The Impact of Virtual Microscopy on Medical Students’ Intrinsic Motivation

Virtual microscopy has been introduced into histology curricula as an approach to improve students learning. An important factor to ascertain students learning and achievement is by instigating and reinforcing students’ intrinsic motivation hence, this study aims to compare the students’ intrinsic motivation towards using virtual microscopy with optical microscopy in learning histology among medical students in Universiti Sains Malaysia. A randomised controlled study was conducted among 120 students from 2017/2018 academic session. The participants were divided into two groups, the virtual and optical microscopy groups, using stratified random allocation. During the one-day intervention, all participants attended a lecture on “Histology of the Eye”, a slide demonstration and a practical session at respective labs according to their groups. Students’ perceptions of their motivation on learning histology using their respective learning tool were evaluated by administering the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory, which measured students’ perceived competence, interest, pressure and value score. The perceived competence score of virtual microscopy group was significantly higher compared to the optical microscopy group (p = 0.037). There was no significant difference between the two study groups in terms of interest, pressure and value score. The use of virtual microscopy as a learning tool gave students greater perceived competence in learning histology. However, it is premature to conclude from this finding, as intrinsic motivation is multifactorial. Future studies should predict the correlation between elements of virtual microscopy with the attributes of intrinsic motivation toprovide a better view on the impact of virtual microscopy on students’ motivation to learn histology.