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University of Nebraska Medical Center

iTunes U: Cytology of the Female Genital Tract | iBook: Immunohistochemistry

Thursday, January 12th | 11:00-11:45am CT | Truhlsen Event Center, UNMC
Session Type: Digital Poster Session

Project Tools Used:  iPad, Macbook, iTunesU, iBook Author

iTunes U Course Project Summary: Cytotechnologists perform microscopic examinations of specially stained slides of human cells for the early diagnosis and treatment of disease. There are currently 28 Cytotechnology (CT) educational programs in the United States (US); however, there is a lack of infrastructure to train cytotechnologists in many countries.
Our CT program at the University of Nebraska Medical Center is a leader in distance education, with three approved satellite sites within the US. So far, we have been providing synchronized distance education to our Satellite sites.
Our goal is to expand our distance education to international sites, and provide asynchronized online education to the countries that lack CT schools. Hence we decided to develop our courses in iTunes U in iPad. We believe that this will allow the students anywhere at any time to access our courses, and promote independent learning of the students.
Recently, we have been receiving requests to provide online cytology education to many countries where cervical cancer is one of the leading cancer related deaths in women. These cervical cancer deaths however, can be prevented by the Pap test, an effective screening test.
Hence we decided to develop the iTunes U course for “Cytology of Female Genital Tract” first. This course is designed to provide online training to students to interpret Pap Tests. We believe that these students will potentially become expert cytotechnologists in screening Pap tests and play a crucial role in the effective treatment at the earliest stage possible to reduce cervical cancer related deaths.


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iBook Project Summary:  The goal of our cytotechnology program at the University of Nebraska Medical Center is to provide asynchronized online education to the international sites that lack cytotechnology schools. For this purpose, we are currently developing various e-learning modules and, iTunes Courses to incorporate into the existing synchronized online educational curriculum that is currently being offered to our satellite sites within the United States. In addition to this effort we are also revising many of our courses to meet the new entry level competencies for cytotechnologists, recommended by the Cytotechnology Program Review Committee. Since development of iBooks provides opportunity for the educators to create interactive study materials, and aligns with the goal of our educational program, we decided to create iBooks. We started with developing an iBook on Immunohistochemistry, and looking forward to develop iBooks for many other courses in the future. We believe that iBooks will allow the students anywhere at any time to access our courses, and promote independent learning of the students.

Speaker

Maheswari Mukherjee, PhD, MS, CT (ASCP)
Assistant Professor & Education Coordinator, Cytotechnology Education
College of Allied Health