Development Process for Human Anatomy and Physiology Blended Online Course.

This course was an exciting project to work on and we learned a lot about the fundamentals of Human Anatomy and how it relates to Hawaiian culture here at Kamehameha Schools. In addition, this is the school’s first Tri-Campus course, involving O’ahu’s Kapalama Campus, Maui Campus, and Hawai’i Campus (KS Big Island).
One of the challenges we faced developing this Tri-Campus course was finding a process to better assist with the analysis phase as the content wasn’t documented in a structural format. The analysis phase is important because we carefully collaborate with the SME (subject matter expert) to determine goals and course content, objectives, and resources for the course.

This was a bit challenging because our Subject Matter Expert had been teaching this course for so long that he knew the content very well and didn’t follow a prescribed, pre-written formula for teaching the course. He was clearly a natural, teaching it like a memorized text-book. Additionally, nearly all of the content was stored in fragmented locations and came very naturally to our SME when delivering the content to his students in a live Face-to-Face venue. This was wonderful for his face-to-face students; however, translating this quality to an online blended venue seemed challenging.

With some minor “trial and error”, our core team came up with an exciting method we coined the “Content Discovery Phase”. During this phase, we collectively came up with a structured process to capture the needed content in an organized way that would assist the development team in constructing an online blended course while applying iNACOL standards.

What is iNACOL? iNACOL stands for the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (http://www.inacol.org). This organization has identified standards that best suit K-12 learners in an online and blended environment.

In addition to the Content Discovery Process, we collaborated with cultural experts to help with the goal of integrating Hawaiian culture and history with western practices typically associated with this type of course.Once all of this important and quality content was documented, we were off to development.

Thanks to the prior work of the Content Discovery Phase, we had a plan to deliver the content in an equally if not better than a Face-to-Face only setting. Within the templates that were created for the unit and lesson plans, online delivery methods had been discussed and documented.We were able to collect helpful links, videos and games that our SME was already using in some of his physical classes.

Our SME, Justin, also created lectures using software that captured him drawing on a virtual white-board while utilizing graphics of the cells, organelles, and other important materials relating to his lectures. The development team was excited to teach our SME how to utilize tools to complete these development items.

The development team was very fortunate to have a SME like Justin whom was already very familiar with technology and utilized it regularly in his face-to-face class. With this in mind, it was very helpful to have our own SME assist in the development of the white-board lectures, setting up tests, quizzes, discussion boards, and uploading content into the course.

The development team created a sound, organized course with distinguished units, lesson plans, objectives, graphics, and interactivity for the learners. In addition, course outlines and tools were created for the learners and instructors to keep them organized during their school year. The development team also created a colorful navigation system that included icons, graphics, and a visual course map for the students and instructors to follow. Once the master course was created, finalized, and reviewed the development team cloned it for the instructors that will be using the course for their students this year.

Yuki immediately accessed his course and began customizing it for his students by creating assignments, announcements, and adding his office hours and contact information to the resources and instructors page. Malia is anticipated to begin her blended course during the spring semester. Together, with a solid team, great support, and a very knowledgeable SME, we are excited to have been a part of the development process for the Blended Online Human Anatomy and Physiology course.

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