INTRODUCTION

You have only one and its well-being depends exclusively on you!

It can see, hear, taste, and feel… It can walk, run, jump, play, think… and at the same time, it can breathe!

Your body has so many fascinating parts to be discovered; from bones and muscles to skin and organs… All your body systems must work together to keep you alive and well.

In this WebQuest you will learn about the 6 main human body’s systems and their functions:

1. Circulatory system
2. Nervous System
3. Respiratory System
4. Digestive system
5. Skeletal System
6. Muscular system

Figure 1: Labelled Human Body Systems. Source: https://www.livescience.com/37009-human-body.html

TASK

You and your classmates are medical students, and you are in the first year of your studies, you should learn basic elements of the human body. You need to research some of the systems in the human body.

• Create teams and take on one of the 6 systems.
• Make your research and complete the activity that corresponds to your system.
• Inform your classmates regarding this system, its function, and its importance to a healthy human body using the results of the activities you have completes, as they are stated below.

Extra activity for all the teams.

After all the teams have presented their work, start a discussion regarding fun and interesting facts about each human body system, e.g.,

• When listening to music, your heartbeat will sync with the rhythm.
• The smallest bone found in the human body is in the middle ear.

Extra activity for all the teams.

Start a conversation on how you would describe the human body to an alien.

PROCESS

RESOURCES

Extra references, which include other human body’s systems.

https://reverehealth.com/live-better/how-body-systems-connected/ 
https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/1885-body-systems 
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/human-body 
https://kidshealth.org/en/kids/bodymovies.html 
https://www.msdmanuals.com/home/fundamentals/the-human-body/organ-systems 
http://sciencenetlinks.com/lessons/systems-of-the-human-body/ 

CONCLUSION

Students will explore the human body and get a broader knowledge of its systems and organs. They will be able to explain the main functions, the importance and the interconnection of the following systems: Circulatory system, Nervous System, Respiratory System, Digestive system, Skeletal System and Muscular system.

Moreover, they will use research skills, word processing, presentation skills and will improve their teamwork skill.

Evaluation of learning achievements

In this section we will not dive very deep into the underlying educational theories about evaluation and testing: there’s too much out there than we could possibly cover in this small project report.

Instead, we want to concentrate on procedures that enable both students/pupils and their teachers to establish if the learning goals of the Webquest were achieved and, if so, to what extent. We recommend teachers make use of a combined evaluation procedure, that consists of:

1. Statements by learners (after being asked to do so)
   • telling what they learned about the subject (knowledge-oriented self-evaluation): now (after going through the Webquest) I know that …
   • telling what he/she learned about herself/himself (formative evaluation, in this case, diagnostic self-evaluation): now (after going through the Webquest) I know about myself that I …
     This pair of basic statements add up to a so-called learner report, in which the pupil/student reflects on what the Webquest brought him/her in terms of acquired knowledge and new personal views and attitudes concerning the subject.

   For instance:

   • ‘I learned that in medieval times the hygiene of people was hardly a concern which helped to let epidemic diseases like the Plague cause so many casualties’ Or:
   • ‘I learned the facts and I know the earth is warming, but I cannot understand why people were so stupid to pollute the world and let it warm up so much.
   • ‘I learned from the information about diseases that this subject is more appealing to me than I would expect in advance: maybe I should consider a medical career’. Or:
     ‘The Webquests confirms what I thought already: I could not care less about the climate and global warming. In fact, I thought it was all a hoax and I still do!’

   This kind of assessment seems more subjective than it actually is: in his standard work on testing and evaluation (and much more), simply called Methodology (1974), Prof. A.D. de Groot described how consistent the student’s self-evaluations appeared to be: when asked again after 5 or 10 years, their evaluation would almost be the same. De Groot advised teachers to use the learner report as a start for joint evaluations, striving for consensus between teacher and student/pupil about the learning outcomes and their value for the learner, but also compared with the learning objectives as stated in the curriculum.

2. The learning achievements are visible in the output produced by the students: it is physical evidence: reports, answers to questions asked in the Webquest, presentations, and performance during presentations (preferably recorded). The teacher completes an evaluation grid stating clearly what the learning outcomes for the student/pupil are. The categories in the grid can be modified by the teacher to cover more precisely the content of a Webquest.

   >We advise teachers to use the grid to start a joint evaluation discussion, aiming at consensus or at least understanding between the teacher and the student/pupil about the learning outcomes: were they achieved (as planned in the curriculum and communicated before the Webquest started) and to what extent? To communicate the learning goals clearly before any learning activity starts, is a transparency requirement that is widely acknowledged in the educational community. The history of making learning objectives explicit goes back to the evaluation ‘Bible’ by Bloom, Hastings and Madaus: ‘Handbook on formative and summative evaluation of student learning’ (1971), a standard work that also served as inspiration for the earlier mentioned Prof. De Groot.

The procedure also applies when students/pupils have worked together on a Webquest. The teacher will ask questions about individual contributions: ‘What did you find? What part did you write? How did you find the illustrations? Who made  the final presentation?’

All the evidence (of learning efforts and outcomes plus joint evaluations) is preferably stored in the learning portfolio of the student, or in any other suitable storage system (folders with written or printed documents, online collection of files, etcetera ).

Changes in personal points of view and feelings are harder to value and here the consensus between teacher and student/pupil about experiences during the learning process provides essential insights.

The grid below gives an example of how the evaluation of the learning process and achievements can be shaped: what kind of reactions to the Webquest does the teacher expect and how valuable are they? Is the teacher capable to explain the value or score allocated to answers or presentations given by pupils? Does the pupil/student understand the evaluation outcomes, and does he/she agree? If an agreement (consensus is not possible, it is still the teacher who decides how to value the student’s work.

Please note that the text in the grid addresses the pupil/student directly: this is important and it is in fact a prerequisite for using such an evaluation grid: it is specifically meant to enable a discussion of learning results between teacher and student and not to communicate learning achievements of learners to others who had no direct role in the Webquest.

Evaluation Grid