Having the opportunity to interact with the human body has a much different experience than watching a presentation or looking at photos in a text book. Rachel Mulheren, assistant professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences, can attest to this after a semester of utilizing HoloAnatomy with HoloLens to teach the students in her Anatomy and Physiology of Speech and Hearing (COSI325) class. By morphing lectures and HoloAnatomy, the 14 students in her class had the chance to learn the material first through a classic lecture, and then see and interact with the same figures in 3D. 

“On the days we used HoloAnatomy, I’d hear students saying things like ‘oh that’s cool’ or ‘did you see that?’,” Mulheren said. “You don’t get that same reaction when you show an image on a powerpoint.”

Being able to physically move around the structure, look on top of it, under it and peel back its layers from skin to bone engaged the students and made the class more interactive.

“It’s an incredibly exciting technology,” Mulheren said. “I feel kind of lucky that I ended up at Case [Western Reserve] where it was developed.”

Mulheren is passionate about incorporating technology into the classroom and finding ways to move beyond just lectures. Through UCITE’s Glennan Fellowship, she was able to incorporate Holoanatomy into her teaching and she is looking forward to finding more ways to engage students with mixed-reality.

See what the mixed reality of HoloAnatomy looks like in this video!