SOPHIA To Feature Mayo Clinic Learning Pathways

MINNEAPOLIS, Feb. 7, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- SOPHIA.org, the open online education platform offering a unique Many Ways to Learn™ learning model with more than 28,000 free academic multimedia tutorials taught by a multitude of teachers, is now offering tutorials developed by a top surgeon and professor at Mayo Clinic. The lessons will focus on two surgical procedures - Laproscopic Cholecystectomy (Gallbladder Removal) and Inguinal Hernia Repair - and are available at no cost.

"Making these quality surgical tutorials from Mayo Clinic available to anyone, anywhere is revolutionary and furthers our goal to connect students with top experts and teachers in a variety of fields," said Allison Gage, Senior Vice President at SOPHIA. "Not only will this content help students in the medical field but it also will provide information for individuals who are interested in learning more about the medical profession as well as for consumers who are interested in learning more about medical procedures."

The Mayo Clinic tutorials will be organized in learning pathways, which will feature 46 short-form tutorials also used to prepare Mayo Clinic medical students to perform the procedures. The lessons will be sequenced to align with the surgical process.

The tutorials were created by Dr. David R. Farley, M.D., a surgeon and professor at Mayo Clinic who has taught and trained more than 300 general surgery residents and is committed to producing the very best general and subspecialty surgeons. His current focus is to develop smarter, more experienced and technically savvy surgeons through the use of simulation, online learning and preemptive learning.

"We are pleased to work with SOPHIA because its efforts are focused on delivering academic content in an exceptional way," Dr. Farley said. "As a teacher, I've always been passionate in finding new and innovative ways to reach students and I believe that this platform is of great service to students who are pursuing or considering medical careers."

SOPHIA currently features more than 200 learning pathways aligned to the national Common Core standards in math and science for students in 6th grade through the first two years of college. The pathways are full-course curriculums consisting of hundreds of bite-sized tutorials with multiple lessons provided on each concept taught by a variety of teachers, offering students Many Ways to Learn. The tutorials feature a multitude of multi-media elements including screencasts, images, video, audio podcasts and text that appeal to different learning styles. Students work at their own pace along a sequenced journey of tutorials and are quizzed along the way to determine mastery of each concept. Tutorials in the learning pathways are created and reviewed by teachers to ensure academic credibility. Teachers also have the ability to review a student's progress by monitoring analytic reports.

In addition to the Many Ways learning model, SOPHIA.org also provides resources to help teachers flip their classrooms, a new method of teaching that is shifting the way teachers teach and students learn. SOPHIA also recently introduced SOPHIA Pathways for College Credit, which makes a college education affordable and accessible.

To learn more, visit www.sophia.org.

About SOPHIA
SOPHIA is a first-of-its-kind social education platform that offers students many ways to learn by making free, credible academic content available to anyone, anywhere, at anytime. The site offers more than 28,000 tutorials created by hundreds of teachers and experts taught in a variety of ways. The platform further enhances the learning process by offering quizzes, assessing learning preferences and providing learning paths that lead students from one topic to the next so students of all ages can learn the way they learn best. SOPHIA is owned by Capella Education Company. For more information, visit www.sophia.org.

Contact: Laura Telander Graf
651.698.4006
[email protected]

SOURCE SOPHIA.org