Performing Department
AU Food Systems Institute
Non Technical Summary
Purpose is to educate students about the digestive tract of the chicken (similar to that of humans) by creating a simulation with four levels of focus, from overview to molecular (introductory to advanced) showing the effect of the digestion on a grain of corn. AUFSI (Pat Curtis, director) will provide oversight, coordination, project evaluation (including analytics built into the modules), marketing and distribution. Paul Patterson (professor of poultry science at Pennsylvania State) will be subject matter expert, and Troy Hahn (associate dean of instructional technology at Suffolk) will be technical lead. Target audience is juinior/senior biology, physiology and poultry science students at any university. The product is an interactive simulation designed with input from students in the computer game development class at Suffolk and piloted through Suffolk's Virtual Learning Commons. The simulation will be beta-tested in undergraduate courses at Pennsylvania State and Auburn and disseminated at no cost through the AUFSI website and other sites. This is a follow-up to the institute's Virtual Chicken, which models the formation of the egg in a chicken's reproductive tract. Thousands of copies of Virtual Chicken have been disseminated worldwide. Expected outcome is creation of an exciting, flexible learning tool that will be thoroughly tested and evaluated and result in improved interest, recruitment and learning among undergraduate students in the agricultural sciences and related disciplines.
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
100%
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
Target Objectives: This project, VirtualChicken: The Digestive System, has several objectives based on the simulation's four levels:• OBJECTIVE 1: The student who completes the beginner level will be able to define the gross anatomy of the chicken's digestive tract and will be able to outline what happens as food passes through the digestive tract.• OBJECTIVE 2: The student who completes the intermediate level will be able to identify the organs in the digestive tract and actively demonstrate using built-in applications how both nutrients and waste move through the chicken's digestive system.• OBJECTIVE 3: The student who completes the advanced level will be able to describe the process of digestion at the cellular and molecular level, including the role of salts and enzymes, and the transport of nutrients and waste through cell walls.• OBJECTIVE 4: Students completing the simulation will be able to research and report on a scientific topic.
Project Methods
PLAN OF OPERATION AND METHODOLOGY:The subject matter expert for this project is Dr. Paul Patterson, a professor of poultry science at Pennsylvania State University (see Key People section). He will provide the subject matter from which staff of the Suffolk County Community College Office of Instructional Technology, directed by Troy Hahn, and AUFSI's technology staff will build the simulation. The SCCC Office of Instructional Technology is focused on online education, with the staff including specialists in instructional development and instructional design as a Learning Management System administrator and technology experts. The technology experts include three programmers with experience in iOS development who are now expanding into Android, and server personnel with expertise with Apple, Windows and Linux. The team also will include two faculty members from computer science, one of them representing the game development curriculum.Providing input will be Suffolk's computer game development and animation class. In addition to learning how to design a simulation, students in the class will learn to take information from clients (Penn State & AUFSI) and interpret the content into a viable working product. Students will be forced to work in small teams, manage their time and handle clients in various locales, in addition to learning the value of proper documentation for passing off knowledge to the next team. Finally, they willhave completed a project that will be used in a portfolio for their academic advancement. Having these skills is important to the typically introverted developer, and allows these students to gain skills that are normally difficult to acquire in a typical college setting.The simulation will incorporate four levels of instruction, from the introduction through beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. Completion of all levels is appropriate for junior/senior biology, physiology and poultry science students at any university. Each level will not be a separate module; instead, the simulation will utilize four levels of focus, from an overview to the molecular level.Introduction: The introduction will provide a brief overview of corn passing through the three-dimensional chicken model with actual camera endoscopy running in a window in synchronization with the introduction featuring the 3D model. The introduction will welcome students to the course and outline course concepts and objectives.Beginner Level: The beginner level will cover gross anatomy, general structure and general function of the chicken's digestive tract. There will be a video tour of the large structures of the digestive tract, from the beak to the cloaca. A student will be able to touch a specific organ and listen to information about the structure and function of that organ. When the student highlights primary organs, supplemental videos and sources will appear for the benefit of students who desire a deeper understanding or want to view actual digestive organs and tissues. Utilizing state-of-the-art technology will allow for interesting variations on testing. For example:• An organ could be highlighted, and the student would identify the organ from several choicesIntermediate Level: The intermediate level will provide details of organs and reveal microscopic structures within the organs. At the intermediate level, students would also be introduced to the details of nutrients and waste at the organ level. They will learn what happens to nutrients and how wastes are produced. They will see the movement of nutrients through the bird's digestive system, as well as the movement of waste through the system. The student will learn the movements of nutrients (vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, fats, proteins) into the body and what their final target organs are. This includes what waste products are crossing into the digestive system from the body and what is entering from the kidneys and oviduct.Because of the use of advanced technology, the student will be able to select a specific organ and enlarge the view. In other words, he or she will be able to zoom to the microscopic view of the organ and virtually "dissect" any parts of the organ. Representations of the different nutritional components will be shown, and students will be able to "grab" enzymes and "scrub" the food/chyme, watching as nutritional elements are removed from the corn. They will also be introduced to the general elements of the immunological defenses in the digestive system as well as general information about intestinal microflora, probiotics, the immune response and vitamin production. Again, testing can take interesting forms:• The digestive tract could be exploded, and the student could reassemble the system• The student could move from the gross system level and pick the correct organ and zero in on the substructure or where the process occurs, using a list of organ substructures.• Substructures of organs can be shown, and the student must identify the structures or what process occurs at that site.Advanced Level: The advanced level will explain the digestive system at the cellular or molecular level. Because this is the cellular level of the organ, there will be molecular representations of the digestive salts, enzymes and nutrients, showing how they break down the corn and how nutrients and waste are transported through the cells into and out of the system. The student will learn the answers to questions such as:• What enzyme digests food?The student will also learn about localized cellular nutrition movements and be able to demonstrate the enzymes that are important to specific areas of the digestive system. They also will be able to describe the function of the enzymes and possible use of the "scrub" technique by grabbing an enzyme or salt and having it release those components from the corn. The students will be able to move molecules in and out of the cell to seepossible interactions; this level of interaction would be very much like a puzzle--if a step is missed, the physiology will not continue until the step is complete. Again, testing can be handled in interesting ways:• Student could be required to move the appropriate molecules in sequence to pass nutrients or wastes through the intestinal wall into the body.• Students could pull elements out of the digestive "soup" and apply them to the proper microstructures they affect.Digestive Structures Modeled: Beak, esophagus, crop, proventriculus, gall bladder, spleen, liver, gizzard/ventriculus, pancreas, kidney, duodenum/duodenal loop, small intestine (jejunum and ileum), ceca, large intestine and cloaca.As noted, the interactive simulation will be designed with input from students in the computer game development class at Suffolk, and the simulation will be piloted at Suffolk through the community college's Virtual Learning Commons. The virtual laboratory will then be beta-tested in undergraduate courses at the Pennsylvania State University and the Auburn University College of Agriculture and through the Poultry SERA. Virtual Chicken: The Digestive System will be disseminated at no cost through the Food Systems Institute website, SCCCs Virtual Learning Commons and other sites. AUFSI will provide oversight, coordination, subject matter expert input and educational evaluation utilizing traditional methods as well as the simulation's built-in analytics. Suffolk will utilize the Virtual Learning Commons database to track usage by its online students. The simulation itself will have tracking applications that will gather data on all users, including time spent in the simulation, scores, levels students are using and how much use is part of a directed class, with the instructor receiving feedback in the form of grades or accomplishments.