Learning Neuroscience: An Interactive Case-Based Online Network (ICON)

Abstract

We have developed an interactive case-based online network (ICON) that provides a new learning environment and integrates the student's thinking across the different concentration tracks of one of Harvard's interfaculty science initiatives. ICON takes advantage of this cross-disciplinary, undergraduate curriculum as a model system to bring a compelling, integrative focus to bear on reshaping how Harvard students learn neuroscience. ICON contains 9 learning modules specific to each case: Case, Working Papers, Blackboard, Neuroimaging, Research Programs and Trials, Decision Tree, Learning Objectives, Virtual Contact, and Brainstorm. Modules allow the student to get away from interpreting vast amounts of available information, move toward selecting useful information, recognize discriminating findings, and build a conceptual understanding of real and meaningful problems in neuroscience. The result is that ICON introduces a new landscape within the academic curriculum where the active participation of faculty and students effectively intersects and captures an immediate, integrative learning experience for the student. The benchmark of ICON is the time spent by students and faculty to create a user-defined learning network that engages faculty to participate in the students' learning and transforms the way the student thinks.