I like to see my students as individuals with different learning potentials and not as numbers in a classroom. By assisting the learning of my students I have realized that everyone has the interest and motivation to improve, but some might take longer than others to do so. I believe that repetition can consolidate previous knowledge learned by students and this is why I give high importance to review sessions. Repetition produces a natural tendency in knowledge and reasoning since it helps transition student's skills from the conscious to the subconscious.
Something that differentiates my course from other courses is the hands-on experience that the students are exposed to. It's a priority for me to involve the students in the microscopic diagnosis of parasitic infections. Therefore, students are involved in the examination of human stools, blood and tissues to recognize disease-causing parasites in humans. This form of experiential learning is all about learning through experiences and reflecting on these activities to fixate knowledge.
My third form of innovation is the integration of clinical cases after the lecture presentations. Case reports provide two interrelated perspectives, both from the patient and from clinicians. By presenting clinical cases in a coherent manner, public health workers will get a better understanding of the diagnosis and management of neglected tropical diseases.
Especially at the beginning of the course, many students have a problem identifying unicellular intestinal protozoa (Figure 1-2). The vast variety of intestinal protozoa, their relatively small size, and similarity can cause confusion to students that are not used to observing these organisms under the microscope. Many students have told me: "all these parasites look the same" or "I don't see anything". Other students confuse the parasites with vegetable fibers or fat droplets floating in the stools. I try to be available to students for the after-class lab session. In these activities, we review the microscopic slides (Figure 3) with open atlas and books. The point is to explain in a descriptive way the morphology of the parasitic structures that they should be looking for to differentiate one parasite from the other. This method has worked for many years and I'm planning to continue being available to students whenever they need my assistance.
Figure 1. Morphology of amoebae. Bogitsh, B. J., Carter, C. E., & Oeltmann, T. N. (2019). Chapter 4 - Visceral Protista I: Rhizopods (Amoebae) and Ciliophorans. In B. J. Bogitsh, C. E. Carter, & T. N. Oeltmann (Eds.), Human Parasitology (Fifth Edition) (pp. 51–69). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-813712-3.00004-7
Figure 2. Important enteric amoebae of humans. Bogitsh, B. J., Carter, C. E., & Oeltmann, T. N. (2019). Chapter 4 - Visceral Protista I: Rhizopods (Amoebae) and Ciliophorans. In B. J. Bogitsh, C. E. Carter, & T. N. Oeltmann (Eds.), Human Parasitology (Fifth Edition) (pp. 51–69). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-813712-3.00004-7
Figure 3. Slides from the PH Parasitology Laboratory.