An Online Course in Human Skeletal Biology

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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.