Digital Histology 2.0: An Open Educational Resource

The teaching of histology is increasingly relying on digital resources in lieu of traditional microscope laboratories. For nearly 20 years, health science education at VCU has depended on a Digital Histology curricular resource on CD-ROM, previously licensed by Wiley Publishing. Now facing issues related to accessibility and technological constraints, this resource is being re-designed as a web-based, mobile-friendly, interactive, open educational resource for VCU health science students and all learners across the world. For the past two decades, there has been a steady decline in the use of microscopes in histology instruction (1,2). As a replacement, a number of digital resources have been developed including image collections published along with the major Histology textbooks. However, these packages mostly offer statically labeled images with limited descriptive text. In 1998, faculty in the department of Anatomy and Neurobiology developed a CD-ROM entitled Digital Histology. While cutting edge at the time, this resource served as a digital atlas with on-demand labeling of structures, interactive quizzes, and formative feedback for more than 6000 VCU medical, dental, graduate, and undergraduate students. However, the shift in standards has rendered this program obsolete and inaccessible to modern devices, including Apple and mobile platforms. Additionally, due to its proprietary authoring software, instructional content can no longer be updated