Knowledge Acquisition and Satisfaction of Virtual Microscopy Usage Among Medical Students of Universiti Sains Malaysia

The virtual microscope has been employed as an adjunct tool to teach optical microscopy for histology learning in medical schools. However, there is no reliable evidence in the literature that virtual and optical microscopy impacts students’ learning. This study focuses on comparing two different methods in learning histology in Universiti Sains Malaysia, namely virtual microscopy and optical microscopy, with regard to medical students’ knowledge acquisition and satisfaction levels. A total number of 120 medical students, consisting of 53 first-year and 67 second-year students, were recruited. The students were divided into virtual microscopy and optical microscopy groups. During the one-day intervention, all students attended a pre-requisite lecture on “Histology of the Eye”, a slide demonstration and a hands-on session using a designated microscope. Students’ knowledge acquisition was evaluated through a pre- and post-practical evaluation and their satisfaction level on learning histology using respective learning tools was measured. The study revealed that the optical and virtual microscopy groups showed significant improvement from the pre- to post-practical tests scores with p < 0.001, respectively. However, the mean increment was higher in virtual microscopy (38.51%) than in optical microscopy (35.08%). Furthermore, the virtual microscopy group had a significantly higher satisfaction score towards the learning tool than the optical microscopy group, p = 0.008. The knowledge acquisition of the virtual microscopy group was equal to the optical microscopy group as they were shown to have a similar improvement in the test scores, comprehension level and learning ability. However, students were nonetheless satisfied with the usage of virtual microscopy as a learning tool.