Medical Education Research
A
“Prof-in-a-Box” for the gross anatomy dissection lab.
Stephen J. Moorman, Neuroscience and Cell Biology, Robert Wood Johnson
Medical School
ABSTRACT:
Within the next decade there will be a critical national
shortage of PhD-level faculty trained to teach gross anatomy. The
optimal learning environment for gross anatomy is the dissection
laboratory where students learn to recognize anatomical structures and
their relationships in situ. We have developed an Anatomy
Prof-in-a-Box (PiB) system where an anatomist using distance-learning
technologies ‘helps’ students in a dissection lab at a different
site. The PiB system consists of: (1) an anatomist sitting in
his/her office with a computer and video camera; (2) a computer and 2
video cameras in the lab; (3) iChat AV software; (4) a catalogue of
anatomical resources; (5) a secure server to host the PiB-student
‘consultation’. The camera in the faculty office allows the
students to see the faculty member, providing a more personal aspect to
the interaction. The cameras in the lab allow the anatomist to
switch between seeing the students and seeing the dissection. The
software allows the students and faculty to interact via audio and
video providing an environment where questions can be asked and
answered and anatomical structures can be identified ‘at a distance’ in
real-time. The catalogue provides the anatomist with additional
electronic resources that s/he can ‘push’ to the student’s computer in
the lab. We set up the PiB at a prosected cadaver and made the
PiB available for student use during ‘office hours’. In this
pilot project, we have demonstrated that many of the functions of a
faculty member in the dissection lab can be performed ‘at a distance’
using the PiB. Therefore, using the PiB a geographically
dispersed faculty could provide laboratory experience for the students
at numerous medical schools.
The results of this work have now been
published in BMC Medical Education. You can get a free copy at:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6920/6/55
(last revised 15 February 2006)
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