How Advances in Virtual Education are Revolutionizing the Laboratory Profession

Virtual education has emerged as a vital tool for continuous professional development, particularly for pathologists and medical laboratory professionals. Since the pandemic, online learning has taken significant strides forward, offering students and professionals a chance to learn at their own pace and access education opportunities they might otherwise never be able to enjoy.  

But even with all the advances that virtual learning has made, there are still challenges. Innovative laboratory professionals are finding creative ways to meet these challenges, and they’re expanding opportunities like virtual continuing education to an even wider audience.  

Critical Values spoke with Xiaoyin “Sara” Jiang, MD, co-founder of Virtual Pathology Grand Rounds, and Hana S. Fukuto, PhD, SMB(ASCP)CM, lead author of a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Pathology (AJCP) on the benefits of a virtual bioinformatics lab. Drs. Jiang and Fukuto shared their extensive experience with virtual education, along with what they’ve learned about how laboratory professionals and pathologists can improve upon it in the future.  

Virtual Pathology Grand Rounds is reaching an international audience 

Dr. Jiang, Chief of Head and Neck Pathology Service, Professor of Pathology, and Director of the Pathology Communications Group at Duke University, helped launch Virtual Pathology Grand Rounds. The idea for the online lectures formed during the pandemic.  

Because of concerns about COVID-19, academic institutions had stopped inviting faculty to visit and give lectures. This was detrimental to both professors and students.  

“When you’re junior faculty, getting invited to give lectures is one way to build your reputation and CV,” Dr. Jiang says. “And on the flip side, these institutions weren’t getting the benefit of having these extramural speakers come and teach their residents and share new ideas.” 

This was troublesome for academic areas like pathology, where presentations and grand rounds are an integral part of students’ education.  

Dr. Jiang and the other co-founders of Virtual Pathology Grand Rounds realized they could help. 

“We wanted to create the virtual pathology grand rounds as a way to replicate these learning opportunities,” she says.  

Together, Dr. Jiang, Sara E. Wobker, MD, of UNC Chapel Hill, Kamran Mirza, MD, PhD, FASCP, MLS(ASCP), of Loyola University Health System, Raul S. Gonzalez, MD, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Elham Khanafshar, MD, MS of UCSF, began the new virtual education project. 

The organizers started small by having their institutions host their own virtual sessions. Over time, they realized they could go truly virtual, without even needing a host institution. And they ultimately expanded to include senior faculty lecturers too.  

But what excited Dr. Jiang the most was the attendees. 

“There was huge attendance from international participants,” she says. “People were joining from Europe, Africa, Asia… It was really amazing.”  

She’s especially pleased with how accessible and inclusive the Virtual Grand Rounds have become.  

“Pathologists and laboratory professionals all work very hard,” she says. “But for financial, institutional or family reasons, we can’t all travel. The virtual rounds allow a lot of flexibility for people to learn where they are. To me, the most important element of virtual education is to allow better access for everyone, not just academics, not just Americans, not just people who have the privilege of practicing somewhere with all these resources at our fingertips.”  

Of course, adopting virtual learning isn’t without its challenges. In the early days, they were concerned about interruptions like Zoom “bombing,” so they began requiring registration to attend. Today, their concerns are more about picking the right speakers and topics.  

“If you’re trying to develop lectures that are applicable to both pathologists and laboratory professionals, to people practicing in different areas, you have to identify topics that are going to be of a broad interest,” she says. “Finding topics that are interesting but not too esoteric is one of our challenges.”  

As far as future plans, Dr. Jiang hopes to make learning more interactive. She’d also like to curate the content from their virtual lectures in a way that is easier to navigate.  

“There’s so much going on with deep learning and AI,” she says. “Perhaps we could somehow harness that.”  

But the bottom line, for her, is inclusivity.  

“Being able to help people across the world take care of patients — to me, there’s no greater goal of education,” she says. 

Virtual laboratories can make learning more efficient and accessible 

Dr. Fukuto, Clinical Associate Professor in Stony Brook School of Health Profession’s  Department of Clinical Laboratory Sciences, developed and assessed a successful virtual laboratory learning unit. She and Gloria I. Viboud, PhD, SM(ASCP)MB, published their experiences in AJCP.   

The idea for the study was born during the pandemic, when students couldn’t attend in-person laboratories. She and Dr. Viboud developed a virtual laboratory that introduced basic bioinformatics concepts to undergraduate and graduate students in the medical laboratory sciences programs. Teaching was done entirely online—without an instructor—via video tutorials, written instructions for online labs, and post-review videos.  

Drs. Fukuto and Viboud learned that a virtual laboratory can be an effective teaching tool. However, only certain types of classroom laboratories can be wholly converted into virtual learning.  

“This was a special case where everything in the lab could be converted into online projects,” Dr. Fukuto says. “It didn’t require pipetting or dealing with patient samples. Something like bioinformatics and data analysis can be converted completely to virtual.” 

But even if a class’s laboratory requires hands-on learning, virtual education can still help it be more efficient.  

“You can give the demonstrations for the laboratory using videos,” she says. “You can show students pictures of samples online. This way, you can minimize the time you spend in the laboratory by giving most of the background information online first. Then when they come to the in-person lab, they already have prepared.” 

At Stony Brook, they have experience with a hybrid master’s program in medical molecular biology. The didactic part of the class is done virtually with lectures, discussions, and even exams hosted online. Then the hands-on laboratory portion is held on the weekends.  

“It gives them more options to continue their education while they’re working,” she says.  

For six years, they have also offered an online Medical Molecular Biology Advanced Certificate Program that is wholly didactic, so it could be done completely online.  

“We get students from out-of-state joining,” Dr. Fukuto says. “And we also have instructors teaching from California even though we’re located in New York. That expands possibilities for both students and instructors.”  

But the virtual programs aren’t without their challenges.  

“As much as I enjoy virtual teaching, I still like to have personal contact,” Dr. Fukuto says. “I think students gain a lot just from taking classes in person. That’s really hard to replace.”  

Trying to scale up the virtual classes to add even more people would also be tough.  

“We have pretty small classes, less than 15 people,” she says. “When it’s more than 15, it becomes hard to pay attention to each of the students. To make sure everyone understands everything, I spend a lot of time writing back to students on their discussion posts. Laboratory science requires a lot of detailed understanding. If you want to give an education that’s as good as in person, making classes bigger is a challenge.”  

Dr. Fukuto is excited about the future of virtual learning and thinks AI might be able to overcome some of the challenges faced today. But even now, virtual learning is a powerful tool for laboratory scientists.  

If you have an idea for a Virtual Grand Rounds lecture topic, or if you would like to give a Virtual Grand Rounds lecture, email vpgrandrounds@ascp.org.