Ensino e aprendizagem em histologia: acesso, validação e usabilidade de tecnologias digitais

Abstract

The present thesis sought to investigate evidence, socioeconomic impact, study habits, practices of digital culture, evaluation and validation of digital technologies in the teaching of histology. This work is divided into three chapters in the form of Articles. The first seeks to investigate the impact of socioeconomic origin on study habits and access to technology for the learning of histology by Brazilian and African students and the general educational result in the discipline of histology during the Covid-19 pandemic. This was a cross-sectional, descriptive study with a quantitative approach, carried out with nursing, pharmacy and biology students from the University of International Integration of Afro-Brazilian Lusophony (UNILAB). Of the 72 participating students, most were female, single and had an income equal to or less than one minimum wage. Smartphones and portable PCs were the preferred devices to access the internet and the YouTube platform to study histology. A significant association between internet use and socioeconomic factors was found in the lower levels of parental education. When comparing learning outcomes before and during the Covid-19 pandemic, all students who took the course during this period had significantly higher scores on the assessments. The second chapter deals with the validation of the content and technique of a virtual atlas for the teaching and learning of histology. A methodological study was carried out from June 2021 to April 2022, with the participation of 11 expert judges in the areas of morphofunctional sciences and 11 expert judges in information technologies. The sums of the Content Validity Index (CVI) were 0.85 for the subject and 0.91 for the atlas technique, respectively. During the pandemic, the use of Digital Information and Communication Technologies (DTIC's) allowed students to continue in contact with the study of histology slides through virtual microscopy. The results suggest that the validated virtual Atlas was able to promote histology learning autonomously and independently of the physical laboratory. The Atlas was considered adequate to its proposal, understandable, accessible, attractive and capable of providing help in the study of Histology. The third article deals with the evaluation of the Usability of Virtual Histology, a virtual microscopy platform developed for the teaching of Histology. Using a mixed methodology – combining methods of a quantitative nature such as the System Usability Scale (SUS) and as a qualitative one, Laurence Bardin's Content Analysis. The study achieved a SUS score of 91.7, receiving the qualification of "Best Imagined" – an index of excellence in the SUS methodology. This work also sought to know the relevance of the study of Histology in the training of medical students at the Federal University of Ceará – participants in the research and to collect their criticisms and suggestions for the development of the Virtual Histology platform.