Breaking Barriers: Teaching Resource Sharing in a Global Community Marsha Lakes Matyas, Ph.D. Director of Education Programs American Physiological Society Bethesda, Maryland, USA Presented at the 36 th International Congress of Physiological Sciences, Kyoto, Japan, July 31, 2009

Barriers Identifying and cataloguing educational resources o Users must be able to find resources easily Establishing quality control of resources o Sometimes having more stuff is not “better”…it’s just “more” to dig through Communication and community building o Sharing more than just resources

Educational Resource Sharing Online journal access o Scientific research o Educational research and practice Internet facilitates wide distribution o The Internet Public Library ( o The British Library ( o Merlot and Merlot Africa ( o Many others…

Establishing Quality Control Search engines o Offer access to wide number of topics and sites o Especially good for “hot topics” in the news o Hard to use for general topics o No peer review Google June 2007 – 1 trillion unique URLs Hot topic: “H1N1” – 14 million hits Health issue: “cardiovascular disease” – 10 million hits Specific sites: “IUPS” – 76,000 hits

Communication/Community Building Facebook ( o February 2004: 4 Harvard students launch from their dormitory room. o December 2004: 1 million users. o April 2009: 200 million active users Second most-trafficked PHP site in the world 50+ language translations; 40 under development 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States.

Archive Resource Sharing Goal: Colleague-to-colleague sharing of educational materials Digital library, not a Web Site o Database driven o Standardized cataloguing of items Allows sharing with other digital libraries o Can be searched and browsed by 17 variables New look and Web 2.0 functions – January ,500+ free resources all education levels

Who contributes resources? Individuals: 25% of resources in the Archive have been contributed directly by users. Partner Societies: APS, Human Anatomy & Physiology Society (HAPS), Society for Developmental Biology (SDB), National Assn. for Health and Science Education Programs (NAHSEP) (K-12 materials), IUPS

User submitted materials (25%) Journal Materials: o Physiology in Medicine (PIM) o Physiology o Advances in Physiology Education o APS Classic Papers & Essays on Classics o Press releases for journal articles o HAPS Educator o The Physiologist Teaching/Career/Multimedia Resources: o FASEB Breakthroughs in Bioscience o HAPS Institute Teaching Resources o Life Lines Physiology Podcasts o Career Development Workshops o Physiology Refresher Courses o Education Workshops Educational journal articles Newsletters Teaching Strategies/guidelines Non-lab assignments Laboratory exercises Press releases Lesson plans PowerPoint files Images/photos Illustrations/diagrams Lectures/lecture outlines Reviews Datasets Simulations Animations Online tools Assessment tools Meeting presentations Memos Movies Podcasts/audio files Resource Types

Educational Level of Resources U.S. Educational level% of resources Elementary School (Ages 5-10)4% Middle School (Ages 11-13)15% High School (Ages 14-18)34% Undergraduate (BS/BA degrees)78% Graduate (MS/MA/Ph.D./Ed.D. degrees)65% Professional (MD, DDS, DVM, etc.)63%

Archive Quality Control Peer-reviewed for scientific accuracy and use of humans/animals in teaching Survey results: “Quality counts” 51% of items viewed are downloaded

Community Building A community of digital science ed. libraries o *Archive ( o *BEN Portal to the Life Sciences ( AAAS and 25+ life science scientific societies o National Science Digital Library (U.S.) ( * All materials at these sites are peer-reviewed for scientific accuracy. All three libraries have received U.S. National Science Foundation support.

Community Building Archive Users Nearly 6,000 registered users 2,300+ users per month Primarily higher education faculty 10-20% non-US users Numerous items have been submitted by IUPS members, as individual submissions or journal articles. Most resources are small- to medium- file sizes for easy downloading via narrow bandwidths.

Community Building “My Archive” o Rate, share, and save items in folders o Submit your own items for review and inclusion Author retains copyright Catalogued for use by specific communities o Medical physiology objectives APS/ACDP Medical Physiology Learning Objectives o K-12 educators U.S. National Science Education Standards (K-12) o Course Type “Show me what other faculty who teach the same course are using…Show me what they rate most highly.”

Community Building - Collaboration One click…Share items via , Facebook, etc.

Future Collaboration Tools Active Links to Folders o Embed a folder of Archive resources in your… Faculty web page Course web page Create an Annotated Collection o Select items from the Archive o Annotate how you used them o Share the collection as an Archive resource

Invitation to Participate in the Archive Community Use the Archive o Search o Browse o Rate and comment Submit a Resource or Create a Collection Serve as a Reviewer Suggest a course type for user profiles

Acknowledgements APS Staff: Melinda E. Lowy, Amy Feuerstein Society Partners: HAPS, SDB, NAHSEP, IUPS Consultants: Chadwick Cipiti, Cindy Carapellucci APS members: Education Committee (Chairs Barbara Goodman, Robert Carroll, Thomas Pressley) and Archive reviewers Funding: The Archive is supported by the APS and grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF DUE and )

References This presentation (#3602) is available at or search “Matyas” at the APS Archive. Facebook Pressroom Statistics ( Accessed 22 July Google Timeline ( Accessed 22 July 2009.