Abstract:

Today we teach histology using microscopy sessions in the lab. This is a bottleneck for the students as outside the labs they are restricted to the support of printed atlases and some digital tools freely available from some other universities. Functional Histology is a course unit of the 1st year of the Biochemistry Degree, an offer of the University of Porto, in Portugal. The course provides 5 hours of contact per week, in which the syllabus is taught using theoretical expositions interspersed with the observation of histological preparations under the microscope and with educational games. In the last 2 years, the average of approvals was 61% and the average grade of 15.40 values. The difficulty in obtaining approval is partly due to the lack of specifically targeted support teaching material so that students gain autonomy and encouragement to study individually outside the classroom.

In this project, we present a digital histology book that students can use anywhere, including the classroom, and on any electronic device. In order to increase interactivity and its use by students, the book has been built in the form of a story with one main character, Karl Mayer, who was kidnapped by one Cell Wizard that need his help to reconquer the “Histokingdom” from the villain. Through theoretical expositions, digital histological images, diagrams, and drawings. Karl will want to know if their readers are following them and along the way he launches challenges that must be answered correctly. One of the main contributions of this project is the creation of a tool that can be considered a mix between a book and a digital game, which can be used anytime, in any space and in all electronic devices. Besides, this game will not be “hard-wired”, but procedurally generated from a simple file with the story and challenges that the teacher can create easily without any programming knowledge. As future work, a visual tool will be provided for the teacher to author any kind of interactive book for any course, in more visual and intuitive interaction.

Keywords:

Digital Book, Digital Game, Histology.