One of the most difficult things I have faced as an online instructor is the implementation of meaningful lab activities into my course. The question that always comes up is: “How can you do anatomy labs online?” That is a great question, and the main one that I struggled with for years before taking the online plunge. To wrap my head around how I was going to do this, I started at square one; the student. What do I want the student knowing or being able to do when they leave my class? This question applies to all of my classes (traditional, hybrid, and online). This statement seems obvious as we all follow the learning outcomes for our courses. To me, this question means more. My question is not what I need to check off on a list of topics we must cover, but instead what they should know. I can only speak for science here, but in science it is important to not only know but to be able to do. Again this applies to whether I see them in person (traditional or hybrid) or not at all (online)? So, how do you do “do” in the online environment?
With that perspective in mind, it became easier to approach building activities for the online student. Instead of trying to adapt in-class activities to online students, I looked at the outcomes and tried to think of ways to get the student to that point. Once I shifted my mind to that style of thinking, the learning possibilities broke wide open .I was able to generate visions of the online class labs being more effective in practical learning and application than the traditional format.
If a student needed to achieve mastery in understanding the anatomy of the heart, two questions come to mind. How are they going to learn about the heart? What are they going to use that information for? This then brings up the subject of my student population and where they are going, academically. Anatomy & physiology (basically form and function) is the backbone of any educational path in the health care field; doctors, physician’s assistants (PA), nurses, pharmacists, physical therapist, athletic trainers, radiologists, dentists, dental hygienists, etc… They need to learn about the heart so that when they get to their clinical training (medical, PA, or nursing school) they can have a basis from which to read the diagnostic tests. Even then it is not enough to read the results. They must be able to interpret the data. That is the critical leap. All of my students need to walk away from our anatomy classes with the understanding of how something works so they can figure out what has gone wrong in a patient. Then, when their medical training teaches them the treatment protocols, it makes sense and becomes more than a ‘if this happens to this” learning rubric. Basically, the information they need to be given forms the foundation to develop their skill set for interpretation of the information they will get and the application of that information to the patient.
