ABSTRACT
ERIN, Educational Resources in Neuroscience, is the Society for Neuroscience's web portal to selected, high-quality materials for higher education. A Board of Editors approves resources after describing them and classifying them by topic, subtopic, media type, author, and appropriate educational level. Some resources are also accompanied by reviews and ratings from faculty who have used the resource. These features make a search of ERIN far more useful than a typical Google search. ERIN's development was funded by the National Science Foundation with a three-year grant to SfN. Along the way, various unexpected problems arose and solutions were found, many of which are described in this overview of ERIN's history and the various decisions that were made in its design and development.
ABSTRACT
To help students master the content of a neurophysiology course, they were asked to participate in collaborative writing projects. In the first two years, students contributed to a class wiki by summarizing one lecture and editing summaries of several others. In the second two years, students worked in teams of three or four to write a series of illustrated chapters spanning the entire semester. The second assignment kept students more engaged than the wiki project, and although they found it a significant amount of work, they also believed that it helped them learn the subject matter. Working in teams, however, was not always a happy experience.
ABSTRACT
In the spring of 2007, the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) did not include support for higher education as a priority in its strategic plan. By the spring of 2009, its priorities had changed. One catalyst for that change was a proposal for a website that would list, review, and rate resources for teaching neuroscience at the graduate and undergraduate level. The proposal was sent to and accepted by SfN Council in August 2008; by spring 2009, SfN had taken initial steps to implement it. Two documents are presented here that mark the change in policy: the website proposal, and SfN Council's response.
ABSTRACT
A combination of student interest, a grant for computers, and a suggestion from a colleague led me to convert the printed lab manual for my neurophysiology course into an online version. The web-based version incorporates videos of procedures, color photos, diagrams, links to articles, and other supplementary materials. This paper discusses designing for the web, retaining compatibility with print, layering information, making videos in digital format, and sharing self-published resources. The labs themselves (appendix) are traditional "wet" experiments with crayfish that have been used in many neurobiology courses.
