European Journal of Anatomy

Official Journal of The Spanish Society of Anatomy
Cover Volume 18 - Number 2
Eur J Anat, 18 (2): 109-117 (2014)

??CoachPod?: evaluation of an anatomy teaching podcast originally intended for learning anatomy on the move

Robert T. Padwick1,2, Elizabeth M. McEvoy2,3, Daniel E. Fielding2,4,Peter J. Gold1,2, Laura E.A. Harrison2,5, NP Narasimha Murthy1,2, Chia Tsyh Tan2,6, Stephen Brydges2 and Peter H. Abrahams1,2

1University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, UK, 2Warwick Medical School, UK, 3NHS Warwickshire Primary Care Trust, Stretton-on-Dunsmore, UK, 4University Hospital Leicester NHS Trust, UK, 5Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, UK and 6Colchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, UK

ABSTRACT Warwick Medical School (WMS) has no dissection facilities; students travelled by coach to the nearest medical school. The ??CoachPod? is a series of podcasts designed to prepare students for dissection whilst travelling to dissection lab classes. Each podcast was filmed a week prior to each session and uploaded to the WMS website for students in the 2007 cohort (n=203). Evaluation was performed using a questionnaire with tickbox, Likert scale and free text questions. Overall response rate averaged 28%. Sixty-five percent watched the CoachPod on a computer, 34% watched it on an MP4 player, 55% viewed it at home, 31% viewed it on the coach, 26% watched each episode more than once, 83% perceived it as beneficial in aiding preparation, 51% felt the Coach was an appropriate learning environment, 90% felt they were of an appropriate length and that the anatomy was presented clearly, 89% believed the recordings were of adequate quality, 84% valued their tutors being in them, 92% enjoyed watching them, and 98% would value continued production. Suggestions for improvement were mostly on technical matters. CoachPod is considered a valuable dissection preparation tool, although it is mainly used at home and not on the move. Just-in-time preparation allowed subsequent incorporation of feedback.

Keywords: Human gross anatomy, E-learning, Undergraduate Medical Education, Computer-aided instruction, Teaching of anatomy

European Journal of anatomy
ISSN 2340-311X (Online)