Publication details
An interactive and self-teaching material for practical microbiology diagnostics
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| Year of publication | 2019 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | The paper presents a fully student-made project of an interactive material for self-education of students. It may serve as a supplement of official materials provided by the teachers (official slideshows, protocols for practical sessions and official interactive self-learning material). It is based on pictures provided by the teachers, but these pictures are used in an inovative manner. The material serves as microbiology game teaching students the diagnostic algoritms in bacteriology. The author has made a material based on Microsoft Powerpoint with interactive elements. The author used mostly the pictures of the “Atlas of medically important microbes” (an interactive electronic atlas), a previous project of a group of the teachers from the Institute of Microbiology of Medical Faculty, Masaryk University and St. Ann’s Faculty Hospital in Brno. These pictures show variety of microorganisms in microphotografies, macrophotographies on various cultivation media and diagnostic test used in practice. All these photographs are arranged so that a student may go through them by chosing a corresponding answer on a slide. The answer has a hyperlink to another slide showing a new picture. The new picture gives a feedback to a student using the material: sometimes just a plain Petri dish is shown as a “result of cultivation”, what gives an information to the user, that the microbe does not grow on that medium. The material that is made by the author serves as an interactive material based on the J. A. Comenius motto “Schola ludum”. The user just clicks on variants of an answer and finds new pictures. The material, in fact, is a simplified simulation of a real diagnostics in microbiology based on morphology of cells, morphology of colonies, biochemical properties of bacteria and other properties. Although it obviously cannot include all details or all eventualities that happen in the real diagnostics, it may function very well as a tool making students to better understand the work of a microbiology laboratory. The material has been tested on a few students (schoolmates of the author) that enjoyed it and they gave a feedback to the author saying that this mateerial can be used at learning for the final examination of Medical Microbiology subject. 18 An interactive material is presented, that is made by a student that used pictures from an atlas. This material may inspire more students by its relative simplicity: all material is based just on Microsoft Powerpoint. It shows that students, even when not led by a teacher, are able to make a good tool that might be used by other students in their education. |