Computerized grading of anatomy laboratory practical examinations.

At the Medical College of Wisconsin, a procedure was developed to allow computerized grading and grade reporting of laboratory practical examinations in the Clinical Human Anatomy course. At the start of the course, first year medical students were given four Lists of Structures. On these lists, numbered items were arranged alphabetically; the items were anatomical structures that could be tagged on a given lab practical examination. Each lab exam featured an anatomy laboratory component and a computer laboratory component. For the anatomy lab component, students moved from one question station to another at timed intervals and identified tagged anatomical structures. As students identified a tagged structure, they referred to a copy of the list (provided with their answer sheet) and wrote the number corresponding to the structure on their answer sheet. Immediately after the anatomy lab component, students were escorted to a computer instruction laboratory where they typed their answer numbers into a secured testing component of a learning management system that recorded their answers for automatic grading. After a brief review of examination scores and item analysis by faculty, exam scores were reported to students electronically. Adding this brief computer component to each lab exam greatly reduced faculty grading time, reduced grading errors and provided faster performance feedback for students without changing overall student performance.

Complete and rapid switch from light microscopy to virtual microscopy for teaching medical histology.

During the interim between the 2003 and 2004 academic years, the cell and tissue biology and integrated medical neuroscience courses at the Medical College of Wisconsin made a complete and rapid switch from light microscopy- to virtual microscopy-based histology laboratories. This switch was prompted by the difficulties in maintaining and the cost of replacing the college's microscopes and microscope slides, and primarily by the desire to promote and streamline learning for our large classes (n > 200) of first-year medical students. A group of students who used the virtual microscope, another group of students who used the light microscope, and faculty with experience using both tools rated the effectiveness of the virtual microscope for learning and teaching. Also, to determine whether virtual microscopy affected student learning, laboratory examination scores for the 2004 class (n = 209) were compared with those of four previous classes that used light microscopes exclusively (n = 811). The switch from light microscopy to virtual microscopy was very favorably received by both students and faculty. More importantly, data from examination scores and course evaluation surveys indicated that use of the virtual microscope may significantly improve student performance and learning efficiency. Procedures for successfully implementing this change are described.