Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia
Many universities across Australia have shifted towards blended learning environments, with new technologies providing the opportunity to drive student-centred learning through a combination of traditional classroom teaching methods with online tools.
Foundational Anatomy & Physiology (A&P) (Bioscience) knowledge is integral to all health education courses. However first year students often struggle with the volume and complexity of the content. To improve the progression and retention of potentially hundreds of commencing students across many health-related courses, we leveraged the use of technologically enhanced interactive learning tool H5P, which allows staff to create mobile friendly, interactive HTML5 learning content in units of study. The learning design, based on specific pre-class and in-class activities, enabled students to participate in online pre-class H5P learning interactives, along with other online activities. After engaging with the online learning interactives, which included polysynchronous modes of learning, students then attended team-based guided-inquiry workshops to discuss their observations that lead to deeper understandings of the intended learning objectives for the unit. In this paper, we describe our project, the processes used to create interactive content and early findings from the data collected, which shows that students were able to develop self-directed learning skills. We postulate that the creation of this type of innovative content can lead to deeper understandings of A&P and ultimately contribute to overall student success, learning and skills development.
Keywords: Anatomy and Physiology education, H5P interactive content, self-directed learning.