New case study: Enhancing access, equity and student learning through the use of virtual microscopy

We've just made available another new case study. This time it comes from Dr Lucy Webster, who was awarded a Flexible Learning Institute Teaching Fellowship in 2010 to complete this project as part of BMS337 (Histopathology), and has this year been honoured with both CSU's Vice Chancellor's Award for Teaching Excellence, and an ALTC Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning for 'for creating flexible and engaging resources to enhance student learning in the Biomedical sciences'.  

One of the slides that Lucy used with her Histopathology students. Both internal
and distance students were given various samples in which they made an
initial diagnosis, followed by a virtual meeting where Lucy was able to
address any incorrect diagnoses through discussion and shared annotation
on the slide on the electronic whiteboard. Following the session,
students would write up a case study report on their final diagnosis and justifications

From the case study:

The teaching of microscopy-based subjects is currently severely hindered by issues surrounding infrastructure, access and equity. In particular, distance education and offshore students are largely restricted to viewing samples on glass-microscope slides during intense residential school periods where they are under immense stress and time pressures. In this case study, Dr Lucy Webster shares how she has used virtual microscopy to digitally reproduce glass slides for normal tissue histology and histopathology so that images can be viewed and manipulated at remote locations. 

This blended and flexible learning strategy has had positive impacts on student access, equity, learning outcomes and engagement. Feedback from students was extremely positive and students have requested that the technology be used in other microscopy-based subjects. Widespread implementation of this technology has the potential to transform the teaching and flexible delivery of all microscopy-based subjects within the Faculty of Science at CSU. 

In this video, Lucy talks about her project: 

You can read Lucy's full case study here.  

Lucy is currently working on a ALTC-funded project with Professor Geoff Meyer at the University of Western Australia on a project entitled “New paradigms for learning and teaching histology; changing focus from microscopy to 3D reconstructions and animations”.