Dynamic Development is a web site that contains an enormous amount of material designed to supplement developmental biology courses that the author, Leon Browder, teaches at the University of Calgary.Dynamic Development is designed to supplement traditional Developmental Biology textbooks. The site consists of about 35 modules that each cover a particular topic in development, such as "Embryonic Induction during Vertebrate Development: Neural Induction", etc. The modules that can be used either together or independently in college level developmental biology courses. Each module has a detailed explanation of the topic, some written by the main author of the site, Leon Browder, others by specialists in those fields. In addition to the textual explanations, each page has a detailed bibliography, links to current relevant topics, links to relevant outside learning resources, page numbers for relevant figures in the most popular Developmental Biology texts, a list of learning objectives, and, occasionally, some additional figures. In addition to the subject pages, there are thirteen online tutorials and exercises that take advantage of numerous resources available on the Internet.
Type of Material:
Collection/tutorial
Technical Requirements:
html
Target Student Population:
College/University students in developmental biology courses
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
Quality of Content Ratings:(5) (4.5) = 4.75
Technically excellent with accurate material
Descriptions are detailed and thorough
Provides an extensive collection of up to date modular material on various aspects of developmental biology
Integrates material with comparable topics in textbooks
In addition to Browder, several other authors have contributed to the site providing additional breadth
Effectively combines material from a large number of other sites
Concerns:
Site does not appear to have been updated since 1998 and is becoming a little dated
No glossary
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching-Learning Tool Ratings: (4) (4) = 4
Very effective usage of many different types of learning resources including textbooks, online text, figures and photographs, animations and active learning exercises.
The modular nature of the content makes it easy to incorporate portions of the material into a course.
The learning objectives for each module are listed
References to the primary journal literature are provided in each module
Concerns:
Many of the topics are heavily dependent on figures from the texts that are not included on the site or are present only on outside sites, some of which are no longer available
Tutorial and exercise assignments are not consistent in design and level of difficulty
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
Ease of Use Ratings:(4) (4) = 4
Easy to use since it is largely static web pages and the material is well written and well organized.
Concerns:
There are a number of broken links on the site. It is not clear if the site is still being maintained.
Many pages do not have a link to the next page, you have to go back to a subject subheading page and find the link to the next topic
Because of the amount of material navigation through the site is at times problematic. A complete site map would make navigation easier.
Some external sites require plugins but the user is not informed of this
Creative Commons:
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