Structure and content
: 2
Structural features and organization
The organizational
core of The Embryonic Disk is its contents
page, which is linked to every main page and always available
as a safe harbour for navigators.
The
pedagogical core of the resource, however, is an
illustrated timetable grid of 28 days, organized into rows representing
the first four weeks of development. Each element of the grid
is a captioned image that refers to the day's most salient event,
and the image is hotlinked to a screen page where the theme is
developed.
A similar
grid is used to represent the relationships between the body systems
of the adult and four key developmental topics that span more
than one system and extend through the second month. The elements
of this schematic grid (see Home page) are also hotlinked to the
relevant screen pages.
The simple
introductory tutorial, 'Egg to Embryo,
employs a straight-through narrative structure, without hypertext
links. It is particularly useful for paramedical students who
lack background in this area.
In all other
sections of the resource, material that we consider core
material for medics and paramedics is visible on
each page as it appears, and a wide variety of supplementary
material (including microscopic sections) can then
be popped up as required, mostly over the same page so that there
is no risk of getting lost in a maze of navigation links.
Supplementary
material includes:
Additional
images and image sequences: icons activating
pop-up viewers for relevant full-colour photographs or animations,
some in viewers and others filling the entire page area.
Notes and
commentaries: material of greater complexity, breadth or interest,
presented in almost 400 pop-up commentaries, each in a More
box, hotlinked to a marker in the core text.
Literature
references: pop-up references to background literature and
further reading on points of contention or of current research
interest, hotlinked from More boxes on those topics.
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