Text and images
© Jeremy Cook 1997–2008

Locations across the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland where 'The Embryonic Disk' is in institutional use		Users and their comments : 2 "The response from our new-curriculum medical students to The Embryonic Disk has been very positive." Sarah Mackay, University of Glasgow Medical School "The program ... works well and is easily accessible without specialist knowledge." "The potential of the medium is used well ... the descriptions and figures are clear." Ronald Bleys in the Newsletter of the Dutch Anatomical Society "Both the staff and students at ICSM are really enjoying using The Embryonic Disk - it has made such a difference to our teaching and the students are really getting to grips with 3D concepts ... thanks for making my life a whole lot easier." Diana Watt, Brighton and Sussex Medical School "We all find it extremely helpful, especially when interpreting embryology in a 3D perspective, and the picture interaction is great." A medical student at Imperial ordering a personal copy "I am writing to thank you for the 'Embryonic Disk' you so kindly sent to the School. The students were very impressed by it and would like to order some for themselves." Yasmin Dsouza, London School of Osteopathy

"I used your excellent Embryonic Disk as part of the Learning Landscape for our current group of Stage 1 students and I have to say that it was a great success ... I found your succession of pictures on formation of the ovum and sperm to be absolutely invaluable for short demonstrations of these processes." Tim Chard, Bart's and the Royal London Medical and Dental School

"Thank you very much for your speedy sending of 'The Embryonic Disk'. I find it exceedingly useful and know that most of my fellow students use it as a main source of learning for embryology and development."     "A big thankyou for your program. Now that I know I passed the Phase 1 exams, I can honestly say it was a great help!!" Two more ICSM medical students

"Postgraduate nursing students who come to Southampton to be trained and educated as Advanced Neonatal Nurse Practitioners undertake a year long course in biomedical sciences and medicine which is then applied to the care of the neonate ... I just wanted to let you and Dr Osmond know how much our students have used and appreciated the CD-ROM. They have found the content appropriate and felt it has prepared them well for the anatomy and physiology sessions which followed." Susan L Smith, Division of Child Health, University of Southampton

"Clearly the ideal way to illustrate embryogenesis is by animated sequences ... these are very well done, especially the sagittal view of embryonic folding, which not only fulfils my students’ dream of showing how the proximal yolk sac contracts circumferentially to form the gut, but explains how the allantois and yolk stalk become surrounded by the expanding amnion to form the umbilical cord."
Gillian Morriss-Kay in Trends in Genetics

Now the precautionary note:

"I would hesitate to direct students to the raw CDs without guidance". Gillian Morriss-Kay in Trends in Genetics
      We accept this as fair comment. Our CD is easy to use in a technical sense but it contains a large amount of fairly complex learning material. Those students who buy the CD for themselves are motivated to explore and find out what it offers, but in general our view (supported by UCL student feedback) is that no resource, not even a textbook, gives full value unless it is actively integrated into course teaching.

Effective ways of doing this include:-

• Recommending ‘The Embryonic Disk’ as a resource for the completion of one or more worksheets on specific topics, early in the course.
• Requiring students to complete particular true/false question sets as part of their in-course assessment, and/or including our questions in summative examinations. (The copying of questions for this purpose is permitted, on terms and conditions that don’t involve payment and are easily met.)
• Using images from ‘The Embryonic Disk’ in lectures and/or course notes.
  (To make this easier we include full-screen versions of key animations within the program, and we offer sets of lecture slides [as PowerPoint shows backed up by JPEGs] based on the high-resolution originals of many of the other images. Users who have purchased our Slide Collections or Teaching Packs are automatically permitted to reproduce the images in printed course-notes distributed to their own students, and on password-limited intranet sites confined to their own institution, thus avoiding the copyright problems faced by tutors who derive lecturing materials from standard published sources.)