SBMS Newsletter Issue 04

SBMS Newsletter Issue 04

June 2021 | Issue 04

• Bioinformatics Research @ SBMS • Research & Knowledge Exchange Retreat • VR-enriched integrative online task-oriented practicals for preclinical education of health professionals • HKUMed identifies Collagen IV differentially regulates planarian stem cell potency and lineage progression: Striving towards tissue regeneration in humans

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Associate Director’s Message

I would like to first acknowledge my colleagues for all the work that goes into this 4th edition of our School Newsletter. I am almost certain that all of you would agree, publicity has become more important than ever, and on this front, our School now also has presence in social media to share the many happenings with its followers and the public. We are also taking an active role to engage the community, including launching of our upcoming and inaugural Biomedical Sciences Summer Academy. Science and publicity go hand in hand, and it is through effective communication that we can put into context the observations we make at the bench for the general public, hoping to leave lasting impacts not only to those in your field but to a much greater audience. I would therefore like to encourage all of you to venture into the many opportunities available around you, and to actively participate in events where we can then make better communicators of science.

Professor Michael Huen Associate Director(Research & Innovation) School of Biomedical Sciences

Teaching and Learning VR-enriched integrative online task-oriented practicals forpreclinical education ofhealth professionals Feature Story

Drawing from the expertise for the VR-enriched anatomy education and the experience of the integrated online practical, in the current research project funded by the UGC Special Grant for Strategic Development of Virtual Teaching and Learning, we propose to incorporate the 3D VR lab for biochemistry and anatomy, 3D scanned VR gross anatomy specimens, VR biomolecule models, 360-degree VR videos in anatomy/biochemistry, and interactive VR quizzes into the task-oriented online practical delivered via mobile apps or e-learning platforms, to provide students with a remote immersive learning environment and to initiate collaboration between students and teachers to co-create the learning materials. We hope this project will provide a novel solution forvirtual teaching and learning of the preclinical medical education, and help the students to improve their virtual learning experience, gain comprehensive understanding and achieve higher order cognition through VR-enriched online active-learning.

In the School of Biomedical Sciences at HKUMed, we are striving to improve students’ learning experience through technology-enriched active-learning pedagogies. The COVID-19 pandemic has inevitably reshaped the higher education, and we have designed and developed cutting-edge learning technologies and pedagogies for active-learning to accommodate the challenges presented in this online-education era. During the past year, we have developed and improved the pedagogy of Virtual-Reality-Enabled Tasks (VRETs) based on the trial study and students’ feedback, and successfully implemented the virtual reality (VR) technology in the gross anatomy dissection lab to the MBBS1 and MBBS2 curricula. To accommodate the feedback of MBBS students for preclinical education, that they would like to have a more integrative approach in learning of the different system blocks to weave the knowledge obtained from anatomy, histology, biochemistry and physiology together, we have also conducted a successful pilot trial on integrated anatomy, histology and biochemistry online task-oriented practical session. The Anatomy Team includes (front row from left): Dr. Mandy Liu, Dr. Rocky Cheung, Dr. Jian Yang, Dr. Tomasz Cecot; (back row from left) Mr. Jeffery Lau, Mr. Patrick Wong, Mr. Siu Pang Ho, Mr. Dicky Lau and Ms. Vanessa Woo.

Dr. Jian Yang demonstrating VRETs

Feature Story Research & Innovation

Bioinformatics is a rapidly growing research strength in SBMS. A few bioinformatics-focused principal investigators (PIs) have joined the School in the last three years (see lab research interest below), and many other laboratories are adopting increasingly sophisticated computational or statistical techniques in their own research area. The increased demand of bioinformatics is in part driven by the increasing volume and complexity of modern biomedical big >Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8

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