HUMAN SYSTEMS EXPLORER

(DOCUMENTARY)

Human Systems Explorer: Student Tutorial Integration

The flexibility to integrate the Human Systems Explorer modules into a wide variety of learning environments is one of the project's many great successes. While a student's first point of contact with an interactive diagram might be in lecture, when a professor draws on a module to explain a difficult concept in passing, this is hopefully just the beginning. Dr. Michael Parker, lead designer of the modules, points out that there are multiple levels of teaching at the school and that, in fact, the majority of a student's time in not spent in lecture but rather in smaller group sessions, or tutorials.

A typical tutorial brings six to eight students together to explore a written patient scenario in depth, under the guidance of a faculty member. These sessions provide a space in which students can dig into specific medical concepts and talk through any difficulties they might be having-and the Human Systems Explorer modules have emerged as a useful component of these discussions. Each tutorial room has a web-linked plasma screen. Students can pass the keyboard around the room and pull up any visuals they think will contribute to the conversation at hand. Because they've been exposed to interactive diagrams as a resource during lecture, they tend to bring the material up again in tutorial. "Oftentimes, it serves as a focal point for the discussion," says Dr. Parker.

The modules have also proved helpful in teaching students in less formal one-on-one or small-group sessions. Dr. Richard Schwartzstein, a professor at the Harvard Medical School, says that many of his students have gained new understanding of tricky concepts by working through the modules at home while for others, achieving understanding has not always been so easy. Some students are still confused, even after working through an interactive diagram on their own. Dr. Schwartzstein meets with these students and walks through the module with them. He asks them questions about how they understand what they're seeing; he has them talk him through the diagram. If he's lucky, he says, he eventually gets them to answer their own question.

In this way, the interactive tutorials are getting at what Dr. Schwartzstein believes teaching is all about: the "Aha!" moment, when a light bulb goes on over a student's head and in one instance, everything finally makes sense. "These tools are a key part of having more 'Aha!' moments occur for the students," he says.