Instructor: Professor Martha D. McDaniel, M.D., Department of Anatomy, Dartmouth Medical School

Project: Medical education is in a period of dynamic change worldwide. Students of medicine in the 21st century need both to learn and to integrate more factual information than their predecessors, and to acquire skills that will facilitate their continuing learning after they leave medical school. Historically, medical students have attempted to learn human anatomy by cadaver dissection, supplemented by utilizing a variety of atlases and textbooks and faculty guidance in the form of lectures and small group sessions. We at Dartmouth feel that this is still a fundamentally sound approach. However, we also feel that the time spent procuring atlases and other learning materials (e.g. radiographs), assembling them in a location that is conducive to thoughtful assimilation, and searching for the appropriate pages is not time well spent. We believe that posting of well cross-indexed (linked) materials (including the use of rollover-images, pop-up text windows, and image links to enlargements) on a web site would greatly improve learning efficiency for our students.

Resources will include photographs of prosections, anatomical models, bones, radiological images, appropriately credited atlas drawings, and short videos outlining the steps to be taken in the assigned dissections and covering selected topics in a more advanced or detailed manner than can be done in class. Still images will be made interactive by using mouse-over scripting to create various textual messages that will explain and identify structures and allow linking among relevant images. The site will be searchable by category. We also plan to incorporate on-line image-based quizzes. Required material will be clearly delineated from optional, supplemental material.

Project Site: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~anatomy/