HistoLogical, a computer atlas and drill of histology

Abstract

An educational program has been developed to aid the instruction of Histology, a required course for the first year medical student. The program was developed using SuperCard on an Apple Macintosh IIci computer. It incorporates high quality color images with a hypermedia format, i.e. the student can jump from topic to topic as he/she wishes. The program has an "atlas," which provides information about each image and topic being discussed, and a "drill," which presents to the student a question about an image and provides feedback tailored to the student's answer. In the drill, the student is asked to type in responses to the questions; the answer is judged by text recognition. For each question, feedback is written for the correct answer, incorrect answer, and up to 10 "accessory answers" (answers which might be expected although they are not correct). The faculty of the UMMS Histology course has encouraged the use of this program in this years' course, and evaluation received from faculty and students has been quite positive.