Physiology Course Material Developed for On-Line Use: Harvey Project

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This project seeks to build a community of practice to create highly interactive, web-based materials for teaching human physiology. The Harvey Project is a collaboration of educators, physiologists, medical professionals, illustrators, Java and JavaScript programmers, instructional designers and web designers. Project participants are donating their time to develop materials for an entire introductory human physiology course which will be made freely available to all educational institutions. The project seeks to integrate the best non-commercial physiology teaching materials now available with new material, including animations, video clips, simulations, 3-D models, interactive problem solving and online performance evaluation. These online materials would not constitute a course by themselves, but would allow a physiology teacher without special Internet skills to develop a complete, customized lecture or distance learning class. Because they are customizable, the Harvey Project lessons could be adapted for undergraduates, medical students, or even high school AP students. They can also be used as part of a lecture or for self-study. Materials which exploit the digital medium fully have been shown to lead to more student involvement in learning and better learning outcomes, but their creation requires a team with diverse skills and thousands of hours of effort. The Harvey Project's participants bring together the necessary skills and are working for free. The model of the Harvey Project is easily generalizable to other disciplines, and may impact the teaching of fields far from physiology.