The Anatomy World Wide Web Site at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) is used as a computerized bulletin board to post information in support of the human gross anatomy course that is taken by the freshman medical students. The Internet is used as an educational delivery vehicle for the gross anatomy course and it can be accessed by our students from the gross anatomy dissection laboratory, the Marvin Computer Laboratory located within the Anatomy Department or the Learning Resource Center located in the medical library. In addition, students can access the Anatomy Web Site from home through the Internet. The Anatomy Web Site provides students access to images, announcements, dissection instructions and self assessment question packets. Cross sectional images are available on the Web Site which have been digitized and mapped here at UAMS. The Web Site allows the faculty to rapidly revise and deliver course information, and hypertext links to other web sites give UAMS students access to educational materials developed at other institutions. A unique feature of the UAMS Anatomy Educational Network is student access to computers at tableside within the gross anatomy laboratory. There are currently 12 student workstations (PowerMac 7100/80AV models with CD-ROM drive, 17" Apple Multiscan monitors) located on mobile carts within the gross anatomy laboratory. Students use these computers to access the Anatomy Web Site while performing their dissections or reviewing material within the gross lab. Additional computers and interactive videodisc programs are available for student use in the Horace Marvin Computer Laboratory, located adjacent to the gross anatomy lab.
The computer system used for the Anatomy Educational Network is Macintosh-based. There are two file servers: a PowerMacintosh 8150 which is used for the network file server running AppleShare, and a PowerMacintosh 6150 Internet file server (16 meg RAM) to deliver our Internet information. WebStar (StarNine) is used to support our Web Site. ClarisWorks, BBEdit, HotMetal Pro, and PageMill have been used in creating html documents. The primary development computer is a PowerMac 8500 with 80 megabytes of RAM, 4 megabytes of VRAM, 2 gigabyte hard drive, 4 gigabyte fast/wide SCSI drive with Jackhammer SCSI accelerator PCI card, 1 gigabyte external hard drive, 230 megabyte magneto-optical cartridge drive, and a 200 megabyte SyQuest cartridge drive. Connected to this development computer is a UMAX color flatbed scanner with transparency adapter, a Polaroid SprintScan slide scanner, a Sanyo S-VHS videotape recorder, and a Pioneer LDV2600 laserdisc player. While a number of authoring tools are used for various projects, the principle authoring tool has been Hypercard 2.3. And while a variety of graphics programs are used in development, our principle graphics tool is Adobe Photoshop 3.04 (recently upgraded to 3.05).
The educational software being used includes: Review Questions for Gross Anatomy & Embryology (Parthenon), The Anatomy Project (The Anatomy Project), Human Anatomy (Gold Standard), Radiologic Anatomy (Gold Standard), and A.D.A.M. (A.D.A.M. Software). There are also a few in-house programs available, including Dermatomes and Review Questions for Histology. A file access and security program (At Ease 2.0) is used which provides an attractive, secure user interface.
In addition to the usage cited above, the Anatomy Educational Network supports two other major courses offered to freshman medical students by the Department of Anatomy: Microscopic Anatomy and Neuroscience. Also, information concerning departmental faculty and graduate studies in the Department of Anatomy is posted on the Internet. All of these pages are accessible through the UAMS Department of Anatomy home page.