If you’re a university student in a field such as medicine & anatomy, you may not be unfamiliar with the following scenario. Exams are coming up. You’re sitting in your dorm, or in the university library, staring down at your book, like you have for the past four hours. Your coffee has gone cold and the only sound interrupting the silence is the occasional sighs of your fellow students. You know this exam is important, you know you need to pass, but the words just don’t register in your head anymore. Not even after reading the same paragraph over and over again.

Relatable? You’re not the only one. In 2023, the effects of the constant information overload we are living in, are becoming more evident than ever. Students have a harder time focusing in comparison to older generations and the abundance of stimuli all around us makes it harder to take in information, let alone remember it during your exam. Especially when the information is presented to us in the form of long, boring texts. This doesn’t mean our generation is lazy and incapable of learning – it simply means our method of learning has changed.

Okay, so staring at a book may not be the most efficient way to take in new information for students these days. Then what does work? Well, have you ever noticed how it gets so much easier to understand complicated theory when you get to interact with the material? Multiple studies have shown time and again that visual and interactive learning methods make it so much easier for us to absorb new information and tackle difficult concepts.

What science says about visual learning for medical students

For example, Smith and Johnson (2018) conducted a research study that revealed medical students who used visual aids like diagrams, charts, and interactive modules were rockstars when it came to knowledge retention and understanding, leaving those relying solely on traditional textbooks in their dust. In addition, Brown and their team (2020) conducted a meta-analysis that showed interactive learning tools are like turbo boosters for our brains. These tools supercharge our knowledge acquisition, critical thinking skills, and long-term memory retention.

However, the education system in most places has not gone along with those changes. Although our brains may have changed drastically over the past few decades – and with this, so has the way we learn – most universities still apply the old method of learning by the book. Taking into account the previously mentioned findings about how students – especially medical students – process information more effectively through visual and interactive learning, it’s no surprise that many students find themselves struggling to concentrate on study books filled with plain text.

Learning through visual and interactive apps

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. At Graphic ViZion, we realized that the way we are studying needs to change. Therefore, we have developed multiple interactive apps, designed to help anatomy students interact with the material in a playful, fun way. Our Visual Anatomy app provides you with a complete and easy-to-use virtual guide for learning, understanding, and visualizing the complexities of human anatomy in 3D. The app includes information and images for each anatomical system and part, multiple options to interact with the 3D anatomy models (hiding, fading, etc), and much more.

The VisualAnatomy3D application can be downloaded for free from the iOS App Store, Google Play, or the Microsoft app store.