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In The Boneyard Project students learn about anatomy and physiology of small mammals and humans while considering ethical questions about utilizing animal products.

In this interrupted case study, students shadow an endocrinologist as she tries to determine what is wrong with Angela Barber. Angela is a middle-aged woman presenting with symptoms suggestive of a thyroid issue. Students are given background information, patient history, and results from thyroid-specific blood tests. The exercise emphasizes the hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid axis and particularly highlights the role of negative feedback. Students will use results from serum thyrotropin and thyroid hormone level tests, as well as patient symptoms, to come up with a diagnosis. In preparation for the diagnosis, students are asked to compare the endocrine profiles of patients with Graves' disease, Hashimoto's disease, iodine deficiency (primary hypothyroidism), and various tumors. The case was developed for college-level biology majors in a physiology course, but also has been used successfully for pre-nursing students in a non-majors anatomy and physiology course. Thus, this activity would be suitable for majors in physiology or pre-medical students, as well as allied health majors.

For years whale evolution was characterized by speculation and limited evidence. Evolution critics even focused on whales as a means to criticize evolutionary theory. Now whale evolution represents one of the best examples of "macroevolution." This "clicker case" uses this fascinating story of historical irony as a backdrop to the study of whale evolution. First, students study an array of whale fossils to learn how evolution is properly viewed as a branching, relationship-based process, not a linear, progressive, "chain-of-being." Using this view they learn how scientists seek to reconstruct past relationships and study transitional features, not search for "missing links." Students then learn that evidence for macroevolution relies on several lines of independent evidence from fossils, comparative anatomy, embryology, genetics, and paleoecology. With a focus on macroevolution, this case makes a critical contribution to evolution education. It could work well in a lower level undergraduate biology / evolution / paleontology course (non-majors or majors), or in an upper-level evolution course, perhaps early in the semester as a primer for related topics.

This flipped case study tells the story of Joyce, a biology student who notices the development of some unusual symptoms (foot slapping and slurred speech) in her mother. In an effort to understand the cause, Joyce views a documentary-style trigger video (created by the case author) that suggests to Joyce that her mom may in fact have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS. The rest of the case walks Joyce through understanding how normal neurons compare to neurons in ALS patients and how that might affect muscle function. The case explores the link between genes, particularly SOD-1, to the formation of malformed proteins and its potential role in the development of ALS. The case concludes with a discussion of drug development and highlights the timeline and costs associated with drug discovery as Joyce becomes concerned about the lack of drugs in the pipeline for ALS, which her mother is ultimately diagnosed with. The case is appropriate for a number of classes including general biology, biotechnology, anatomy and physiology, upper level-cell biology, or any human health and disease-related course.