Abstract

This paper examines the potential merits of empirical modelling in teaching students about the anatomy of the body. To begin to understand the body, a student must remember the functionality of each organ as well as its name and position in the body. Other information is often given to the student about the effects of external factors on the different organs. This large quantity of information is often difficult to learn through books due to their un-interactive nature and limited visual teaching capabilities. An interactive model has been designed which uses constructivist theories to help the student learn more effectively.

Visual learning is at the heart of this model and attempts have been made to make the learning experience as rich as possible. An emphasis has been placed on the interface of this system as it is used to communicate information to the student. Given an effective interface, it has been argued that the user will never learn as much as the modeller does when designing a model. For this reason, the possibility of the student's involvement in designing this particular model is discussed with specific reference to homework and research type activities. The idea behind using visual and interactive learning is an empirical one which view learning as a personal experience.

This project benefits greatly from EM techniques. There are endless dependencies between organs without considering the external factors that affect these organs. The agent based thinking means that organs can easily be modelled to function realistically and a detailed model be made out of this. Existing software is looked at and compared with the model and benefits of both are discussed.

Dependencies in EM allow models to be easily extended and altered. The scalability of this model is beneficial to a modeller with an interest in a specific part of the body or one which has time constraints. Dependencies can be used to extend or join models together and can be used to great effect with this model. Customisation is also part of extendibility and the requirement to tailor make software for students has been discussed.

I claim that EM is very suited to the problem at hand and this model is a demonstration of what is possible within the field of educational technology to help in the learning of many subjects.