UBCO Professor Creates Tool to Help Visual Learners

One professor in Kelowna realized that not all students are textbook learners, so he brought the information to life.

University of British Columbia (UBC) Assoc. Prof. Bruce Mathieson said his students needed more visuals.

“My students have been telling me that most of them are visual learners, that they don’t necessarily retain all the information they need from attending lectures and taking notes,” said Mathieson, who teaches biology at UBC Okanagan’s Irving K Barber School of Arts and Sciences. “Technology is a way of life for most of today’s students, and visuals are a huge part of that.”

Mathieson has created seven videos that detail the dissection of the human brain and he also received the Curriculum Innovation Award. The $9,750 award allowed the professor to hire a programmer who created a program that allows students to digitally navigate a brain on a computer screen.

“It’s like a little video game, you can navigate and isolate the various areas of the brain and it’s a way of putting pictures to the parts of the brain anatomy you are learning about,” Mathieson said.

One student Shane Simon found that Neuroanatomy was one of the most challenging parts of the curriculum. Simon however said being able to virtually walk through the material during his own time helped.

Iman Zahirfar, another student agreed.

“Instead of just memorizing the material from a textbook, this tool allowed me to see real-life structures of the brain and the names associated with them, which is fun,” said Zahirfar. “Because of the set-up of the tool, I became more curious as to what each structure did and actually ended up studying more as a result.”

Students told Mathieson that they’ve been spending more time looking over the material since the digital options were created. Mathieson noted that many students are getting upwards of 95 per cent on their tests now.