Release of the 14th Edition of Human Biology, By Michael Windelspecht

We are very happy to announce the release of the 14th edition of Mader’s Human Biology text. This represents the 8th book in this series that has been revised under the direction of Michael Windelspecht at Ricochet Creative Productions.

HUmanBIology14e

As with all of the texts in this series – the cover of the book was not just chosen for its visual appeal. Rather, the authors picked this cover since it provided an excellent way of illustrating the challenges that the human body has maintaining homeostasis under non-typical conditions.  To supplement the cover, the authors and contributors at Ricochet Science are developing a series of articles that may be used in the classroom. These articles will be posted over the spring 2015 semester.

Articles on this topic:

This was the first book at McGraw-Hill that was authored using Inkling’s Habitat platform – a digital authoring system that allows authors to visualize how a text will look on a variety of platforms.  Here is an article from Inkling which describes the benefit of this process:

From the Preface:

Humans are a naturally inquisitive species. As children, we become fascinated with life at a very early age. We want to know how our bodies work, why there are differences, and similarities, between ourselves and the other children around us. In other words, at a very early age, children are acting like biologists.

In many ways, today’s students in the science classroom face some of the same challenges their parents did decades ago. The abundance of new terms often overwhelms even the best prepared student, and the study of biological processes and methods of scientific thinking may convince some students that “science isn’t their thing.” The study of human biology creates an opportunity for teachers to instruct their students using the ultimate model organism—their own bodies. Regardless of wether this is their last science class or the first in a long career in allied health, the study of human biology is pertinent to everyone.

There are also challenges that are unique to the modern classroom. Today’s students are are being exposed, almost on a daily basis, to exciting new discoveries and insights that, in many cases, were beyond our predictions even a few short years ago. It is our task, as instructors, not only to make these findings available to our students, but to enlighten students as to why these discoveries are important to their lives and society. At the same time, we must provide students with a fi rm foundation in those core principles on which biology is founded, and in doing so, provide them with the background to keep up with the many discoveries still to come.

This edition of Human Biology is the second textbook in the Mader series which utilized the student data derived from the LearnSmart platform as a form of review. The premise is very straightforward. Students don’t know what they don’t know—but LearnSmart does. By compiling data from all of the probes answered by all of the students, and then overlaying that data on the text, we are able to visualize areas of content where the students are having problems.

In addition, this revision of Human Biology, Fourteenth Edition had the following goals:
1. build upon the strengths of the previous editions of the text
2. reorganization of the content to include a more robust discussion of the biology of infectious diseases
3. refinement of digital assets to provide a more effective assessment of learning outcomes to enable instructors in the flipped, online, and hybrid teaching environments.

Videos on Using the Data from LearnSmart and SmartBook

 

Unleashing the Power of Adaptive Learning: The Flipped Classroom from Ricochet Science on Vimeo.

Unleashing the Power of Adaptive Learning: Heat Map Technology from Ricochet