Products
If you teach in visually oriented biomedical and life science disciplines such as histology, anatomy, pathology and histopathology, haematology, botany etc then you know how important it is that students are able to recognise key features of specimens. Having this knowledge accessible to teachers helps inform how content is reviewed in tutorials and practical classes. The ability for students to interact with images (zoom and pan) while answering questions is particularly important for microscopy-based disciplines.
Many question tools that allow teachers to incorporate images do so with a static image and may utilise arrows, numbers or letters to mark features and ask students to match them to their corresponding name which in some cases may help students deduce the answer without relying on their own experience and knowledge of the topic. Hotspot type questions that ask students to identify a feature without cueing as to possible locations are an improvement on this but often don’t allow the student to zoom in and out to see the context of the feature.
We are excited to announce the release of our new image-based question tool. The tool assesses students’ ability to identify a location of a feature on an image and provides immediate feedback. Unlike other digital assessment tools, our question tool tests feature identification skills without giving hints as to possible locations and allows students to interact with the image, zoom in and pan across, while attempting the question.
Here are some key benefits of our newly released tool:
Students can easily manipulate the image interactively by zooming and panning across the slide as they answer the question.
After placing a pin into their chosen area of the image, students receive immediate feedback as to whether they were correct or incorrect. This helps to alleviate the stress of marking and giving individualised feedback when the cohort size is large.
After correctly identifying the feature, or using up the maximum number of attempts allowed, students are shown the correct region, along with any feedback annotations to allow you to immediately remediate misconceptions.
Use either the entire image or if the feature is repeated multiple times across the image, a smaller field can be chosen. Students are able to zoom in and out and pan across the selected field of view.
Review heat maps of student pins and filter for correct and incorrect responses to facilitate in class discussion and address misconceptions in real time.
One of our goals has been to save you time while creating questions. Over the last ten years, our members have collectively made over 1,771,648 annotations on images. Our question tool lets you take advantage of any of your previously made annotations or public layers while defining the correct and feedback annotations for a question.
Our question tool has been designed to suit a variety of classroom uses, including both multiple or unlimited attempt formative classroom activities, and single attempt exam style questions with no feedback provided to learners.
To get started, the question tool can be accessed by teachers while viewing any image on Slice. Click Access the Question tool.
To learn more about how the tool works visit our knowledge base.
We’ve created four questions for you to test out the new tool. Follow the links below and make sure you're logged in so you can answer the question, or create your own!
Identify the left sphenoid bone
Identify a germinal centre within a lymphoid follicle
Identify the invasive carcinoma of the pancreas
Identify the old (healed) myocardial infarction
If you have any questions about our new tool or using Slice in class you're welcome to get in touch with me at s.dowdell@best.edu.au.
