Study of nonsynchronous online teaching of regional anatomy for international students integrated with medical humanities and local culture during COVID-19 pandemic.

PURPOSE: The COVID-19 pandemic imposed unexpected disruptions to anatomical educational practice, the teaching of regional anatomy for international students which has changed to an online format and faces various challenges. The challenges include creating online education homogeneous/equivalent to offline education, introducing local culture to international students, and educating students in medical humanities and ethics. METHODS: To address these problems, the teaching staff integrated medical humanities and local culture into nonsynchronous online teaching of regional anatomy. RESULTS: The nonsynchronous online teaching with interpreted videos of dissections does not significantly affect the experimental and total scores of regional anatomy courses for international students. Integrating medical humanities and local culture into this teaching model is appreciated by them and also has a good teaching effect. CONCLUSION: Students not only gained professional knowledge but also obtained enhanced exposure to local culture and professional spirit from this regional anatomy education.

Effects of Open Board Lecture Videos on Anatomy

COVID-19 has forced anatomists to perform non-face-to-face education using lecture videos. A Korean anatomist has given (white and black) board lectures and distributed lecture videos to the public for many years. This study was to verify the effects of open board lecture videos in the anatomy field. A questionnaire survey was carried out with the help of medical students who were exposed to the board lecture videos. The video provider uploaded the lecture videos on YouTube, where the viewing numbers were counted. At a medical school where the video provider belonged, the students mainly watched the lecture videos before the anatomy class. The watching hours of the lecture videos were related to the written examination scores. Students gave positive and negative comments on the board lectures. At the other two medical schools, students partly watched the lecture videos regardless of the teacher who delivered the lectures. The results suggested that students understood the board lectures themselves. On YouTube, the lecture videos were viewed by approximately 1,000 students. This paper introduces the desirable aspects of open board lecture videos on anatomy. The videos could enhance the quality of both students and teacher.

Flipped anatomy classroom integrating multimodal digital resources shows positive influence upon students' experience and learning performance.

Anatomy is shifting toward a greater focus on adopting digital delivery. To advance digital and authentic learning in anatomy, a flipped classroom model integrating multimodal digital resources and a multimedia group assignment was designed and implemented for first-year neuroanatomy and third-year regional anatomy curricula. A five-point Likert scale learning and teaching survey was conducted for a total of 145 undergraduate health science students to evaluate students' perception of the flipped classroom model and digital resources. This study revealed that over two-thirds of participants strongly agreed or agreed that the flipped classroom model helped their independent learning and understanding of difficult anatomy concepts. The response showed students consistently enjoyed their experience of using multimodal digital anatomy resources. Both first-year (75%) and third-year (88%) students strongly agreed or agreed that digital tools are very valuable and interactive for studying anatomy. Most students strongly agreed or agreed that digital anatomy tools increased their learning experience (~80%) and confidence (> 70%). The third-year students rated the value of digital anatomy tools significantly higher than the first-year students (p = 0.0038). A taxonomy-based assessment strategy revealed that the third-year students, but not the first-year, demonstrated improved performance in assessments relating to clinical application (p = 0.045). In summary, a flipped anatomy classroom integrating multimodal digital approaches exerted positive impact upon learning experience of both junior and senior students, the latter of whom demonstrated improved learning performance. This study extends the pedagogy innovation of flipped classroom teaching, which will advance future anatomy curriculum development, pertinent to post-pandemic education.

Medical students' perceptions and performance in an online regional anatomy course during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The present study evaluated the students' psychological well-being, experiences, performance, and perception of learning regional anatomy remotely. A regional anatomy remote learning curriculum was designed and learning materials were delivered virtually to 120 undergraduate medical students at Jinan University, China. All the students consented and voluntarily participated in this study by completing self-administered online questionnaires including the Zung's Self-Rating Anxiety and Depression Scales at the beginning and end of the learning session. A subset participated in focus group discussions. Most of the students (90.0%) positively evaluated the current distance learning model. More than 80% were satisfied with the content arrangement and coverage. Many students preferred virtual lectures (68.2%) and videos showing dissections (70.6%) during the distance learning sessions. However, writing laboratory reports and case-based learning were the least preferred modes of learning as they were only preferred by 23.2% and 14.1% of the students, respectively. There was no significant lockdown-related anxiety or depression reported by students using depression and anxiety scales as well as feedback from focus group discussions. The surveyed students' confidence scores in distance learning were significantly higher after 5 weeks than at the beginning of the session (3.05 ± 0.83 vs. 3.70 ± 0.71, P < 0.05). Furthermore, the present results showed no significant differences between the current group's academic performance in the unit tests as well as the final overall evaluation for different parts of the course compared to that of the previous year's cohort. The findings above were congruent with focus group discussion data that the use of the online teaching platform for regional anatomy significantly improved the students' confidence in virtual and self-directed learning and did not negatively affect their academic performance.