Daniel Matthews Justification Paper Cells and Body Tissue Unit of Instruction Boise State University EdTech 506

6 Graphic Design for Education User Assumptions: The users for this unit of instruction are Georgia high school students in 10th 12th grades. They will come into the course having had Biology and a passing score on the End-of-Course-Test from Biology. Although it is not a prerequisite, about 90% of the students taking Human Anatomy have also taken and passed Chemistry. The students taking this are also college bound students who are usually highly motivated students working to earn money for a HOPE scholarship which awards Georgia high school students with four years of scholarship money if they attend any in-state college or university. When this unit begins, the students have already learned about the biochemistry components of the body in the previous unit, and have learned the basics about the human body including an overview of the body systems and they will be familiar with the types of tissue. This unit will fit into the State Standards in the order they have been adopted. It is the third unit of instruction and it addresses the fourth and fifth state standards for Human Anatomy and Physiology. The unit of instruction will begin by describing the parts of the cell and will progress to overall cell functions, then to how those cells group together to form tissue, and ultimately to how the tissues build organs. The flow in the course is typically to start with the smallest building block which we call the micro or very small and then builds to the gross anatomy which are structures that can be observed by the naked eye. The website is not intended to be an independent study. It will be used to supplement instruction. Students may use it as a reference as they are working through the chapter for additional help or for pictorial representation of some of the topics covered in the unit. The lesson plans on the site are to help the instructor be able to best use the website to help supplement the instruction. The website is in no way a comprehensive breakdown of the unit of instruction. The website will also act as a multimodal form of review for the students to represent the content knowledge in ways that
mesh with different learning styles that may appeal to different modal preferences (Sankey, Birch & Gardiner, 2006). The website includes some graphics, to help student understand and recognize

information, some textual information, for review, and some videos. Graphic Descriptions Graphic 1 Cell City Analogy (second image down the page)

The cell city analogy has been around for a long time. The assignment itself was not original, but the worksheet has always been very simple and had little excitement included in it. Lohr said that green is cited as one of the favorite colors and it is associated with greater visual acuity, so the plain white background was replaced with a light green background. A new font that has better spacing made the paragraph easier to read, and the bolded and underlined key phrases in the paragraph make it easy for the user to find the important phrases in the paragraph. Some white space between the paragraph and the questions keep the sections separated. The title has shadowing to make it more interesting and give it some dimension. The title has been scaled large to show more importance and the actual assignment at the end is in red, a contrasting color to the green background. Finally a clipart skyline (city) has been added to the top to increase interest, but keep it very simple so as not to distract from the purpose of the document. Graphic 2 Cell Diversity (second image on the page) This image was originally created with the principals of ACE PAT in mind. However when the image was created I had missed the boat on the purpose of ACE PAT which is to use the graphic to encourage students to do some learning on their own. So I recreated the image which is the one that is listed on the Cell Diversity assignment. Next to the image I also gave the students an assignment they can do after the explanation. The image has organizational cues that show the truck which is carrying cells to the factory where they will be used to build tissue. The assignment for students will be to create their own list of some things that are built with the same types of materials. An example could be a sand castle which is built out of sand. The image represents blood cells being carried into the body tissue which in this case would be the blood stream. Since blood is the only liquid tissue in the body I thought this was an appropriate analogy, and students will use that to come up with some of their own examples of similar cells that make up body tissues. Graphic 3 Passive Transport (second image on the page) This passive transport image represents how molecules will move from a high concentration to a low concentration slowly over time. They will pass through the cell membrane into the lower concentration. Once the two sides are balanced on the right side, the molecules then move equally in both directions. The white space in this one shows the passage of time, and the asymmetry between the right and left sides will draw the users eye to the fact that a major change in the arrangement of the molecules has occurred. Graphic 4 Phases of Mitosis (second image on the page) This image was created as part of the CARP assignment. CARP stands for contrast, alignment, repetition, and proximity. I used each of these elements when the image was created. I used contrast in the image title and in the header of each section by making the headers bold. I tried to make things look really different like Lohr suggests (p. 201). I used alignment by aligning

both the descriptions and the images to make it visually appealing. This should also help reduce the cognitive load on the students because the images are aligned to form perceptual chunks for the students (Lohr, 2002). I used repetition in the visuals are the same size and similar colors and the font is the exact same font throughout the image. Finally, I used proximity so a user knows which description go with which images and can tell the separate stages of mitosis. Graphic 5 Tissue Types Concept Map (second image on the page) This graphic was created in the form of a concept map using the concepts from the textbook by Lohr on page 250. I used a 4:3 display ratio which is appealing to the eye and then used color to draw the eye to the center of the image. Once in the center, the users eye would be drawn out and the different levels of tissue types are represented by different shapes. The text is easy to read and appealing to the eye. I used lines to show the direct connection between the types of tissue and their subcategories. Graphic 6 Tissue Locations This image was created using type to typography. The purpose of typography is to create an association between the type and the associated image the type is portraying. The purpose of typography is to help students associate the words from the section or unit with the images they represent (Smith, 2008). This image represents 3 types of tissue located in the human body, and it represents where they are related to one another. The 4th concept is the concept of mitosis which is critical for the tissues to stay alive and intact in the human body. The epithelial layer is on the outside as it is a protective layer surrounding the body. The word epithelial flows over the outside just like our skin flows over the outside of our body. The coloring of epithelial also loses its color slightly as it nears the top, as our epithelial tissue does when it is stretched. The muscle stretches and has a bulge in the center like our muscular tissue does and it contains subtle horizontal lines representing striations or layers in the muscular tissue. The words connective tissue represent our bone and tendons which attach muscles to bone. Connective tissue has also been textured similar to the texture of our bones and the words that attach to the muscle taper to the point of attachment to the bone. Mitosis is shown dividing into 2 separate parts representing the process of mitosis which is cell nucleus division. Graphic 7 Classification of Epithelial Tissue (second image on the page) This graphic came from the principle of selection. In our textbook we had an image that looked great but did not describe how epithelial tissue is classified. I took the concepts and drew a much simpler set of images. The new image has a simple background and the tissues themselves are drawn very simply to reduce the distraction the user gets when looking at the images. The image has spacing to draw the users eye to the main images on the picture and the text that goes with the images. This is the intention and will help students understand the labels and the concept. Graphic 8 Concept Review (header)

This image is a review of the entire chapter. The concepts at the top of each header are aligned there to show they hold more importance than the information grouped together underneath. All of the information is chunked according to the headers. The vertical alignment signifies that the information at the top is more important than the information at the bottom. Also the items that are slightly offset to the right is more secondary in nature. The information listed is all the major topics covered in this unit of instruction. Design Process Using a webpage to make supplemental information available to students is a big step in allowing them to take their education into their own hands and gives them an opportunity to return to the website and look over the information they may have missed during class or may need to see again to fully understand how to do it. The purpose of the webpage is to give students a reference they can use to help grasp the key topics from the chapters, and to have an additional resource they can use to reference for the chapter. Each section of the website includes a chunk of information. The chunking of information improves students information processing capacity and allows them to retain larger amounts of information (Furukawa, 2009). Each individual site contains a different topic covered in the unit. Some have more information than others as some sections will be more dependent on the website for some of the instruction while other units will be mostly traditionally based. Chapter Flow This chapter will begin with the introduction unit. It has a YouTube video teaching the organelles of the cell using a rap video. It doesnt cover all the parts of the cell, but it should remind kids of some of the parts they have learned and what they do. The teacher can then follow the lesson plan for the introduction and it will take them through two days of 52 minute instruction and complete the parts of the cell. Once the organelles of the cell have been learned, the students will move onto the cell city analogy on the webpage. They will complete this activity during class if possible so they can get help from the instructor with the metaphor. Then the students will spend time creating their own metaphor for the organelles of the cell. The second day will end on the second page of the website, cell diversity. The students will learn the basics of cell diversity and then come up with their own example of something that is created using similar materials. It can be part of the body, but it does not have to be. After their activity is done individually, each student will share their example with a partner. They will compare and contrast their examples. The next page has a good image on it for cellular transport, but needs much instruction. This day will be mostly traditional, and kids can use the image to help illustrate passive transport. DNA replication is a very short piece that is very important and complex, but a fairly short topic. The full amount of instruction shouldnt take more than 20 minutes, but it is also its own chunk of information.

Then the instructor will get into the next lesson plan about mitosis, including videos, tutorials, and pictorial representation of this very important cycle. After mitosis, instruction moves onto a fairly complex topic of protein synthesis. The instructor will rely heavily on clear descriptions and students who pay close attention and work hard to understand. The images will help students understand the different steps involved in the 2 processes. The tutorial video at the end helps clarify how the image flows. Students can use both to help them grasp the topic. The next day will begin the types of tissue. Follow the Types of Tissue Lesson Plan to complete the unit as a whole.

References

Furukawa, J. (2009). Computer-based Education for the Future: What Works?. In G. Siemens & C. Fulford (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2009 (pp. 2803-2808). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/p/31878. Lohr, Linda (2008). Creating graphics for learning and performance: Lessons in visual literacy (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. Sankey, M., Birch, D. & Gardiner, M. (2010). Engaging students through multimodal learning environments: The journey continues. In C.H. Steel, M.J. Keppell, P. Gerbic & S. Housego (Eds.), Curriculum, technology & transformation for an unknown future. Proceedings ascilite Sydney 2010 (pp.852-863). http://ascilite.org.au/conferences/sydney10/procs/Sankeyfull.pdf.