Good Practice from Valerie O’Loughlin, IU Bloomington

In order to increase student comprehension of embryology, I began collaborating with Jim Hull (now retired) in Graphics services to create a series of computerized embryology animations. We focused on cardiovascular (heart and blood vessel) development, as this aspect of embryology tends to be quite challenging for my students. Each animation developed demonstrates a specific dynamic event that occurs in heart development.

Currently, a graduate student (JR Montoya) is working with me to develop further animations in Flash format. In addition, JR's master's thesis involves examining the assessment data from these animations and determining to what extent these animations aided the learning of embryology concepts.

This project received funding from the SBC fellows (formerly Ameritech fellows) program, a 2001 TLTL Media Assistant Grant, and a 2002 IU School of Medicine Educational Research and Development grant.

Students find embryology particularly difficult to understand for a variety of reasons:

1. Embryology explores DYNAMIC PROCESSES as opposed to STATIC STRUCTURES. I must describe a set of complex steps that occur over a period of time. Due to this 4th dimension of time, these dynamic processes are almost always very complex and difficult to conceptualize.
   
2. By their nature, embryology texts use static, 2-dimensional images to illustrate these dynamic developmental processes. It is difficult for a student to look at a 2-dimensional image A and image B, and understand the development that took place for the changes to occur between image A and image B.
   
3. There currently are few embryology animations on the market that can clearly and accurately demonstrate these dynamic processes.

Thus, I decided to create my own set of animations that illustrate specific events in heart and blood vessel development. I believe that computerized animations can illustrate these dynamic processes better than a single picture could.

The pretest and posttest scores are compared to determine if viewing the animation helped the participant learn material about cardiovascular embryology.

The basic sequence for animation development is as follows:

1. A basic storyboard was developed, listing the basic events that must occur in each frame.
   
2. Animations were developed in one of two ways:
   a) QuickTime animations (developed by Jim Hull) were drawn in Adobe Illustrator or Developer, and then later converted into quicktime movies
   b) JR Montoya used the Macromedia Flash program to create the more interactive Flash animations
   
3. I reviewed each animation, added the textual information, made suggestions and editing comments about the layout of the animations, and made corrections.
   
4. The staff at the Teaching and Learning Technologies Center (TLTC, IUB) converted finished QuickTime animations into WWW files and helped develop templates for online pretest and posttest forms.
   
5. JR Montoya prepared the online assessment survey template for each animation.
   
6. Finally, I prepared multiple choice questions for each animation pretest and posttest, uploading all tests onto the Web site.

The online tests were prepared using Transform (available on the IUB WWW server). The staff at TLTC were VITAL to helping us utilize and modify these forms for this study.

My students and participants from around the world were encouraged to visit the site, take the assessments and view the animations. In addition, I used the animations in my Gross Anatomy Lecture (A550-551) as an additional teaching tool.

Based on feedback from my students, unsolicited emails from Web site visitors, and Web-based assessment survey comments, I have found that these individuals found these animations effective, easy to use, and efficient learning tools. Many reported the animations were more effective learning tools than 2-dimensional static images and lecture without animations. Specific comments listed on the assessment survey include the following:

• "A great learning tool for the development of the heart. I wish my school provided such a great tool."
• "Animation is the best way to understand changing relationships."
• "Very helpful, I could not have pictured this process without help from the animation."

Detailed assessment information is listed below.

Analysis of IP address data showed that individuals from around the world have accessed the animations. The locations include Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, SE Asia, and the Middle East.

We currently are soliciting more volunteers to participate in our Web-based assessments of each animation. PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE AND BECOME AN ASSESSMENT PARTICIPANT! YOUR HELP WILL BE GREATLY APPRECIATED!