Ann Arbor, MI — Seeing is believing. But watching a video transforms belief into comprehension. Such is the theory behind a Mac-based program at the University of Michigan (UMich) Medical School. To supplement the traditional lecture-exam teaching model, medical students now watch videos of anatomical dissections via the Web, then complete their own procedures. Edited on iMac computers with iMovie and QuickTime, the videos have helped the most recent class of UMich students record the highest average grades achieved in the last ten years.

In the Division of Anatomical Sciences, instructors used to demonstrate gross anatomy procedures to 37 separate groups of students, semester after semester. Then the medical school faculty hit on the idea of filming the dissections, so that students could watch them at their own pace on the university’s website. It was all part of a move towards creating a more active learning environment, says UMich’s Dr. Thomas Gest.

“Over the past three years, we have been reducing the length of lectures delivered in our first-year medical gross anatomy course,” notes Gest, an associate professor of anatomical sciences. “The purpose of decreasing the lecture time was to make more laboratory time available, and to change the focus of the course from teacher-centered, passive learning to student-centered, active learning. We also wanted to make more class time available for peer teaching, so that individuals could learn their anatomy in the best possible way, by teaching others.”

Adds Gest: “The theory was that students could look at the movies before they came to the lab, then they’d be up to speed on what they had to do when they got there. Instead of doing these demonstrations 37 times, we’d just make one movie, then everyone could watch it at their leisure and review it in lab during dissection. In this way, we felt that everyone would get the same knowledge base, because the information would be standard across the board.”

Gest and his colleague, Dr. William Burkel, a professor of anatomical sciences, hired a team of UMich medical students to head up the production effort. The crew used a Canon XL-1 digital camcorder to capture the dissection footage. A Kodak DC 4800 still camera grabbed additional shots of the procedures.

Gest worked closely with the students, frequently pitching in during the postproduction phase (Burkel even lent his voice as the narrator on the tapes). Fortunately, iMovie made the editing task painless for all.

“We chose iMovie because it was so easy to use,” says Gest. “It was a product that both the faculty and students could grasp and master quickly. With iMovie, even if Bill and I weren’t around, the students could still work pretty much autonomously.”