Evaluation of a novel digital environment for learning medical parasitology

Abstract

Eukaryotic parasites represent a serious human health threat requiring health professionals with parasitology skills to counteract this threat. However, recent surveys highlight an erosion of teaching of parasitology in medical and veterinary schools, despite reports of increasing instances of food and waterborne parasitic infections. To address this we developed a web-based resource, DMU e-Parasitology®, to facilitate the teaching and learning of parasitology, comprising four sections: theoretical; virtual laboratory; virtual microscopy; virtual clinical case studies. Testing the package was performed using a questionnaire given to ninety-five Pharmacy students in 2017/18 to assess effectiveness of the package as a teaching and learning tool. 89.5% of students reported appropriate acquisition of knowledge of the pathology, prevention and treatment of some parasitic diseases. 82.1% also welcomed the clinical specialism of the package as it helped them to acquire basic diagnostic skills, through learning infective features/ morphology of the parasites. ARTICLE HISTORY

Eye Tracking—An Innovative Tool in Medical Parasitology

“…There is an urgent need to search for new, effective teaching methods in medical education, including parasitology [16,[34][35][36][37][38]. All over the world, specialists in the field of parasitology exchange their experience and insights on the virtual teaching of parasitology [16,37,[39][40][41][42][43][44]. The use of appropriate methods in the field of telemedicine, telemicrobiology, and tele-microscopy can be extremely useful in the course of teaching parasitology, but can also be important in diagnostics and clinical practice.…”

Comparative study of virtual and face-to-face training methods on the quality of healthcare services provided by Kermanshah pre-hospital emergency staff (EMS): randomized educational Intervention trial

“…Virtual training is increasingly used in medical education such as nursing students’ practical skills, the teaching of oral pathology and anatomy, radiology, parasitology, etc. [ 8 – 12 ]. Many authors have expressed positive role of this approach in education such as reducing training costs, unlimitedly repetition of the same training, time flexibility, comfort and lack of transportation worries [ 13 ].…”

Novel Resources for Learning the Identification of Human-Related Parasites

“…To address this, an international teaching innovation team from different European universities, led by De Montfort University (DMU, Leicester, UK), is building a novel resource for learning and teaching parasitology, named DMU e-Parasitology [7][8], which will be available on the DMU website in 2019. Owing to the fact that microscopic detection of parasites in human, animal or environmental samples remains the cornerstone of parasitological diagnosis despite advances in technology and molecular sciences [9], DMU e-Parasitology is equipped with the following resources for appropriate learning of this technique: a) Virtual Biomedical Laboratory, which will be equipped with different web-based units for learning how to perform different staining techniques for parasites.…”