Overview

Introduction to Biology, AP Biology, and Anatomy Physiology classes frequently use dissections of frogs, cats, fish, and other animals to allow the students to get hands on experience with physical beings and actual animal tissue. Schools, however, are increasingly allowing students to “opt out” of physical dissections, making allowances for the students who choose not to do the dissection to read text on the subject or interact with “simulators”. Some teachers are choosing to use the various simulators of available as a cost effective way of doing dissections, as there is no need to purchase new specimens for every student, and little effort in terms of storage and set up.

Not much time is spent doing experimentation and laboratory activities in life science classrooms. Time is either tied up in lecture, and if the lecture covers anatomical structures, the students are frequently asked to color and fill in pictures, rather than interacting with a specimen. Teachers are slowly incorporating more activities in the classroom, and some of those include dissection (both virtual and real).

There are a large number of simulators available for various types of dissections, and each one can serve multiple purposes. Focusing on dissections that occur in a biology classroom, I will look at online dissection websites and applications of cats, frogs, and fetal pigs. These occur with frequency at varying levels of biology and life science classrooms. Not all aspects of the websites need to be used at once; most are divided into sections so that each activity can be garnered to the lecture material and be done in parts.

How to Get Started With…

Obviously, before allowing the students to interact with a simulator, an appropriate simulator must be selected. While many simulators can be used for various purposes, some are more level appropriate and should be evaluated for their usefulness before exposing the students to an application that might be over their heads.

Prior to allowing the students to interact with various simulators, the teacher should outline the basic anatomical features of the “specimen”. Students should also have some form of guided notes to help them throughout the exercise. The background information and the guided notes will help keep the students focused on the material, and will guide the students through the simulation.

I have selected a website that follows a fetal pig dissection. Use this website to follow along:http://www.whitman.edu/biology/vpd/ (be sure to have Shockwave installed).

This is the first screen of the virtual pig dissection:

There are several routes that a teacher could take when using this resource. On the website it provides certain predetermined paths that students can take, each one with various interactive parts.

Within the “Study Guides” section, students can select a certain region of the pig to examine. I have selected the “Respiratory system”.

As you can see, there is a hyperlink entitled “Follow the air’s path to the trachea..”

Continuing with the dissection, you are allowed to go back and forth through the steps, and each step has associated notes that can be expanded upon with lecture material or guided notes.

After the students have worked through the guided dissection (or even at some later point, potentially as a means to review the material), the website offers quizzes on the homepage for the student to take.

Classroom Examples

Staples High School Science Department

http://shs.westport.k12.ct.us/mjvl/science/bioweb.htm

This home page from Staples High School science dept. offers a fair amount of information that can be used in many different capacities. The link of “dissections and simulations” offers a set of external links to other online dissections, such as simulations of dissections of earthworms and crayfish.

Hardee Senior High School

http://www.hardee.k12.fl.us/lesson_plans/Virtual_Dissection.pdf

This is a lesson plan from a high school in Florida. This particular example offers information about which state biology standards the virtual dissection matches. This template could be used for teachers trying to design their own lesson, as it prompts the teacher to ensure that the material is being used not only to augment the knowledge of the students, but matches the required material.

Calhoun High School

http://alex.state.al.us/lesson_view.php?id=26287

This lesson plan expands upon the previous example, and includes several statements that are vital for future assessment: “Students will be able to…” This outlines the student expectations of what they will be doing during the virtual dissection and what they will need to be able to do after the dissection. This lesson plan also offers a sample student handout and a teacher guide that can be modified as necessary.

Osseo-Fairchild High School

http://www.ofsd.k12.wi.us/science/study.htm

This is a combination of a lesson plan of a virtual dissection as well as a mini research project. The research was to see if students who completed the virtual dissection performed better on assessments than those who did traditional dissection. While the study found that those that did the virtual dissection scored significantly better, the discrepancies between the control group and experimental group were large (experience of teacher-20 year vet vs. first year intern), and the group sizes were relatively small. This website also offers a good review of the literature on the comparison of virtual dissections against traditional dissections, and can be used by teachers who wish to incorporate one or the other.

Assessing … for the Classroom

Pro’s

Virtual simulations are a cost effective way of having students interact and study the anatomy of various organisms. It can provide opportunities for students to interact with new forms of technology, and can be used as a supplementary material to material covered in lecture, or can be a stand alone unit. With biology classrooms, teachers can tie the material to the study of a human body as the mammalian bodies share many similarities.Simulations also prevent student and experimental error during the dissection, which can be costly and time consuming to fix. All of the parts of the specimen are going to be present and clearly labeled, unlike normal dissections.

Con’s

There is always something lost when students are not allowed to touch an object. The tactile sense and the somatosensory cortices are no longer being used when a student uses a mouse to point and click rather than slice and pull apart. While this may be a benefit to some students as they are (or their parents are) uncomfortable with the thought of dissections, others lose that sensation. Also, should the students work in groups, it is much easier for one student to dominate the use of the computer while others sit back and watch.

The use of virtual dissections may also be limited by the technological background of the students and the limitations of the technology available to them at the high school or whatever level virtual dissections are trying to be used. There is also the potential problems should the application/website not function.

Virtual dissections also offer limited plasticity and differentiability. Live dissections offer the ability for students to study the differences between specimens, which is not possible with virtual, and exploration of the specimen is also limited and predetermined by the application.

Considerations for Teachers

Prior to using any piece of technology, the teacher must be prepared with the material and be sure that all of the functions within a website or program are functional. Computers should have all of the proper plugins installed (Flash, Adobe, Windows Media player are some of the common ones that needed to be updated with frequency) on the computers that are going to be used by the students. Also, should the students be working in groups, teachers should not group the students randomly, as some students are more comfortable with computers and may dominate the use of the simulation and learn more than those that sit back and allow others to do the work for them.

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This work is licensed by John Savage under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 3.0), and is an Open Educational Resource.

Last edited by John Savage on Oct 5, 2009 7:39 am GMT-5.