Application of Cyber Lecture on Histology and Neuroanatomy for Medical Students and Its Effect Analysis

Park, Jeong Hyun; Lee, Young Il

Abstract

Growing educational demands for the basic medical subjects due to rapidly expanding importance of basic medical sciences including anatomy and increasing amount of medical knowledges have brought up the need to use new methods in learning. However, the number of professors in basic medicine didn't change within the last decades. Recent development of information and communication technologies has greatly influenced on the education and exchange of information. Furthermore, this technology is now widely used in the education and evaluation of medical students. The purposes of this study are to describe practical services available on network system (cyber lecture), and to evaluate the efficacy of this system in the field of basic medical subjects including neuroanatomy and histology. In this study, we adopted several teaching strategies of newly developed cyber teaching, face-to-face teaching, and practice. Medical students of Kang-Won national and Dankook universities were participated and asked to complete an anonymous survey in private. The majority of students had already experienced web-based leaning at least once and preferred this lecture system to be expanded hereafter. Some students suggested intimate integration of photomicrographs shown in cyber-lectures to the histology lab for the maximization of educational effect. Results in this study show that this kind of lecture system is useful in teaching basic medical subjects, but cannot replace totally a teacher's share in the learning process. Feedback from the medical students shows that this education is widely used and needed. Cyber lecture system based on network technology is likely to play important roles in many aspects of medical fields and expected to make new paradigm of medical education in the near future.