Changes in Anatomy Lecture and Laboratory Instruction During Covid‐19
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction/Objective Covid‐19 created challenges to anatomy education, particularly gross anatomy given the traditional in‐person format of lectures and lab. The objective of this study was to assess the changes in lecture methods and lab materials used in anatomy courses that ran between May‐August (T1) and August‐December (T2) 2020 responding to Covid‐19 restrictions. Materials/Methods A survey was distributed to anatomy educators through professional associations from June‐November 2020. Respondents indicated (1) their institution; (2) programs taught (professional health (PH), medicine (MED), or undergraduate (UG)); (3) course type (integrated or stand‐alone); (4) percentage of lab time before and during Covid‐19 that utilized cadaveric, plastic, and/or other teaching materials; and (5) lecture format. Institutions were classified as public or private via institution websites. Mann‐Whitney U and Wilcoxon signed‐rank tests with Bonferroni correction compared responses before and during Covid‐19 across programs, course type, and institution. Data are presented as percent increase (+value) or decrease (‐value). Alpha<5%. Results T1 and T2 received 67 and 191 responses, respectively. During T1 and T2, cadaver use decreased in PH (‐58% & ‐28%), MED (‐55% & ‐34%), and UG (‐57% & ‐55%) programs (P≤0.045); stand‐alone (‐58% & ‐33%,P<0.001) and integrated (‐48% & ‐28%, P≤0.004) courses; and private (‐49% & ‐25%, P<0.001) and public (‐65% & ‐34%, P<0.001) institutions. During T1 and T2, plastic use did not change for programs, institutions, or courses (P>0.05), except UG decreased plastic usage during T2 (‐20%; P=0.033). During T1 and T2, use of other teaching materials increased in PH (+1180% & +278%), MED (+385% & +1000%), and UG (+285% & +246%) (P≤0.015); stand‐alone (+920% & +540%, P<0.001) and integrated (+330% & +500%, P≤0.002) courses; and private (+1233% & +667%, P<0.001) and public (+415% & +400%, P<0.001) institutions. For T1 and T2, in‐person lecture decreased (‐89% & ‐72%, P≤0.001), while remote lecture increased (+509% & +533%, P≤0.001) during Covid‐19. Conclusion Reduction in cadaver use and in‐person lecture were most pronounced in T1, but remained diminished through both time points, suggesting a shift from the initial pandemic response to teaching to more complex hybrid programs as regulations permitted. Significance/Implication This study provides evidence to better understand how anatomy educators adapted their gross anatomy teaching due to Covid‐19 across programs. In addition, this study provides first of its kind insight into how anatomy was taught across programs prior to Covid‐19. Future studies need to determine whether the findings characterized here were pandemic‐based or if they represent long‐term changes for anatomy education.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.019 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".