Development of an Open Access, Interactive Histology Atlas for Undergraduate Anatomy and Physiology

Anatomy and Physiology I and II are courses taught at countless institutions at both the 2-year college-level and 4-year college-level, often as pre-requisites for students seeking admission to health sciences undergraduate or graduate programs. As faculty, we invariably seek accessible, high quality instructional resources that allow students to excel without incurring a high financial cost. Lab manuals available from current publishers are typically not cost-effective and often contain content unrelated to commonly adopted learning objectives. Additionally, undergraduate students commonly demonstrate poor mastery of microscopic anatomy, and have difficulties drawing connections between histological structures and the corresponding organ-system physiology. We hypothesized that this is due, in part, to misalignment of the high-resolution images in the publisher’s lab manuals which often do not accurately represent the histological patterns seen in commercially available student slides. The ill-matched images cause confusion for students which unnecessarily impedes integration of histological structures with corresponding organ-system physiology. The authors of the globally available, open access textbook, Anatomy and Physiology I: An Interactive Histology Atlas, purposefully captured micrographs of commercially available slides currently in use by students in countless institutions in lieu of “textbook perfect” slides. The Atlas, created and published using Pressbooks, meets ADA accessibility standards and is accessible on numerous devices including screen readers. The Atlas was created using interactive multimedia elements to maximize student engagement. The Atlas showcases H5P interactive activities, allowing students to slide a vertical bar left and right to either reveal a hand-drawn illustration overlay or hide it to expose the underlying micrograph. Preliminary data in a study of student lab practical examinations suggests that student exam performance using the Atlas is comparable to, and statistically indistinguishable from, exam performance for students using resources produced by a highly acclaimed publisher (Marieb and Smith, Pearson). For some histological sections, there is a distinct improvement in exam performance, highlighting the benefit of this open-access resource to students. Additionally, student success metrics (ABC/DFW rates) show a trend towards increased course retention and completion. A DFW rate of 33.14% was reported using the Atlas compared with a 35.0% DFW rate using the lab manual commercially available through Pearson. However, the statistical power of this data is insufficient to determine statistical significance, and data collection is ongoing. Together, these data suggest that the Altas, available globally at no cost, is a high-quality alternative to costly commercial textbooks, enabling students to excel while lowering financial barriers to academic success. Anatomy and Physiology I: An Interactive Histology Atlas was made possible by grant funding from the University System of Georgia's Affordable Learning Georgia initiative. This abstract was presented at the American Physiology Summit 2025 and is only available in HTML format. There is no downloadable file or PDF version. The Physiology editorial board was not involved in the peer review process.