THE HOME TUTOR - A NEW TOOL FOR TRAINING IN MICROSCOPE SKILLS

AxioHOME is a new concept in microscope design. It is a microscope wit h a visual display unit mounted in the head permitting computer genera ted displays to be projected on to the real microscope image when view ed down the eyepieces. This allows the annotation of the microscope im age with both text and graphics. The AxioHOME system was used for the construction of complex interactive tutorials for the training and ass essment of students. The basis of a tutorial is that features of inter est on a microscope slide are indicated to the student who is then pro vided with either information or questions about those features. In tu rn the student can also annotate the slide with comments for later dis cussion with the teacher. The system therefore allows a dialogue betwe en teacher and student. The creation of tutorials is time consuming. I t takes approximately 10 min of teacher time to create 1 min of studen t time. However since the same tutorial can be used by numerous studen ts this releases the teacher from repetitive training. The student res ponse to this teaching method has been very positive. The main critici sm being that insufficient teaching material was available.