Melissa Quinn, PhD

How Are You Teaching?

Medical Anatomy Labs in the Age of COVID-19

I'm an assistant professor in the Division of Anatomy. I predominantly teach in the medical curriculum and get to work with the students all four years of their tenure. I also teach within our graduate program. I am the director of outreach and community programming for the division. My research focuses on anatomy education and interprofessional education.

In the past year, I've transformed my teaching to address the COVID-19 pandemic (for example, my approach to online, hybrid, or socially-distanced classroom teaching).
 

My Teaching Strategy

We had to modify in-person, hands-on anatomy labs to virtual and hybrid platforms due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We had to create a way to maintain anatomical excellence by developing online anatomy labs that could be comparably engaging for learners.
 

Inspiration

We wanted to maintain our dedication to our students and did not want them to completely feel like they would be losing a significant part of their medical education. We needed to find a way to continue active participation in a virtual lab where the students would not be dissecting.
 

In Practice

There were a few different scenarios that have panned out this year. We started all virtual, moved to hybrid, went back to all virtual, and back to hybrid. We (my colleague and my amazing graduate teaching associates) created 60+ prosection videos with over eight hours of footage through five blocks, used cameras and Zoom to complete dissections with live streams in real time, held virtual office hours (for content and just for students to talk and feel connected), live-streamed labs, held virtual practicals, etc.
 

Student Response

The students have responded positively to our changes and all the different things we had to implement:

"The use of Zoom to hold anatomy office hours and Mediasite to show cadaver dissections was very helpful given that we could not get into the anatomy lab during a pandemic."

"The anatomy prosection videos were so incredibly helpful in learning anatomy. I am so thankful to have these to review for years to come in my training. Please keep making these!"
 

Advice to Other Instructors

Don't be afraid to have to pivot and be creative. If you are enthusiastic with what you are doing, there is nothing off the table [in terms of what] you can modify [and] how you present it. View Dr. Melissa Quinn's presentation, Medical Anatomy Labs in the Age of COVID.