Online Learning Update

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

Spurred by the success of an earlier anatomy class offered as a massive open online course (MOOC), the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine is expanding its course offerings through its own institutional website and enhancing the course content with the help of a textbook publisher and 3D simulation company. The university’s anatomy faculty has been developing the materials for a series of courses using Elsevier texts, Netter Atlas of Human Anatomy, Gray’s Anatomy for Students and Larson’s Human Embryology. The content creators have also worked with Sharecare Reality Lab to add digital, 3D, anatomic simulations that use virtual reality to enable students to explore the human body.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/10/13/u-pennsylvanias-low-cost-online-anatomy-courses-use-vr.aspx

by Cassandra Khaw, Indie Games

Is this a sign of the encroaching apocalypse or an indication of better things to come? Stanford University used to be one of those top-notch educational institutes that cost an arm and a leg to attend. And now they’re offering free courses? I’m not sure what to think about this but I’m definitely not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

http://youtu.be/_UcRbnJoDKc

http://indiegames.com/2012/01/stanford_university_provides_f.html

By Alireza Jalali, Daniel Trottier, Mariane Tremblay, and Maxwell Hincke, eLearn Magazine

Mobile technology has infiltrated medical school education. Students now bring tablet PCs, rather than notebooks, into the classroom. They can access Web-based curriculum during lectures and add notes directly to their files. At the Faculty of Medicine University of Ottawa the curriculum for the first two years is online, and PDAs have largely replaced reference books for students in clerkship programs. And more telling, employees at Ottawa Hospital Medical have been encouraged to replace pen and paper notes with iPads. Thus, transitioning from written to digital examinations seemed to be a reasonable next step. To assess the benefits and drawbacks of this approach, we developed a mock anatomy examination using the Questionmark software and compared its administration and evaluation on two electronic devices.

http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=articles&article=152-1

by Learnable

We’ve been talking about courses, lessons, steps and Learnable for a while now and so we thought it was time to tell you exactly how these pieces fit together in a Learnable online course, and how you can get started on becoming a Learnable instructor. The quick version. An online course is an interactive “virtual classroom” that students purchase access to. Each course is made up of a number of lessons. The content in those lessons is made up of a number of steps. Steps are small sections of content (say a video or an article) that, when ordered together, make up a lesson. In other words, courses consist of lessons, lessons consist of steps, and steps are chunks of content such as video tutorials, articles, slide shows, downloads, exercises, or assignments.

http://blog.learnable.com/2010/the-anatomy-of-a-learnable-online-course/

By Tina Nazerian, EdSurge

Case Western Reserve University plans to replace the usual anatomy labs with a new series of hands-on experiences, including a virtual-reality simulation. The reason, says Mark Griswold, a professor at the medical school, is that running a cadaver lab is costly and difficult. “What everybody pretty quickly realized was that digital technology combined with medical imaging and our ability to make 3D models as biomedical illustrators, those three factors all combine to really make it possible to teach anatomy in this way,” Griswold says. “That was not possible 10 years ago.” The school is just one of many experimenting with replacing traditional laboratory classes with VR labs. And a range of companies have recently started offering products to outfit such digital alternatives.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-07-19-schools-and-colleges-try-virtual-reality-science-labs-but-can-vr-replace-a-cadaver

By PHILLIP ERICKSEN, Waco Tribune

Virtual reality, defined as a computer-generated simulation of an interactive three-dimensional environment, has wide potential, from entertainment to education. VR is already in use for general instruction in some college classrooms, and Baylor officials are exploring its potential. Education by VR is far more relaxing than the nightmarish fantasies some games feature. One application at Baylor lets users take close looks at human anatomy — lungs before and after years of smoking, for instance, or immersive experiences inside of a stomach.

http://www.wacotrib.com/news/higher_education/virtual-reality-excites-baylor-students-professors-for-the-future/article_2552eb05-e81f-5392-9bc5-6955c0673e09.html

by Meghan Bogardus Cortez, edtech Magazine
Meghan is an associate editor with EdTech: Focus on Higher Education. She enjoys coffee, cats and science fiction TV. In the summer of 2016, nothing was quite as buzzy as the smartphone game, “Pokémon Go.” Thanks to its augmented reality (AR) format — which blends real-world interactivity with an immersive video game world — the game spiked in popularity among K–12 and college students. It also introduced the concept of AR into the education sector. By 2018, the AR device market is expected to reach about $660 million, a new infographic from the New Jersey Institute of Technology reports. While AR is still up and coming, several mobile apps have emerged to let students (both at the K–12 and higher ed level) engage with interactive books about space and human anatomy charts.

https://edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2017/10/how-will-ar-transform-education-infographic-0

By Hillary Miller, eLearning Inside

An initiative of Rice University, OpenStax was first launched in 2012 with the goal of cultivating peer-reviewed, high-quality textbooks that were low-cost in print and entirely free online. Today, the publisher provides titles for over 30 courses, including U.S. History, Macroeconomics, Anatomy and Physiology, and Microbiology. Each book is authored by a team of leading experts from universities all across the United States. The goal of OpenStax Tutor Beta is to provide instantaneous feedback and custom-tailored learning support for every learner. Students utilizing OpenStax Tutor don’t need to download any software to use the product; they simply log on to the OpenStax Tutor website to access their course textbook and complete their assignments.

https://news.elearninginside.com/new-openstax-tutor-beta-offers-personalized-learning/

By Laura Helmuth, Slate

We at Slate have a lot of opinions about the most worthwhile classes you can take in high school, college, and adult education, and like anybody, we like to give unsolicited advice, so welcome to our week of guidance counseling! We’re rolling out 17 class recommendations, starting with five today. These are the classes that taught us the most important lessons—even if we didn’t realize it at the time. Take a look at this week’s schedule, below. What’d we miss? On the final day of this series, we’ll collect readers’ best advice. Please let us know what was the most important class you ever took—or the one you wish you’d taken. Email us at classes@slate.com with up to 200 words advocating for your class. And please add your recommendations to the comments section or share them on Twitter using the hashtag #TakeThisClass.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/classes/2015/08/what_classes_should_i_take_geology_coding_geography_math_poetry_acting_anatomy.html

by eCampus News

Instructors could create interactive, self-guided lessons for their students using a software startup’s cross-platform app template based on Purdue University intellectual property. Kevin Hannon, founder of Active Lesson LLC, created the app template to strengthen his students’ understanding of canine anatomy. Hannon is associate professor of basic medical sciences and teaches canine anatomy in Purdue’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/app-template-creation-034/

by Michael A. MacDowell, Times Leader

A consortium of foundations, including Leon Lowenstein, Bill and Melinda Gates, William and Flora Hewlett, Laura and John Arnold, Calvin K. Kazanjian Economics and others have joined with OpenStax College – and innovative arm of Rice University. OpenStax College is dedicated to producing high-quality, online textbooks for courses widely taught in college. The latest free college textbook from OpenStax College is the two-semester introductory course, “Principles of Economics.” OpenStax College also has published online introductory books for physics, sociology, biology, anatomy and physiology and statistics, and is working on books for pre-calculus, chemistry, U.S. history and psychology. College students and their parents know these courses oftentimes are required by the core curriculum at colleges and universities. All these books are fully peer-reviewed. Most of them have been written by outstanding authors, including some who previously authored standard printed textbooks.

http://timesleader.com/news/otheropinion/1347948/COMMENTARY:-MICHAEL-A.-MACDOWELL-Online-textbooks-can-drive-down-cost-of-education

by ANDREA NOVICKI, CIT Duke

Medical Neuroscience, taught in Coursera by Duke’s Dr. Len White, has finished. This intense course was designed to include the core concepts in neurophysiology and clinical neuroanatomy in most first-year neuroscience courses in schools of medicine, with an estimated time commitment of at least 16 hours/week. In Start Your Synapses!, course assistant Justin Johnsen provided a view into the course as it was running. Now that the course is over, how did it go? See the URL for data and comments on this extraordinary course.

http://cit.duke.edu/blog/2013/07/coursera-medical-neuroscience-week-3/

Editorial: West Virginia Gazette

Florida has announced that 23 state-run colleges soon will offer $10,000 degrees, and some Texas schools already have complied. A Texas master plan is titled “Anatomy of a Revolution? The Rise of the $10,000 Bachelor’s Degree.” It notes that three-fourths of families now think college is out of reach. In California, Assemblyman Dan Logue has introduced an “Affordable College Act” to achieve the $10,000 level. Such cost-cutting strategies depend heavily on online learning courses in which a few teachers reach thousands of students — rather like the famed computer courses of Khan Academy. It’s controversial, and some critics sneer that it will bring “Wal-Marting of education,” weakening the value of degrees. The Texas master plan says: “The ground has shifted beneath the feet of traditional public higher education.”

http://wvgazette.com/Opinion/Editorials/201302150198

by Developing an Online Course

Even in my on-campus course, I sometimes feel like I’m turning a firehose of information on my students . . . . we cover evolution, ecology, behavior, physiology, reproduction, anatomy, conservation and other topics all within a single quarter’s course, with a taxonomic scope spanning more than 30,000 species! I am hoping that I’ll still be able to teach this information effectively in an online format, but doing so still a involves a lot of reading assignments and recording of lectures, neither of which really play to the strengths of the online format (such as facilitating interactions between students). Hopefully the course will still meet its objectives and prepare the students for higher-level classes that more closely target the pinnacle of Bloom’s pyramid!

http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/coursedevs12/2012/04/20/translating-information-dense-courses-for-e-delivery/

By Karen Farkas, The Plain Dealer

The eTutoring program offers help in accounting, anatomy and physiology, biology, calculus, chemistry, math and statistics. More of Ohio’s public and private universities have been invited to join eTutoring — a statewide collaborative that allows college students to get free help from online tutors provided by participating schools. The Ohio Board of Regents is expanding the program to all two- and four-year universities with a goal of making it available to more than 600,000 students. Currently 21 colleges, including Baldwin-Wallace College, Cleveland State University, Kent State University, Lorain County Community College and the University of Akron, participate in eTutoring, which began with five pilot schools in fall 2009.

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2012/04/ohio_expands_online_tutoring_f.html

by Mark, Ace Online Schools

Just because you’re online doesn’t mean that you can’t experience the world first-hand — or as close to first-hand as possible. Here are websites that feature virtual learning experiences, exposing online visitors to everything from history to geography, astronomy to anatomy, literature to government.

http://www.aceonlineschools.com/25-awesome-virtual-learning-experiences-online/

Sheila Scutter, Ieva Stupans, Tim Sawyer and Sharron King, AJET

Podcasting is used commonly recreationally and is now increasingly used in education. The technology for podcasting is readily available, easy to use and inexpensive, making it an attractive option for providing additional flexible learning resources for students. However, little is known about how podcasts are used by students and the implications for learning. This paper describes how podcasts were used by students in a medical radiation program. In common with many other health science programs, the medical radiation program has a large content load, particularly in first year where courses such as anatomy and physiology are introduced. Students generally used podcasts to review lecture content, especially when they had difficulty with understanding lectures or new terminology. Students generally listened to the recordings whilst viewing the lecture PowerPoint presentations on a home computer. Results from this study indicate that academics need to contemplate the introduction of instructional methods such as podcast lectures within the broader context of instructional goals.

http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet26/scutter.html