Thread:Summary of discussion - for scoping and plan (1)

The overall project aim is to enable the existing textbook, self-tests and worksheets to be used in many contexts by different audiences.


 * Development is to focus on ways to guide learners, clearly and simply, through the chapters of the existing text. Eventually the desire is to create a teaching and learning ‘package’ (or several small ones) that is visually rich (graphics, animations, video), is fun (quizzes, crosswords…), and light (but not childish).


 * The target audience guiding design would be the distance students who currently undertake the course - Typically these people are … animal lovers, people who have some association with animals, for example through vet nursing, farming, zoology, police-dog handling etc, majority are women, mostly mature.


 * As a guide to ‘how big’ to make learning chunks (notional learning hours) current teaching and learning is based on one semester full-time, or one year part-time.


 * The main learning challenge we need to address is that many of the people who use the text are being exposed to anatomy and physiology terminology for the first time and find it challenging


 * The first part of the current course is the most difficult because it involves the initial exposure to subject jargon, difficult words to say, let alone understand …and then use.


 * Designing activities to engage with the text will become a main focus of this project:

Activities need to help learners


 * come to grips with the terminology used in A and P
 * apply/authenticate what they’re learning
 * share what they’re learning
 * get feedback/reassurance about what they’re learning [can come from each other, not necessarily the ‘experts’ and we can use wiki discussion pages / web-chat to enable this]

They also need to be [would be good to have discussion about these from others who’ve done it already]
 * fun [games, crosswords etc]
 * portable
 * localizable
 * printable

[one implication raised was using the format/syntax of the pedagogical templates in wikiEd means they don’t transfer to other environments]


 * This is an important consideration -- but not insurmountable. The pedagogical templates will transfer to any Mediawiki installation -- eg Wikibooks, Wikiversity etc. Its simply a question of copy & paste. WE has no problem with our pedagogical templates being copied to other free content projects -- in fact we encourage this. The pedagogical templates transfer well to the print versions of Wiki ==> print, and WE have a prototype which demonstrates that they will transfer to a SCORM/IMS content package (essentially the format used for importing content into an LMS.) --Wayne Mackintosh 01:40, 9 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Images that are presently used (in PPT), enrich and illustrate materials well. But there will be copyright issues….will need new sources or new images [raises a resourcing issue].


 * A substantial portion of the existing text is material that is directly relevant to people who need to know about human anatomy and physiology so it would seem ‘efficient’ –to make materials also usable by people interested in this level of human anatomy [materials have already been adapted and used with massage therapy students]


 * Some of the content is only relevant to animal A and P so these parts of the text eg skin, skeleton…will require their own activities. Careful design and development will enable both human and animal A and P students to use the resources.


 * How do we identify this? Is it possible to generate a list of the contents that is usable for both human and animal A & P. This is an exciting opportunity for reuse! --Wayne Mackintosh 01:40, 9 May 2008 (UTC)


 * The materials for human anatomy might be required at a level higher [current NZ standard requirements] than the animal anatomy students require. We thought this could be addressed by clear objectives at the outset. Also, the activities should be designed to require learners to engage at different levels with the text.