An Online Course in Human Skeletal Biology

人类学(81)从历史上看，学习人类骨骼一直是一种“亲身实践”的经历，学生们在课堂上检查、测量和比较真实骨骼的骨骼，同时使用教科书指导他们的学习。这种学习体验的质量在很大程度上取决于基本教材的可用性。由于这些资产在不同的机构之间差别很大，教育经验在很大程度上取决于可用的材料。认识到这些人工制品材料的可获得性有限，几年前建造了一个致力于人类和灵长类骨骼的数字图书馆：www.eSkeleons.org。该网站是美国国家科学基金会国家科学数字图书馆的早期组成部分，并与其2D和3D多媒体材料和互动性一起，帮助扩大了数字图书馆的定义。电子骨骼资源提供了关于人类和灵长类骨骼的详细参考信息的“一站式商店”。它包括稀有和濒危灵长类物种的数字化骨骼，以扩大学生对一些很少研究的人类近亲的了解。电子骨架的用户社区由不同的学习者组成，他们的年龄和年级水平各不相同，在访问该网站时他们的预期学习结果也不同。与这些用户的体验使他们意识到，包括课程在内的许多用户、学生和教师将受益于课程，该课程将为他们提供更有针对性和个性化(但仍有针对性的自学)，教授和测试他们对骨骼的理解。因此，该项目正在电子骨架材料的基础上创建一门关于人类骨骼生物学的在线课程。最初的工作重点是在德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校实施和测试的高年级本科生课程。在线课程包括多媒体自定进度的学习模块和考试，用于教授和测试学生对该主题的掌握程度。这种异步学习环境的一个优势是，学生可以学习和复习材料，而不需要考虑实验室的开放时间或骨骼的可用性，因为虚拟材料总是只需点击鼠标即可。学生可以在掌握主题后参加考试，而不是按照预设的时间表进行考试。由于该网站是围绕数据库设计的，其层次结构可以用来评估特定学生如何浏览学习材料，预计这种跟踪将揭示出针对学生的其他学习模式，而且更普遍地适用于其他学习者。

Anthropology (81)Historically, learning about the human skeleton has been, quite literally, a "hands on" experience, with students examining, measuring, and comparing the bones from actual skeletons in the classroom while using a textbook to direct their study. The quality of this learning experience is in large part determined by the availability of the skeletal teaching materials. Because these holdings vary considerably from one institution to the next, the educational experience depends significantly on available materials. In recognition of the limited availability of these artifact materials, a digital library devoted to the human and primate skeleton was constructed a few years ago: www.eSkeletons.org. This website was an early component of NSF's National Science Digital Library and, along with its 2D and 3D multimedia materials and interactivity, helped to expand the definition of what constitutes a digital library. The eSkeletons resource provides a "one stop shop" for detailed reference information about the human and primate skeleton. It includes the digitized skeletons of rare and endangered primate species in order to expand the student's understanding of some rarely studied close relatives of humans. The eSkeletons' user community is represented by a diverse body of learners who vary by age and grade level, and who differ in their expected learning outcomes in visiting the site. Experience with these users led to the realization that many users, students, and teachers would benefit from the inclusion of a curriculum that would provide them with a more focused and individualized (but still directed self-study) that taught and tested them about their understanding of the skeleton. Thus, this project is building on the eSkeletons materials to create an online course in Human Skeletal Biology. The initial work is focusing on an upper division undergraduate course that is being implemented and tested at the University of Texas at Austin. The online course incorporates multimedia self-paced learning modules and exams that teach and test the student's mastery of the subject matter. An advantage of this asynchronous learning environment is that students can study and review materials without regard to lab open hours or bone availability because virtual materials are always just a mouse click away. Students can take their exams when they have mastered the topic, rather than following a preset schedule. Because the website is designed around a database, its hierarchical structure can be used to evaluate how a particular student navigates through the learning materials, and it is anticipated that this sort of tracking will reveal other learning patterns that are both student-specific and more generally applicable to other learners.