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Pocket Anatomy's human anatomy Apps assist medical and healthcare students study and prepare for their human anatomy exams via their iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch Apple device.

Great article by enthusiastic instructor that gives details about designing and delivering effective role-playing activities online. Relates activities to Bloom's taxonomy and gives tips for grading students.

Online Learning | Feature 6 Ways to Be a Better Online Teacher --- check out #3 for a creative 'active-learning' activity that has students tweeting as various characters as they read texts from the Crusades.

Abstract: This is the largest and most comprehensive metaanalysis of undergraduate STEM education published to date. The results raise questions about the continued use of traditional lecturing as a control in research studies, and support active learning as the preferred, empirically validated teaching practice in regular classrooms.

"Two-stage examinations consist of a first stage in which students work individually as they typically do in examinations (stage 1), followed by a second stage in which they work in groups to complete another examination (stage 2), which typically consists of a subset of the questions from the first examination." Q: What are ways to successfully apply this strategy in online courses?

Harvard's online repository for active learning. Searchable by activity type (e.g., discussion, game, peer instruction, debate, presentation), subject area, timeline, learning goals, student scope (individual, pair, group, or whole-class), final product and assessment type. Site also summarizes research on active learning by activity type.

"The basic idea behind the use of 'Learning Styles' is that learners can be categorized into one or more 'styles' (e.g., Visual, Auditory, Converger) and that teaching students according to their style will result in improved learning. This idea has been repeatedly tested and there is currently no evidence to support it. . . . We argue that the interests of all may be better served by promoting evidence-based approaches to Higher Education."

Key finding: "A strong majority of those who have taught online, 71 percent, say doing so has helped them develop skills and practices that have improved their teaching both online and in person. More than seven in 10 say online teaching has enabled them to think more critically about how to engage students with content, better use multimedia content and better use the learning management system."

"Rethinking the variety of voices and formats will not only be better for engagement, but also for learning. Rather than presenting information in scripted bullet points like an old-fashioned e-learning module, we should experiment with formats like debates, conversations, open-ended inquiry and stories in online courses. This will require students to extrapolate key points, synthesize what they've heard, and sometimes leave with more questions than clear take-aways."

"Instructional designers, like web developers in the '90s, historically had expertise in conveying content through a limited set of tools and platforms, such as a learning management system (LMS). LX designers, in contrast, merge design-thinking principles with curriculum development and the application of emerging technologies to help faculty tailor content to student behaviors and preferences. It cuts across disciplines and moves beyond the LMS: LX designers embrace graphic design, multimedia production, research-based standards and social media. They are partners to faculty throughout the program and course development process."

"The findings suggest that a new role, the life skill promoter, has emerged. Furthermore, analysis of the remaining roles (pedagogical, designer, social, technical and managerial) showed that: (i) online instructors are, first and foremost, pedagogues; (ii) the design of the particular online program influences the pedagogical and designer roles and; (iii) the managerial role has declined in importance over the years due to the development of more intuitive and transparent online scenarios from the beginning of the course onward."

Key finding: "Our data suggest that inserting short summaries into existing course videos is a simple and facile way to improve student recall of course contents." Thirty-second lecture summaries at the midpoint and end of lecture videos were correlated with significantly better learner performance on related quizzes. This was true if the lecture summary was delivered by the course instructor but not if it was delivered by a "guest." (Note: The average video length was approx. 10 minutes.)

This meta-analysis of the effects of video on learning found that adding video to existing teaching led to strong learning benefits. Videos may provide students with control over their level of cognitive load, they allow authentic demonstrations of skills, and they enable teaching staff to edit according to multimedia learning principles. Videos were more effective for teaching skills than transmitting knowledge.