A student-led approach to developing online interactive physiology case studies

Case-based learning (CBL) is an active learning approach which requires students to apply their knowledge to solve real-world problems. While used across multiple disciplines, CBL has a long history in medical education. In a typical CBL session, small groups of students work through clinical scenarios with support from a facilitator. A recent meta-analysis by Cen et al. (2021) showed that CBL significantly improves medical students’ academic performance compared with didactic learning methods. The use of case studies in physiology education has also been shown to increase students’ motivation and support the assimilation of knowledge (Zimmerman, 2010). While there are many freely accessible physiology case studies available online, these are primarily designed to help educators deliver synchronous CBL sessions. To the best of our knowledge, there is no existing resource that provides open-access online interactive case studies to support students learning physiology.

The aim of our larger project is to develop a series of interactive open access online case studies to support physiology learning for biomedical sciences and medical students. Here we will share our experiences of student-led content creation.

During an ongoing summer studentship, two undergraduate medical science students worked to develop case studies including “The Botanical Burglar” focusing on physiology and pharmacology of the neuromuscular junction and “The Hidden Message in a Fractured Bone” focusing on anatomy and pathophysiology of bones. The case studies are being developed using H5P (HTML5 Package) and hosted on a WordPress website (www.physiologycases.co.uk). The interactive elements include multiple choice questions, fill-in-the-blanks and image labelling tasks. Two members of academic staff reviewed the case studies for accuracy and alignment with the intended learning outcomes before publication. Anonymous feedback will be collected from both students and educators using a short survey in Microsoft Forms. The H5P plugin H5PxAPIkatchu will be used to collect data on interactions such as the number of question attempts and question scores. Analytics data, including page visits and average time spent, will be quantified using Google Analytics 4. These data will allow us to evaluate how students and educators from different backgrounds engage with the online case studies, creating a holistic understanding of the educational environment and facilitating data-driven decisions to improve teaching strategies, learning outcomes, and overall user satisfaction.

Cen XY, Hua Y, Niu S & Yu T (2021). Application of case-based learning in medical student education: a meta-analysis. European Review for Medical and Pharmacological Sciences 25, 3173–3181. Zimmermann M (2010). Case studies in a physiology course on the autonomic nervous system: design, implementation, and evaluation. Advances in Physiology Education 34, 59–64.