Overall, most students (85%) identified the potential of cadaveric dissection and the associated SDL activity for assisting their development as future medical educators. Students offered various reasons for their motivation to explore their findings. For example, some participants identified an intrinsic motivation to test their hypothesis against the provided cause of death. With support from their instructors as resources, students were able to develop their proficiency in communication and clinical reasoning skills. Participants were interested in acquiring technical skills, where one student stated that “Understanding how tissues are sectioned and prepared was extremely rewarding.” Others desired to engage in collaboration with their peers and faculty. Students identified the value of cooperation and support. One student response explained, “when trying to do something unfamiliar, it is really helpful to have people around you that you can collaborate with and ask questions to.”

Multiple students hoped to utilize the SDL activity as a bridge between their medical education and their future roles as physicians, with one student writing that “Having the opportunity to look at the pathology at a deeper level and understand how it might have affected the patient and their signs, symptoms, and cause of death was a way to broaden my understanding in a hands-on learning opportunity. Additionally, it allowed me to be curious.” Similarly, another student reported that they had “…never seen those kinds of pathology grossly and in person, and I was interested in learning more about it and investigating it more closely. Furthermore, I also felt that by investigating pathology more, it would benefit my learning both as a medical student and future physician. It provided a unique learning opportunity to see how a pathology looks, in the context of a body, and potential consequences. I hoped that it'd help me learn the material better.”

Student-centered SDL activity in the context of anatomy dissection offers the opportunity of promoting a relationship between the basic sciences and clinical concepts [4, 9]. It is believed that this bridging can aid students’ motivation in pursuing the role of medical educators, fostering their technical proficiency, medical understanding, and general curiosity. In this additional training program, students were supported in becoming “visually literate” and encouraged to partake in the preparation and identification of tissues, where “it is rare…to see an isolated student hunched over a compound microscope with a box full of glass slides and textbook open,” let alone identifying their own resected tissues [10]. It is believed that in further focusing on student cooperation, in a faculty-supported setting, such a program can function to encourage the development of skills related to the production of medical educators.

The results demonstrate that students have diverse motivations for engaging in such programs, including intrinsic curiosity, acquisition of technical skills, group work, and preparation for their future roles as physicians and medical educators. By focusing on these aspects, a learning environment aiming to encourage application of knowledge and contextual clinical application could be designed. A formalized program modeled after the voluntary SDL activities developed by these dissection lab students would benefit students’ skills in developing their own in-depth knowledge and practical skills via SDL opportunities. This course would employ the findings related to the values of cooperation, curiosity, and the supported acquisition of application of knowledge and technical skills. SDL activities would be useful to enhance their comprehension of the subject while also developing their clinical contextual skills and understanding of pathophysiology. While these could be strengths of the program, they could also be limitations of the program as they depend on the interest and level of student engagement.