Here is what I am thinking for how I would organize the class next time. Please add your comments and feedback in the discussion below or directly onto this page.

Book
Next time I teach I want to build the course around the Anatomy Coloring Book and this wiki site rather than a traditional textbook. I would tell students to get the coloring book and would encourage them to also get an anatomy book--basically any edition of any anatomy textbook, as it would just be a reference source for them.

Question Based
For each chapter I would like to focus on questions regarding that particular system. What do we really want to know about the integumentary system? By doing this we would end up spending a lot more time on some chapters (e.g. the heart) and less time on other chapters (maybe we don't need every origin and insertion of muscles??). By having it question driven we would have a focus for our inquiries and a focus for the wiki site. I imagine that most questions would relate to problems (e.g. what is skin cancer, what are treatment options; why does skin wrinkle as it ages), but that is alright as long as we are learning anatomy as we answer these questions.

Teamwork
I would divide the class into two teams, and teams would alternate chapter to chapter rather than have a whole bunch of different groups. The summer 2008 class has already created a great site, so we don't need to start from scratch or totally redo anything. Hence, I would not expect as much participation from everyone as I did this time. Having said that, within each team there could be several people who would agree to participate in larger ways. Those who participate in larger ways would receive additional points. Perhaps having people choose specific ways in which they will do extra work would be handy. After a week or two people could nominate themselves for these positions and let their teams vote on who should do these jobs. These jobs could potentially be held by multiple people on a team, or a person could hold the position for a few weeks and then transfer responsibility to someone else.We would have some sort of online poll for determining how much extra these positions should be worth. Here are some of the "extra effort/extra credit" positions we might create for each team:

• Team leader: Someone who coordinates the efforts of the team, allocates assignments, motivates, and teaches. This person should create team cohesiveness and be a friend and a leader.
• Grammar Girl (or Grammar Guy): This person would ruthlessly edit the spelling and grammar of each page, without paying a lot of attention to content.
• The Question Generator: This person would work a chapter ahead, thinking of questions relating to upcoming topics and would consult with team members about these questions.
• The Page Reorganizer: This person would work to reorganize content to give a consistent feel to each chapter. As a class we would decide what a typical chapter should look like (e.g. goals, structures, glossary, review questions, etc) and this team member would work on making each page consistent with the template.
• The System Guru: This person would spend a lot of time on one particular system, making the content particularly good and clear.
• The Test Consultant: This person would help with tests by making lists of topics we covered, getting feedback from team members as to which topics were most important, and then providing that list to the instructor and team members.
• The Media Guru: This person would pay particular attention to pictures and videos. Within each chapter (s)he would search for better images and videos, adding and removing as deemed appropriate.
• The Slide Reorganizers: This person would meet with me after class each week to go through the slides for the upcoming lecture. They would help plan the content of the upcoming lecture and would help choose which slides to keep, which to modify, and which to delete. They would interface with the question generator to ensure that enough questions about upcoming content were in place so we could organize lecture around the questions and create more consistency between the lecture and the wiki site.
• Discussions: require students to communicate with each other on the message boards once a week. Either ask a question about the week's material or answer a classmate's question.

Some other jobs would be shorter term or sporadic. For example, we could have clinical consultants that meet with doctors and nurses to question them about specific topics. They could interview these health care professionals to get more details on conditions (with an emphasis on which anatomy was crucial to learn relative to that topic). How about an interactive activity designer who comes up with an in-class activity that we could do to break up lecture and learn things in a different way? What about a coloring book consultant? Since the class would be based on the anatomy coloring book it might be useful to have someone work through the pages ahead of the class and then talk with me about problems they run into or questions that came up. Perhaps a special topic slide show? For instance, if the class is really interested in bypass surgery and the structures involved perhaps a student or two could put together a PowerPoint presentation that could be used in class. Perhaps people could give in-class presentations?

What other "special assignments" might be useful?

Assessment
Figuring out how well a person understands material is very tricky. One of the challenges I have is making sure there is consistency between what is emphasized in class and what is emphasized on the tests. One thing we learned this summer was that we should have more frequent assessments, maybe a test every other week. Should we have an assignment prior to each lecture? How else should we give credit? Credit for attendance? Participation in online discussions? Completing the coloring book pages ahead of lecture (with reduced points for completion after lecture)? Should there be essay questions, or fill-in-the blank, or matching along with the multiple choice questions? How much extra should be awarded to those who put in more effort on the wiki (or fill the extra assignments discussed above)?

How would you measure a person's understanding of anatomy? How would you assess their long-term retention of the material?

As you can see, I am not proposing incremental changes so much as I am proposing a total restructuring and rethinking of the classroom. I would really appreciate your thoughts and feedback! Feel free to throw out any ideas, big or small, on what you would do differently if you were teaching the class.