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Peer Review

Virtual Pig Dissection

Reviewed:
Feb 6, 2023 by Biology
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Ratings

Overall Rating: 4.8 stars
Content Quality: 4.8 stars
Effectiveness: 4.5 stars
Ease of Use: 5.0 stars
Overview:

This site allows people the opportunity to engage in a virtual pig dissection. Originally created by Professor Earl W. Fleck of Whitman Colleges biology department, the site lets users go inside the pig to learn about its various systems, via a set of high-quality color photographs, which can be viewed at different angles and perspectives. The site also includes quizzes.

Type of Material:

Reference Material

Recommended Uses:

Recommend best use is for online courses and for study of animal anatomy and physiology outside of the lab.

Technical Requirements:

Works well with Firefox and chrome. Some images in the organ systems dissections would not open in Safari.

Identify Major Learning Goals:

No learning outcomes are specified. 

The purpose of this site is to serve as a supplement to introductory mammalian dissection laboratories. The site is intended to support students who do not want to engage in actual dissection, or who have engaged in dissection and want a way to preview or review the material they experienced in lab.

Target Student Population:

This material would be appropriate for AP Biology students in secondary education or introductory anatomy courses at the college level.

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

Basic knowledge of biology is needed to understand material. Some familiarity with anatomical terms will benefit the user.

Content Quality

Rating:
Strengths:
  • The information is accurate
  • Images are excellent quality
  • Structures and organ systems are clear and accurately labeled in images
  • The dissection process is shown in sequence to imitate an actual dissection
  • There is a reference section to clarify anatomic directional terms used in descriptions of the dissection
  • Quizzes are provided to review the material
Concerns:
  • Information about internal organs, especially functions, is limited
  • Structures that are labeled are limited in some systems
  • Content consists of text and static images, which may not engage some users

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:
Strengths:
  • Images of fetal pig are superior to diagrams commonly found in dissection resources
  • Images are clear and have sufficient resolution to view structures
  • A logical step-by-step sequence to the different systems mirrors an actual dissection
  • The site is well organized and information within and between topics flows very well
  • There is some discussion of the function for many of the structures
  • This resource could be used to replace a fetal pig dissection
  • This resource could also be used to supplement an actual dissection, before, during, and after
  • Material is presented in such a way that it could also be incorporated into a lecture or presentation
  • This resource has been placed in the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA, allowing instructors share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material)
Concerns:
  • The resource does not take advantage of modern methods of incorporating interactivity into a website
  • More detailed and extensive descriptions of physiology would improve the effectiveness of the resource
  • The site appears to have been last updated in 2011
  • The quizzes are currently offline, pending updates to fix technical problems; this may be a longstanding issue
  • The references are out of date and could be updated

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:
Strengths:
  • The website functioned as expected (except for the quizzes)
  • The site lends itself to step-by-step engagement
  • Navigation is intuitive, easy, and clear
  • Basic navigation instructions are provided
Concerns:
  • The site does not address ADA issues
  • Optimum browsers are not suggested--some issues were noted with Safari
  • The navigation instructions should be updated--they say: "Within this site, you can navigate to any chapter from the links at the left."; the links appeared on the right in the browsers we viewed the site with
Other Issues and Comments:

This site has dissected images of a fetal pig which may be too graphic for younger users.

Creative Commons:
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