Innovative teaching in Corona times with high-tech microscopes

Dur­ing the Coro­na pan­dem­ic, hands-on lab­o­ra­to­ry work was very lim­it­ed. At the Cen­ter for Advanced Imag­ing (CAi) at Hein­rich Heine Uni­ver­si­ty Düs­sel­dorf (HHU), remote inter­faces are suc­cess­ful­ly used to help stu­dents learn how to oper­ate mod­ern micro­scopes and ana­lyze the images obtained.

The team at CAi teach­es stu­dents how to work with mod­ern micro­scopes, espe­cial­ly con­fo­cal laser scan­ning micro­scopes. The stu­dents need this knowl­edge to be able to exam­ine sam­ples from biol­o­gy, med­i­cine, chem­istry or physics inde­pen­dent­ly lat­er on. They also have to learn how to pre­pare the sam­ples, eval­u­ate the micro­scope images obtained and man­age the large vol­umes of data — often dozens to hun­dreds of giga­bytes per image.

But how does all this work in Coro­na times, when spac­ing require­ments and lim­its on the num­ber of peo­ple mean that a dozen stu­dents are no longer allowed to exper­i­ment in the lab? Since the sum­mer semes­ter of 2020, the CAi team has been using a remote inter­face for teach­ing pur­pos­es, with the help of which stu­dents can remote­ly con­trol the high­ly com­plex equip­ment from home.

A super­vi­sor then sits in front of the micro­scope in the lab, and the stu­dents are con­nect­ed to the micro­scope’s oper­at­ing com­put­er using spe­cial soft­ware. In the video con­fer­ence that runs simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, the super­vi­sor explains the device and oper­at­ing soft­ware, how a sam­ple must be pre­pared, and how good images can even­tu­al­ly be tak­en from it and analyzed.

 

“It’s amaz­ing that the stu­dents can do remote­ly over 90 per­cent of what is pos­si­ble with the micro­scope. Of course, I have to pre­pare the sam­ple on site and rough­ly search and adjust the image; the big screws on the micro­scope don’t work remote­ly yet.”

- Dr. Sebas­t­ian Hän­sch, staff mem­ber and intern­ship super­vi­sor at CAi

Like­wise, the stu­dents can and should con­sult and exchange ideas with each oth­er dur­ing their work so that they can work out their own solu­tions. This is pos­si­ble through video con­fer­enc­ing, dur­ing which the stu­dents simul­ta­ne­ous­ly see the vir­tu­al con­trol pan­el of the micro­scope. Although only one can active­ly oper­ate the con­trols at a time, fel­low stu­dents can pro­vide impor­tant guid­ance by direct­ing their mouse point­er to the right place on the screen.

Dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy also has its lim­i­ta­tions when it comes to teach­ing stu­dents how to use a micro­scope. The hap­tic ele­ment is miss­ing. Says Hän­sch, “To give stu­dents an idea of this, we gave them very sim­ple ‘fold­ing scopes’ made of card­board and plas­tic to take home, where they could assem­ble them and do sim­ple exper­i­ments.” They were also giv­en prepa­ra­tion flu­ids and glass slides so they could prac­tice the steps to make a sam­ple microscope-ready.

Some of the ele­ments devel­oped for the course will be retained when class­es are avail­able again in pres­ence soon. Dr. Hän­sch explains: “The online inter­face makes it much eas­i­er for all par­tic­i­pants in larg­er groups to observe each work step on the instru­ment equal­ly well. If, on the oth­er hand, a dozen stu­dents are sit­ting in front of a sin­gle device in the lab, those in the back row can hard­ly see what’s hap­pen­ing in front.” Dr. Ste­fanie Wei­dtkamp-Peters, man­ag­ing direc­tor of CAi, and Prof. Dr. Yvonne Stahl received the HHU teach­ing award in 2020 for the mas­ter mod­ule. They could now use parts of the prize mon­ey to tech­ni­cal­ly imple­ment this new inno­v­a­tive online teach­ing concept.

Dr. Ste­fanie Wei­dtkamp-Peters adds: “We also use the tech­nol­o­gy used for teach­ing in our research work at CAi. Through this, our microscopy experts can sup­port oth­er users on the instru­ments from their desks on how to take the best images.”