Along with the videos for the web-enabled courseware, Gest and Burkel helped organize the collected findings from students’ dissections into an online research database. With just a few keystrokes, students now can call up a wealth of medical histories via the UMich website. And, thanks to the iMac computers placed at each dissection station, students can also record, share, and search on each other’s data as they perform their own procedures. Gest says the database offers invaluable details about each cadaver used in the dissections.

“Let’s say a student doing a dissection discovers that the cadaver used to have a specific heart abnormality,” explains Gest. “He or she would enter that information into the database via the iMac. Then if students were researching that type of condition, they could search the database and see which cadaver had it, then they could examine the cadaver themselves. In that way, any of the 170 students could view whatever variations in anatomy might have been found.”

Since Gest and Burkel have introduced the Mac-based tools into the curriculum, student achievement and enthusiasm have increased in equal measure. Gest reports that anatomy students have posted their best scores on record, while giving the course the highest approval rating ever. Student evaluations of faculty also have been extremely positive — the instructors recently received the highest average evaluations in the history of the program.

To date the anatomy professors and the student production crews have captured the entire first-year anatomy course on video. Production in the summer of 2002 yielded a QuickTime Virtual Reality (QTVR) tour of the anatomy facilities and digital videos of common surgical procedures. And, say Burkel and Gest, all of their courseware is delivered via the Internet, so students can learn in the manner best suited to them.

“Our hope is that at some point, every student can get by with nothing more than what we offer on the Web,” Gest says. This will make it possible for students who are visual as well as those who are auditory learners to get at the information on their own terms. Working with the various Apple technologies has enabled us to put all of the knowledge in one place, yet offer lots of alternatives. Long-term, I think that will affect the quality of students’ lives.”