Ignacio Roa

In 2020, COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, affecting our country both in commercial, social and educational activities; making student-teacher interaction impossible in all the country's universities. This, added to the difficult economic and social times that our students are going through, make it increasingly necessary to search for strategies that bring us closer to providing them with study material in a simpler way. This is why Instagram turns out to be a tool that is accessible and easy to use. The objective was to describe the social media platform Instagram as a useful tool for accessing Histology and Embryology content, for students at the Universidad de Talca, Chile. As a methodology, the Instagram platform was used, with an account designed to deliver teaching material to first and second year students of the Universidad de Talca, in the Health Sciences degree programs, in areas of Histology and Embryology, consisting of theoretical and practical questions, labeled figures, cartoons and diagrams designed and created themselves. This material was posted on the platform daily according to the subjects that the students should see according to the calendar in the different modules. After the first semester of this year, a survey was taken in order to evaluate the impact of the initiative on students. The students perceived the teaching initiative in a positive way, with methodologies that encouraged academic-student participation and interaction. They highlighted the quality of the material and the quicker access at all times from their mobile phones. Instagram becomes a good tool to help other methodologies to delivery of teaching material through formal institutional channels, allowing students to access faster and at a low cost of navigation.

ROA. I. Use of Instagram as a pedagogical tool for teaching morphology in times of COVID-19. Int. J. Morphol., 39(4):1063- 1067, 2021.