Data Mining and Learning Analytics

CHAPTER 9EXPLORING THE USEFULNESS OF ADAPTIVE ELEARNING LABORATORY ENVIRONMENTS IN TEACHING MEDICAL SCIENCE

Thuan Thai¹ Patsie Polly²

¹ School of Education, University of Notre Dame Australia, Fremantle, Western Australia, Australia

² Department of Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales, Kensington, New South Wales, Australia

9.1 INTRODUCTION

Pathology is a discipline in the medical sciences that focuses on the study of disease. This includes the cause of the disease and the effect it has on the human body at the organ, tissue, and cellular level (Kumar, Abbas, Aster, & Robbins, 2013). Pathology also involves the diagnosis and research addressing prevention of disease. As such, good foundational knowledge of many other science and medical science disciplines, such as anatomy, histology, physiology, pharmacology, microbiology, immunology, and biochemistry, is required of undergraduate science and medical science students to fully understand concepts in pathology.

At the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia, pathology is a study plan available to students in a number of degree programs, including the Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Advanced Science, Bachelor of Medical Science, and Bachelor of Health and Exercise Science. Owing to the flexible structure of some of these degree programs, it is possible that students could enroll into a pathology course without previously completing all the science prerequisite courses that are foundational in ...