Alessandra I.G. Buma, Femke Simmer, Marjanne den Braber‐Ymker, Patricia J.T.A. Groenen

Appraisal of the PathoDiscovery: an interactive web‐based educational tool for teaching pathophysiology and histopathology

  • Microbiology (medical)
  • General Medicine
  • Immunology and Allergy
  • Pathology and Forensic Medicine

Virtual pathology education has shown to enhance the students' learning experience. At the Radboud University, an E‐learning platform—called the “PathoDiscovery”—was developed and first used in a course about neoplasm development amongst first year (bio)medical sciences students. The PathoDiscovery incorporates high‐power microscopic images, histological annotations, interactive questions and pre‐programmed feedback.The objective of our study was to develop and evaluate the PathoDiscovery within the “Neoplasm” course focusing on student perceptions of usability and utility. For this study the online feedback on the PathoDiscovery that was obtained anonymously from (bio)medical students over two consecutive academic years was analyzed. The responses of the first year were used to make improvements. After the second year, the feedback of the two academic years was compared. The rating of the E‐learning increased from 6.8 (n = 285) to 7.4 (n = 247) after implementation of feedback obtained in the first year. The students judged the structure as logical (90%). The content was considered easy or just right (57%), matched the learning objectives (76%), and contributed to knowledge development (78%). We conclude that the first experiences with the PathoDiscovery are positive for both students and lecturers; it is an example of a dynamic online learning tool that is easily adaptable and is well suited for a blended learning approach.

Need a simple solution for managing your BibTeX entries? Explore CiteDrive!

  • Web-based, modern reference management
  • Collaborate and share with fellow researchers
  • Integration with Overleaf
  • Comprehensive BibTeX/BibLaTeX support
  • Save articles and websites directly from your browser
  • Search for new articles from a database of tens of millions of references
Try out CiteDrive

More from our Archive