How to Make Educational Lemonade Out of a Didactic Lemon: The Benefits of Listening to Your Students

When educators develop and introduce new learning approaches or resources, they usually have specific didactic goals in mind that they want to achieve. However, these goals may not always match the needs of their students, who often confound such plans by finding new and different uses for the educational tools that are offered to them. Originating from the author’s work as the histology component director at the University of Michigan, the experience described here provides an example of a learning resource being reappropriated by the learning community. In order to encourage dental students to study histological micrographs after faculty-guided laboratory sessions were eliminated, the author prepared and offered them a series of PowerPoint files with histology images and some corresponding questions. However, instead of increasing their motivation to use the online virtual microscopy resources, students adapted this new tool for reviewing the material and for self-evaluation whether they were prepared for upcoming examinations. Although the product did not succeed as originally devised, it turned into a very popular review resource for the author’s students. Students’ feedback and critical input, as well as their active participation in producing additional, similar learning tools were the deciding factors for this successful change of purpose and the further development and refinement of this new learning resource.