Category Archives: Course Design

Desperate times call for desperate measures: Teaching Physiology in a hybrid/online format and block schedule

Physiology and STEM educators at colleges and universities around the world have deployed creative and innovative strategies to preserve class and laboratory instruction during a pandemic.

My residential, liberal arts, undergraduate institution implemented a hybrid learning format, as did many others.  The hybrid format was adopted by the institution because room capacities were reduced to accommodate physical distancing and because we expected that COVID quarantines and isolations would force faculty and students to attend remotely.  Classrooms were outfitted with cameras and microphones in the HyFlex model to facilitate remote participation.  All classes and laboratories were forced to move online during certain blocks as a response to regional COVID rates and some students participated remotely for the entire year—including those who participated from their international homes.

More drastically, we converted our “normal” semester schedule (students complete four courses across a semester) into a block schedule.  Under the block schedule, students enrolled in one course at a time, intensively, for just under four weeks per course.  Courses met for three hours per day, four days per week.  Students completed a forced-choice mini-exam at the end of each unit and larger exams with forced-choice and short answer questions at the middle and end of the course (Table 1).  Laboratories were scheduled as additional meeting times.  Instructors and departments were granted a great deal of flexibility in laboratory scheduling so there were many permutations to lab schedules within a block—sometimes a student attended laboratory for three-hour sessions twice per week, other times a student attended for 1.5 hours four times per week.

In this post, I’ll address the changes that we made to our Human Anatomy and Physiology I and II (Biology 325 and Biology 326) sequence.  I’ll also reflect on the successes and challenges of the revisions and what we have retained in our return to in-person, normal semester scheduling.

Although we no longer utilize the block schedule at my institution, these reflections may be useful to instructors who are considering intensive summer courses and to instructors who would like to facilitate active and remote learning for other reasons.  It is important to note that the difficulties I address below are more likely to affect underserved, underprepared, or otherwise disadvantaged students and faculty, so particular attention to equity is important in considering how to deliver remote and/or intensive learning experiences.

Class (“lecture”) revisions

We adopted a flipped approach to the classroom portion of the course.  We chose this approach primarily in recognition that three-hour time blocks could only be successful with substantial interaction.  The flipped approach also helped us to navigate the hybrid format given that we anticipated technical concerns and/or limited attention spans would negatively impact the quality of meetings for remote students (three hours is an exceptionally long time to attend a Zoom class!).  Four instructors taught the courses each semester.  We divided each semester’s material into four units and each instructor created pre-class lecture videos of the relevant material for their assigned unit (Table 1).  Pre-class lecture videos totaled approximately one hour to 1.5 hours per class meeting.  The instructor also developed in-class materials for their assigned unit—typically case studies and/or worksheets.  Class began with instructors answering questions about pre-class video content and daily class objectives in response to student small group discussions.

Importantly, the block schedule reduced net class meeting hours and required us to prune as much content as possible.  We also integrated units that were previously separate.  For example, rather than address cellular physiology and skeletal physiology in separate units, cellular physiology was delivered using the calcium homeostasis and skeletal physiology for application (Table 1).

Lessons learned:

As noted above, instructors divided video and class material preparation by unit.  This required a high level of trust between instructors, and a willingness to try new ideas and pedagogies.  It worked well because our instructional team is cohesive and, although our pedagogical approaches vary, we value each other’s approaches.  Students benefitted from the lecture styles of four different instructors.

The flipped approach was helpful for practice and application of material.  The block schedule affords little time between class meetings given that classes meet for three hours per day on consecutive days.  Case studies and worksheets that applied lecture content helped students to identify points of confusion and build understanding. Further, students loved the ability to return to pre-lecture videos and rewatch points of confusion.  We now have a wealth of videos and in-class activities in our toolbox.  We continue to use many of the videos and assignments and recommend this approach to others– you might try flipping portions of class meetings as a starting point.

The intensive nature of the block schedule was advantageous in that students focused on one course at a time (so only needed to catch up in one course if COVID forced them to miss class).  A single course was their primary school-related responsibility during a block because they had no other courses and sports were largely on hold.  On the other hand, the intensive schedule left little time to develop content retention and build conceptual mastery.  There was little to no opportunity for spaced repetition.  We are currently seeing under-retention of content from last year in this year’s students.  If others attempt intensive schedule courses, it is important to recognize that content retention may be curtailed but conceptual development could be preserved with sufficient practice and application.

More generally, we are finding that students forgot how to time-manage and study in the block schedule.  They did not need to balance multiple classes or, for the most part, sports and social engagements.  The intensive nature of the block meeting schedule meant that much of their out-of-class time was spent preparing for the next day’s class rather than reviewing and studying material.  Some students (particularly those who are already disadvantaged) balanced this experience with intensified caregiving demands amid COVID restrictions.  Overall, student study habits declined—they are now struggling to optimize location, motivation, strategies, and pacing for self-regulated learning.

Students often operated in semi-isolation last year—often interacting with black boxes on a screen instead of classmates—and struggled to stay engaged via Zoom, even in breakout rooms.  This is a particular struggle for small, residential, liberal arts institutions where learning is typically done in small communities supported by close relationships.  Faculty found it difficult to build relationships with students during a four-week class with 50% remote participation each day and a requirement for meetings via Zoom (office visits were prohibited).  Students were less able to build a sense of STEM identity and belonging given the weaker relationships and reduced laboratory engagement (see below).  Sense of belonging and identity was likely especially challenging for individuals from minoritized groups with already lower STEM identity and belonging.

Lab revisions

All physiology experiments were removed from the laboratory sequence for the 2020/2021 academic year in response to the block schedule and to requirements for physical distancing and reduction of respiratory droplets.  The laboratory sequence consisted entirely of human anatomy.  We immediately recognized that learning a semester’s worth of human anatomy in four weeks—on top of class material—would be near impossible.  Therefore, we proposed a self-paced online anatomy lab experience that students could complete outside of their other coursework across the entire semester.  We utilized the Complete Anatomy platform (Elsevier; https://3d4medical.com/) and required students to submit a schedule for studying and completing practicals based on their own course schedule and other obligations each block.  Instructors held weekly instructional sessions via Zoom and met with students for tutoring as needed.  Instructional sessions were recorded and provided to students.

Lessons learned:

Any online, self-paced instructional platform will be subject to technical difficulties including spotty or slow home internet access and limited computing resources.  In addition, the Complete Anatomy platform posed surprising technical difficulties with gradebook access, content generation, and personal computer compatibility.  There were also notable technical glitches when delivering assessment via the Complete Anatomy platform.  We were able to either troubleshoot or work around each of the difficulties (for example, uploading Complete Anatomy images into our LMS for assessment), but it was labor-intensive and stressful.  Content generation was time-intensive and required a team of undergraduate teaching assistants during each semester and the prior summer.  We were lucky to have an outstanding team of teaching assistants who were so capable that they were awarded as institutional Student Employee Team of the Year (https://www.csbsju.edu/news/student-employee-awards-2021).

We were hopeful that the 3D visualization aspect of the platform (https://cdn.3d4medical.com/media/complete-anatomy-3/2019/screens.mp4) would help students improve mental 3D visualization abilities given that this has been a struggle for past students.  This did not seem to occur, although it is difficult to be sure given that most student work was completed away from instructors.  This year we paired Complete Anatomy software with physical models for in-person lab instruction and the combination works well.  We value Complete Anatomy as a study tool but some technical difficulties have continued, making it less suitable for assessment.  Online anatomy assessment was, of course, also limited because we had no way of enforcing a closed-book requirement.

Instructors observed that students did not retain as much content compared to previous years.  This is likely a result of multiple factors, including procrastination and approaches to learning.  Regardless of the original schedule developed by each student, many procrastinated and completed a flurry of practicals near the end of the semester.  Clearly those students were not practicing the spaced repetition that is important for learning.  Additionally, students often approached practicals as an item to be checked off a to-do list rather than a learning task.  When we hold laboratory sessions in-person, we can motivate and encourage students toward deep-, rather than surface-, learning in a way that we were unable to do remotely.  If we were to repeat the self-paced structure, we would enforce the students’ planned schedules more strictly.

Summary

We are happy to be back to a normal schedule with in-person instruction—made possible (thus far) by an institutional vaccination requirement for students and faculty and by masking requirements.  We have retained tools and strategies from last year, including flipped instructional materials and Complete Anatomy as a study tool.  We have moved away from other tools and strategies.  However, we (and others) may continue to offer intensive online summer options in which many of these approaches may be retained.

Table 1:  Class schedule

Pre-class video topics In-class activities
Unit 1 Day 1 ·       Course introduction

·       Homeostasis

·       Endocrine system

 ·       Osteoporosis case part 1

·       Study plan
Day 2 ·       Cellular signaling

·       Microscopic structure of bone

·       Bone remodeling mechanisms

·       Bone remodeling regulation

 ·       Osteoporosis case study part 2
Mini-exam 1
Day 3 ·       Cellular junctions

·       Passive membrane transport

·       Active membrane transport

·       Ca++ transport (osteoclast and intestinal epithelial cell)

 ·       osteoporosis case study part 3
Day 4 ·       Bone growth and fracture repair ·       Osteoporosis case study part 4

·       Bone growth disorders activity
Mini-exam 2
Unit 2 Day 5 ·       Resting membrane potentials ·       Resting membrane potential worksheet and practice questions
Day 6 ·       Neuron functional anatomy

·       Graded potentials

 ·       Neuron functional anatomy worksheet

·       Graded potentials worksheet
Mini-exam 3
Day 7 ·       Action potentials

·       Action potential propagation

 ·       Action potential worksheet and practice questions
Day 8 ·       Synapses and synaptic transmission

·       Synapses and synaptic integration

 ·       Synapses and synaptic integration worksheet and practice questions
Exam 1
Unit 3 Day 9 ·       Nervous system introduction

·       CNS protection

 ·       Brain trauma case study
Day 10 ·       Functional brain anatomy ·       Brain regions functional scenarios activity
Mini-exam 4
Day 11 ·       Receptor physiology (somatosensation)

·       Pain

 ·       Neanderthal pain discussion (Zeberg et al., 2020)
Day 12 ·       Vision

·       Autonomic nervous system

 ·       Autonomic nervous system case studies
Mini-exam 5
Unit 4 Day 13 ·       Control of movement

·       Functional skeletal muscle anatomy

 ·       Brain machine interface worksheet (Flesher et al., 2016; Moritz et al. 2008; O’Doherty et al., 2011; Sasada et al., 2014)

·       Muscle functional anatomy worksheet
Day 14 ·       Sliding filament theory

·       Neuromuscular junction

·       Excitation contraction coupling

 ·       Neuromuscular junction worksheet

·       Malignant hyperthermia case study
Mini-exam 6
Day 15 ·       Graded contractions

·       Muscle metabolism and fiber types

 ·       Motor recruitment worksheet

·       Muscle training worksheet
Exam 2

 

Jennifer Schaefer is an Associate Professor of Biology, the Biology Department Chair, and the Neuroscience Minor Director at the College of St. Benedict/St. John’s University.  She earned her B.A. in Biology from St. Olaf College in 2002 and her Ph.D. in Physiological Sciences from the University of Arizona in 2010.

Jennifer’s teaching expertise is in anatomy & physiology and neurobiology.  Her research in the science of teaching and learning investigates the interaction between metacognition and self-efficacy for student academic performance.  Jennifer collaborates on an ongoing national collaboration to develop a consensus set of core concepts for undergraduate neuroscience education and her research in neurobiology investigates motor control circuits in Drosophila.

Jennifer is a member of the American Physiological Society, Society for Neuroscience, Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience, and Phi Beta Kappa

Jennifer E. Schaefer

Associate Professor of Biology

College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University
Physiology as an Interpretive Lens for the Clinician’s Dilemma

Clinicians are faced with a dilemma – the need to make decisions based on a universal set of evidence and experience that usually does not explicitly include that individual. My understanding of the clinician’s dilemma germinated while working toward my professional Master’s in Physical Therapy and became clear during graduate course work in epidemiology. I didn’t have a chance to write about it and propose some vague abstract solutions until 2005,[i] and didn’t propose tangible solutions until 2014 which are embedded into a curriculum I developed for a new Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) program at Plymouth State University (2015-2017) and were then published in 2018.[ii] And to be clear, no one has solved this dilemma. At best we have some inkling of the types of reasoning that make it less poignant, or at least enable a clinician to have a rationale for decisions. There’s a gulf between a clinical researcher saying “Your practice is not evidence based”, and the clinician saying in response “Your research isn’t practice based”. A hardline stance of evidence-based practice not including mechanistic causal reasoning and only including (or giving strong priority to) randomized controlled trials that focus on outcomes as the primary determinant of the best treatment is not practice based.[iii]

The CauseHealth[iv] project considers the problem in their book Rethinking Causality, Complexity and Evidence for the Unique Patient[v]. Clinicians must be able to inquire and reason about unique situations and consider what, whether, how, when, and to what extent clinical practice guidelines and evidence from systematic reviews and randomized controlled trials apply in that particular situation. Clinicians consider mechanisms as causes underlying particular situations even when they are part of a unique arrangement of a complex system and when the observation of prior situations exist, or the ability to repeat the situation is limited.

In physical therapy this requires a depth and breadth of physiological understanding that starts with the core concepts and proceeds to integrated, complex, mechanistic causal relationships. Physical therapists “diagnose and treat individuals of all ages, from newborns to the very oldest, who have medical problems or other health-related conditions that limit their abilities to move and perform functional activities in their daily lives” (APTA).[vi] A core component to the knowledge used in practice for this profession is physiological knowledge. Beyond understanding pathophysiology, physical therapists must be able to reason through the consequences of various situations – when is physiology as expected vs. not as expected and how does a set of expectations (or non expectations) influence our understanding of the current particular situation. In other words, clinicians are reasoning through causal models, either implicitly or explicitly. And often, much of what happens at the causal model level of knowledge for practice includes physiology.

My writing and teaching promote the use of causal models as representations of knowledge for clinical reasoning, and the use of graphical causal models for the clear articulation and sharing of such knowledge. This approach is helpful for the consideration of how universal concepts learned through an empirical process and thought to be true for a population can be applied in a particular situation. When teaching DPT students how to use physiology in clinical reasoning we approach causal models of physiological mechanisms as an interpretive lens for the clinician’s dilemma.

Clinical research utilizes statistical inference to estimate, from a sample, what a population characteristic or cause-effect relationship may be. The cause-effect relationship may be intervention-outcome, or it may be exposure-disease. The patient in front of a clinician was usually not in the original sample. The question then becomes, is this patient part of the population that this study (or these studies) represent via statistical inference? And is this patient part of that population in a manner that is important given the physiological mechanisms involved in the cause-effect relationship? This is a physiological question. We immediately can consider whether the inclusion and exclusion criteria of the research includes or excludes this particular patient. Those are obvious reasons to question whether the patient you are working with is part of the same population to which these studies inferred. We naturally look at age, sex, comorbidities and severity of the situation. All of these considerations imply variation in the underlying physiological state of the particular patient from the inferred population. But even if the particular patient is similar to the inferred population on all of these considerations, underlying physiological assumptions based on the mechanisms remain and should be considered.

For example, research demonstrates that electrical stimulation of the major skeletal muscles involved in walking is causally associated with positive outcomes in people with chronic heart failure such as maximum oxygen consumption (VO2max), six minute walk distance (6MWD) and even, to a lesser extent, health related quality of life (HRQOL).[vii]  Figure 1 depicts the simple graphical causal models that the clinical research (randomized controlled trials) has investigated as part of an evidence-based practice empirical approach to understanding the relationship between interventions and outcomes (made with DAGitty).[viii] Even when assuming a particular patient would be included (based on meeting inclusion criteria and not meeting exclusion criteria for these studies), there are several very poignant physiological mechanisms when considering the use of electrical stimulation in practice that impact the probability of the intended outcome.

No one assumes that electrical simulation directly improves health related quality of life, or six minute walk distance, or even oxygen consumption. There are physiological and even psycho-physiological, behavioral and cultural mechanisms involved in the connection between electrical stimulation and these three outcomes, and these three outcomes are very likely connected to one another.  Figure 2 is one possible graphical causal model that fills in some of the possible mechanisms.2

The clinician is working with many competing hypotheses, and is “faced with all sources of variation at the same time and must deal constantly with the full burden of the complex system.”1  Let’s take a closer look at the many causal assumptions of the model in Figure 2. As a graphical causal model, the first thing to realize is that all edges in the graph with an arrow encode the knowledge that one variable causes the other (and the lack of an arrow implies no causal connection). This does not have to be a definite causal connection; in fact, most of them are probabilistic and can be stated as conditional probabilities. For example, this graph encodes the knowledge that ES acts as a cause on muscle function. Which can be stated as a conditional probability: the probability of improved muscle function given ES is greater than the probability of improved muscle function given no ES. The model in Figure 2 also includes additional interventions since ES would rarely be considered the only intervention available. In fact, the patient in the condition where ES is the only intervention available probably would not be in the inferred population (for example, there are no studies on the use of electrical stimulation with patients with chronic heart failure that were not ambulatory or were unable to do other forms of exercise). This model includes aerobic training (AT), resistance training (RT), ES, adaptive equipment (AE), inspiratory muscle training (IMT), all as possible interventions for improving 6MWD, VO2max, and HRQOL in people with HF.

The characterization of the intervention (exposure, cause) in this model is discrete (yes/no), but it does not need to be discrete; it can be continuous and can include any of the considered important parameterizations of ES. Also, the effect muscle function is discrete but can be continuous and include any of the important parameterizations of muscle function. In other words, the causal model can encode as much of the ontological information about reality (its variables) as the user would have it encode. As attributed to George Box, “All models are wrong, some models are useful.”

The mathematical and logical implications of the causal model go on to include the multivariable considerations such as the chain rule of conditional probabilities (VO2max), identification of confounders (balance as a confounder), blocking variables (anaerobic threshold), and adjustment sets (6MWD).

My point here is to answer the question—“Isn’t this the same as concept map?” No. Causal models depicted as graphs are based on graph theory and adhere to a set of logical and mathematical rules that allow logical and mathematical implications to be proposed and tested. But they do share concepts. We could say that all causal models are concept maps, but not all concept maps are causal models; therefore, they are not equivalent since equivalence implies bidirectional implication.

Concept maps of physiological mechanisms are great teaching and learning tools. The next step, to use physiology as an interpretive lens for the clinician’s dilemma, is to consider encoding them as graphical causal models. In fact, this is the logical step from the core physiology concept of causation.

Another consideration for the clinician is that no single study has confirmed these causal connections all at the same time. But, a corpus of studies has tested these causal associations. The model in Figure 2 represents knowledge for practice; practicing based on this model is an example of using physiology to help in reasoning through whether to use an intervention with a particular patient. For example, if a particular patient has a problem with balance unrelated to muscle function then the probability of ES improving their 6MWD and even HRQOL is likely lower than in a particular patient without such a problem. And if a particular patient’s problem is mostly from the direct reduction in cardiac output associated with chronic heart failure, then a change in muscle function from ES may have less of an impact than in a particular patient with stronger contribution of muscle function in their reduction in oxygen consumption. And if the particular patient has low inspiratory muscle strength (IS), then IMT may be the best approach to start with – despite the fact that there are no clinical trials that investigate the intricacies of when to use ES vs. IMT. Thus, causal models of physiological mechanisms are an interpretive lens for applying clinical research in clinical practice. And this involves reasoning through causal models of complex physiological mechanisms.

The question is not whether this is already being done in practice (because it is, though usually implicitly not explicitly). The question is how are we teaching future clinicians and students? Is there a way to teach it that expedites the transition from classroom reasoning to clinic reasoning? Effective teaching often includes pulling back the curtain and explicitly revealing that which has been implicitly occurring. When a student asks me how their Clinical Instructor was able to come to some particular conclusion, the answer is usually that they were implicitly reasoning through some assumed causal model. Causal models can explicitly bridge the gap between learning physiology from a standard medical physiology textbook, doing a case study in a clinical course, and seeing a patient in a clinic.

The next step in my journey of using causal models for clinical pedagogy is the relationship between narratives, stories and causal models. If causal models are a more complex depiction of the reality underlying evidence-based causal claims; then narratives and stories are a more complex depiction of the reality underlying causal models. If you’re interested in discussing this further, please let me know.

Thank you to all of my colleagues (which includes all of the DPT students) at Plymouth State University for trusting this vision enough to take a chance on a new DPT program; and thank you to my closest dialogue partners in this and my upcoming work in the causal structure of narratives, Drs. Kelly Legacy and Stephanie Sprout (Clinical Assistant Professors of Physical Therapy); and Dr. Elliott Gruner (Professor of English/Director of Composition).

[i] Collins SM. Complex System Approaches: Could They Enhance the Relevance of Clinical Research? Physical Therapy. 2005;85(12):1393-1394. doi:10.1093/ptj/85.12.1393

[ii] Collins SM. Synthesis: Causal Models, Causal Knowledge. Cardiopulmonary Physical Therapy Journal. 2018;29(3):134-143.

[iii] Howick JH. The Philosophy of Evidence-Based Medicine. John Wiley & Sons; 2011.

[iv] CauseHealth Blog https://causehealthblog.org/ (Accessed 10/15/2021)

[v] Anjum RL, Copeland S, Rocca E. Rethinking Causality, Complexity and Evidence for the Unique Patient: A CauseHealth Resource for Healthcare Professionals and the Clinical Encounter. Springer Nature; 2020.

[vi] American Physical Therapy Association https://www.apta.org/your-career/careers-in-physical-therapy/becoming-a-pt (Accessed 10/15/2021)

[vii] Shoemaker MJ, Dias KJ, Lefebvre KM, Heick JD, Collins SM. Physical Therapist Clinical Practice Guideline for the Management of Individuals With Heart Failure. Physical Therapy. 2020;100(1):14-43. doi:10.1093/ptj/pzz127

[viii] Textor J, van der Zander B, Gilthorpe MS, Liśkiewicz M, Ellison GT. Robust causal inference using directed acyclic graphs: The R package “dagitty.” International Journal of Epidemiology. 2016;45(6):1887-1894. doi:10.1093/ije/dyw341

Figure Legends

Figure 1: Simplified Causal Associations Tested in Clinical Trials (Abbreviations: ES, electrical stimulation; 6MWD, 6-minute walk distance; VO2_max, maximum oxygen consumption; HRQOL, health-related quality of life)

Figure 2: Complex Causal Associations Necessary for Clinical Practice (Abbreviations: AT, aerobic training; (a-v)O2, arteriovenous oxygen difference; IMT, inspiratory muscle training; IMS, inspiratory muscle strength; PaO2, partial pressure of oxygen in the arterial blood; RT, resistance training; Ve, minute ventilation; VQ matching, ventilation perfusion matching )

Sean Collins is a Professor of Physical Therapy at Plymouth State University and was the founding chair and director of the Doctor of Physical Therapy Program.  He earned an ScD in Ergonomics (work physiology focus) and epidemiology at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He teaches a three-course series on Clinical Inquiry, as well as a course in Clinical Physiology and a course on physical therapy practice with patients that have complex medical and cardiopulmonary conditions. From 2015 through 2021 he served as the Editor of the Cardiopulmonary Physical Therapy Journal, was co-leader and co-author of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) Heart Failure Clinical Practice Guideline from 2014-2019, and in 2018 was honored with the Linda Crane Lecture Award by the Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Section of the APTA for his work on using causal models as tools to teach and to join clinical research and practice.

 

Course-based Research Experiences Help Transfer Students Transition

As transfer student numbers increase at 4-year institutions, we need to provide opportunities for the formation of learning communities and research experience. Course-based research experiences allows for both. Students receive course credit toward their degree, work on independent research, and engage with peers and faculty in a small setting.

Several studies have been conducted to show the advantages of undergraduate research as a value-added experience. (1,2,4,6,8). As an R1 university, we have a tremendous amount of resources devoted to STEM research – but we are unable to accommodate all of our undergraduates who are looking for lab experience. The development of course-based research experiences (CUREs) across colleges and universities has increased the availability of research opportunities for undergraduates. (1,3,5). In addition, they have provided an increased sense of community and interaction with faculty – two factors that were highly valued by all students. The question for us was how can we provide more of these courses given space and personnel constraints and are there student populations that might benefit more directly from these courses?

Several years ago, we increased the number of transfer students we accepted from community colleges and elsewhere. But there was no transfer-specific programming for those students and they had little sense of community. Transfer students tend to be a much more diverse student population in several ways. Their average age is higher than our incoming first-year class, they are more likely to be PELL Grant-eligible (40% of transfer vs 20% of first-year students), first-generation college students (30% of transfer vs 15% of first-year students) and are more likely to work and live off-campus. Although they recognize the value of community and research experience according to surveys, they often state they don’t have the time to invest as they are trying to graduate as quickly as possible.

We received a grant through HHMI (in part) to train faculty to develop CUREs specifically for transfer students. STEM courses that “counted toward graduation” was a way to get buy-in from the students and to be funded by grants and aid. All transfer students needed additional life science courses to complete their degree, and this was a course that wasn’t transferred in through the community colleges so there was space in their degree audits. These were small enrollment courses that lent themselves to forming cohorts of student learning communities as they proposed hypotheses, designed and implemented their experiments, and presented their findings to the class. This allowed transfer students to receive course credit toward graduation in a lower-stress way during that first transition semester.

Course-based Research Experiences Help Transfer Students Transition

Lisa Parks 9.30.2021

Figure 1

Cell Biology CURE Example:

Testing whether environmental compounds or other chemicals induce cell death

Protocols Provided:  Cell seeding and growth, Cell counting, Measuring cytotoxicity, Bradford Assay, Western Blot, Immunofluorescent Analysis

There are thousands of chemicals and compounds that either potentially affect cell growth, metabolism, and death.

This project has a lot of room for student individuality. Students could do endocrine disruptors, for example, or Parkinson’s disease related compounds (i.e., things that kill mitochondria), environmental toxicants, heavy metals, etc. They could test across cell types, concentrations, diseases, etc.  They could use the cancer cells and we could get a screen of compounds. Or they can pre-dose with a potential protectant (GSH?) and then expose the cells to something toxic to see if cell death can be attenuated.

This is particularly important because one issue we struggle with is that students with a 2-year associates degree automatically receive credit for all general education requirements through the NC Articulation Agreement. This means that transfer students are left with stacks of required difficult STEM courses with little opportunity to balance their course load for their remaining semesters. In addition, they are often trying to graduate “on time” so they are starting at a new, much larger, state university with little formal introductory programming and often, unfairly heavy STEM course loads. This isn’t the best way to set these students up for success. We found our transfer students falling behind in GPA and time to graduation. Tracking transfer students that take these first-semester CUREs will help us see if this approach increases student retention in the STEM majors, their graduation rates, and through surveys, their feelings of community at NCSU.

Teams of tenured or tenure-track research faculty and teaching-track faculty along with a handful of post-docs continue to develop these courses. As you can imagine, COVID interrupted this effort as we scrambled to go online and closed our lab spaces to undergraduates, but the CURE development continued.  Anecdotally, we noticed an increased collaboration and a sense of community among the faculty that extended beyond the workshop training. This has been seen in several studies at other institutions (7,9). As these labs have been developed, it has led to increased team teaching, research projects, and publications. Teaching faculty have had another mechanism for staying current and being engaged in research and literature while giving them another outlet for scholarly work. Research faculty have had another mechanism for exploring side projects that they may not have had the time or funds to pursue in their own labs and allowing them an opportunity to get into the classroom.

Faculty write up or discuss a proposal with each other – an idea that they wish they had time or space to devote to. It’s typically no more than a page. Students take it from there. They spend the first third of the semester learning techniques and protocols, and writing their experimental designs. The rest of the semester is devoted to implementing their experiments, presenting results and receiving feedback at weekly lab meetings, and re-working or replicating their experiments. Final findings are presented as a poster session in our main lobby where all faculty and students are encouraged to stop by. A sample CURE is provided in the box.

As this approach to teaching has increased in our department, it has begun to influence space allocation within the buildings. We are beginning to influence how future buildings are designed and how renovations to existing space can accommodate this approach. We have begun to question whether we need large amphitheaters for 300+ students in a classroom and we are starting to see how we can divide up that space into learning labs and rooms with moveable chairs and tables – facilities that will promote the formation of learning communities and critical thinking skills as opposed to memorization of content.

Thank you to Dana Thomas and Jill Anderson for collecting and providing data about our transfer students.

REFERENCES

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  8. Nagda BA, Gregerman SR, Jonides J, von Hippel W, Lerner JS. Undergraduate Student-Faculty Research Partnerships Affect Student Retention. Rev of Higher Educ 22:55-72, 1998.
  9. Ward HC, Selvester PM. Faculty Learning Communities: Improving Teaching in Higher Education, Educational Studies, 38:1, 111-121, DOI: 10.1080/03055698.2011.567029
Lisa Parks is a Professor of Teaching and Director of Undergraduate Programs in Biological Sciences at North Carolina State University. In addition to her regular teaching load of cell biology and advanced human physiology, she has helped develop several courses and is currently developing several course-based research opportunities for transfer students. She has been a participant, a mentor, and a current grant recipient with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute where she was bitten by the “research as pedagogy – inquiry-based learning – critical thinking” bug. She gladly drops what she is doing to talk about this. Lisa received her BS in Zoology from Duke University and her PhD in Biology with a concentration in cell physiology at Georgia State University.
Together or Apart? Lecture with Laboratory, or Taken Separately?

Think back to your days as a college student majoring in science. Was your college on the smaller scale such that your professor met with you weekly for both your lecture and laboratory in chemistry, biology and physics? Or was your university on the large size, and while you sat among dozens or even hundreds of your peers in an auditorium where your professor lectured, you then met weekly in a smaller laboratory session conducted by teaching assistants? Our past experiences as students may or may not bear similarities to our professional career teaching environment at present.

As college professors in biology, or related science disciplines, our student enrollment in the major and the headcount of part-time versus full-time faculty have likely dictated the course schedule each semester. Such quantitative data, meshed with the physical resources of chairs in a classroom and square footage of laboratory space for teaching purposes, may be the major drivers of curricular practices. Pedagogical tradition perhaps accounts for science course scheduling practices as well. Budgetary matters too weigh heavily on decisions to maintain the status quo, or to experiment with test piloting the implementation of emerging course designs.

I teach at a mid-sized public university that offers graduate degrees alongside our more populous undergraduate majors. Our biology majors number approximately 1,000. Our faculty include part-time adjuncts, full-time lecturers and tenured/tenure-track professors. We do not have graduate teaching assistants in the classroom. Most often the assigned faculty teach both their lecture and laboratory sessions for a given course. A recent trend in our college has been to identify traditional lecture/laboratory courses that could be split such that students enroll in completely separate courses for the lecture versus the laboratory. For example, our microbiology course that used to be one combined course meeting twice weekly for lecture and once weekly for laboratory is now two distinct courses, laboratory versus lecture, although both are taken in the same semester, each course posts an individual grade on the transcript.

When asked to consider if any of the courses I teach would or would not be appropriate for separation of lecture from laboratory, I went to the pedagogical literature to see what I could find on the topic. Where science courses are combined into a single course (one grade) with lecture and laboratory, the lecture may be to a large scale audience, while the labs are disseminated into smaller break out groups led by either the lecture faculty or else another faculty member or teaching assistant. On the other hand, a science “course” may have a completely separate course number where students enroll and earn a grade for lecture, and a distinctly different course number where they enroll and earn a separate grade for the laboratory. Knowing these two variations exist, the literature reveals other alternatives as well.

A paper in the Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning evaluated college introductory biology courses where either the same instructor teaches both the lecture and laboratory sessions versus those where there are different instructors for the lecture versus the lab. The author reports “no general trend indicating that students had a better experience when they had the same instructor for both lecture and laboratory than when the lecture and laboratory instructor differed (Wise 2017).” In fact, he states that students may even benefit from having different lecture and laboratory instructors for the same course as such would afford students exposure to instructors with different backgrounds and teaching styles (this paper’s doi: 10.14434/josotl.v17i1.19583).

When I was a teaching assistant during my graduate school days, I developed my teaching style by trial and error as the TA for the laboratory session break outs from the professor-led large auditorium style lectures for the undergraduate first year students majoring in biology. That was the early 1990s, and it was a mid-sized private university where at the same time they were “experimenting” with upper level undergraduate laboratory classes that were lab only. They called them “super labs” and they were not attached to a concurrent lecture course. Indeed, a 2005 paper in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education by D.R. Caprette, S. Armstrong and K. Beth Beason entitled “Modular Laboratory Courses” details such a concept whereby the laboratory course is not linked to a lecture (doi/epdf/10.1002/bmb.2005.49403305351). These modular laboratory-only courses are shorter in duration, ranging from a quarter to a half of semester, for 1 or 2 academic credits. Their intent is to apply the learning of specific skills, methods and instrumentation in their undergraduate biology and biochemistry curriculum. Of note, they recognized that their transition to such modular short-term laboratory courses was eased by their academic program already having their traditional curriculum with individual laboratory courses separate from the lecture courses.

Studio courses had in my mind been those taken by the art majors and other fine arts students. In the literature, however, there is an integrated “studio” model for science courses. A paper in Journal of College Science Teaching details how a small private college converted their Anatomy & Physiology I course, among others, from traditional lecture/laboratory courses to the integrated studio model. Their traditional twice weekly 75 minute lectures with 60 students and 150 minute breakout laboratories with 16 students per section, was reconfigured to 30 students meeting with the same instructor and teaching assistant twice weekly, each for 2 hours. These longer duration class sessions each consisted of, for example, 20 minutes lecture followed by 30 minutes of a context-linked laboratory, and then 20 minutes lecture followed again by 40 minutes of a linked laboratory They report fewer course withdrawals and unsatisfactory grades and cite that students felt “engaged and active” as did instructors who spoke of “immediate application and hands on” activity in the interactive classroom (Finn, Fitzpatrick, Yan 2017; https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1155409).

Based on my experience with comprehension by students with the content delivery, I have decided to redesign my upper level undergraduate Cell Physiology course such that the cell physiology lecture will be a standalone 3 credit course, and students will be encouraged to take either during the same semester or the following semester, the 1 credit cell physiology laboratory course. When viewed thru the course scheduling and facilities lenses, this “split” will afford more students to enroll in a single lecture course section, while then having multiple smaller capacity laboratory course sections. As this is an upper level elective, students may find that a 3 + 1 credit option as well as a 3 credit only option suits their needs accordingly. And they can decide for themselves, together or apart, lecture with laboratory, or taken separately.

Laura Mackey Lorentzen is an associate professor of biology at Kean University in Union, NJ, where her teaching emphasis is general biology for majors as well as cell physiology, neuroscience and senior capstone. She earned a PhD in Biomedical Sciences/Molecular Physiology and Biophysics from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston TX, an MS in Cellular & Molecular Biology from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh PA, and a BS in biology from The University of Charleston, WV. She is a past president of the New Jersey Academy of Science (NJAS) and past editor-in-chief of AWIS Magazine, for the Association of Women in Science.
An Alternative Assessment Approach to be More Inclusive and Inspiring

I want to propose a different grading system that I think is more encouraging to some students and will be particularly useful for supporting diversity in physiology classes and in science general education classes.  Two separate influences converged to give me insight in creating this grading system.

In many of my courses, I value 3 different aspects of student participation and work: their attendance, their homework and their project work. My dilemma was how to grade in such a way that a student had to do all 3 well in order to get an A. If each aspect was weighted equally, then a student could get 100% on two parts, would only need 70% on the third part, which did not suit my purpose (see Figure 1A).  If each part has different weights, then the student can get even less than 70% on the part that has the least weight, only making matters worse.  I then tried to use the geometric mean, taking the cube root of the product of the percentages on the different parts (see Figure 1B).  While that improved things somewhat, it still did not achieve quite what I wanted and it was a bit confusing to the students. Finally, I tried  multiplying the grades in each area; while this was an improvement, if I stayed with the 90%, 80%, 70% cutoffs, this was too harsh a system (see Figure 1C).

The other influence that occurred was that our university started an incentive program to get people to be more active. If a person walked a million steps in 1 year, they would get a pay bonus. In talking to a colleague about this, the colleague pointed out that behavioral economists would argue that the incentive program would be more effective if the university handed out the bonus in January and said, if you do NOT walk at least 1 million steps this year, we will take back the incentive in December; basically, people will work harder not to lose something than to get something they do not yet have (3, 5, 6, 7).

My grading system is to tell the students they have 1,000 points on the first day of class and that 900 points is required for an A.  They lose 25 points for every class absence, they lose 25 points for every homework assignment not done satisfactorily, and up to 300 points if the final project or assessment is not satisfactory, see Figure 1D.  Consider a course that meets 3 times per week for 15 weeks and has homework for each class. If a student misses 5 classes (11%) then they cannot get an A.

If a student has more than 5 unsatisfactory homework assignments, then they cannot get an A.

If they lose more than ⅓ of the points on the project, they cannot get an A.

If they miss 2 classes and have 3 unsatisfactory homework assignments, they cannot get an A.

The conventional system in which a student gets x points for this assignment and y points for that assignment makes some assumptions (1, 9).  One assumption is that the response is additive and independent; there are plenty of phenomena in physiology that we know are synergistic and not additive.  My system is more like requiring a properly functioning heart, lungs and brain in order to consider the organism to be properly functioning, whereas the conventional system would be analogous to weight a properly functioning heart as much more important that properly functioning lungs.

Many students taking science classes suffer from imposter syndrome (4, 8, 10).  By making it clear that the student is starting the class with an A, I hope to make them realize that they do belong.  I reinforce this by saying that I view myself as their coach and I want them to succeed. But as a coach, it doesn’t help them if I do all the practice, they have to put in some work-hence the reward for attendance and homework.  (In classes where I have TAs, I refer to them as assistant coaches-again, to stress that we are there to help them get better and to emphasize that they have to do some work and not just watch us.)   Of course, some students worry that the project is a “gotcha” assignment.  I get around this by using an idea from Mittell (as quoted in 2).  If the project gets a not satisfactory evaluation, the student can revise and resubmit.  I use Mittell’s analogy that in my class “not satisfactory” is like when their parents say, “your room is not satisfactorily cleaned for you to go out” (as quoted in 2).

A business school colleague objected to my grading system because he felt students should earn their grade.  I appreciate and respect that point of view and I think it depends on the student, the class, and the teacher.  My analogy is, for a sports team, before the season starts, is the team undefeated or winless?

There are several reasons why I give credit for attendance:

I encourage discussions and brainstorming in class.  Students not present cannot learn from these interactions.  Furthermore, the rest of the class loses the absent student’s insights and questions which would enrich and diversify the interactions.

I am a bit more interested in developing lifelong habits that will serve the students well than in having them memorize information and theories, in part because some of the accepted information and theories are likely to change over their lifetime. To me, learning to attend class is a bit like learning how to get, and stay, in shape. Part of that is the ability to set aside time to exercise and to do it even on days when one is not in the mood.  For me, process is at least as important as short-term results. So I wanted a grading system that rewarded the behaviors I wanted (9).

A colleague also pointed out that if a student can get an A in a class without being in attendance, then, apparently, class time was not necessary for learning for that student (or, perhaps more accurately, class time was not necessary for passing the exams for that student).

Finally, I have a selfish reason for giving credit for attendance. I think the class works better when most students are there; I certainly find it more rewarding and enjoyable to be in front of a full class than when half of the students do not attend.

As I developed this grading system, it made me reflect again on what were my goals for the course.

Was I more interested in results or process? Taking my coaching analogy, if I were coaching physical fitness or flexibility, was having the student be able to run one mile in under 5 minutes or being able to touch their toes the goal of the semester or was it to help them develop habits, get in better shape than they started, and learn to enjoy the satisfaction of being in shape? For me, the analogous traits are to develop solid learning habits, to learn to critically think, to improve their ability to discuss and brainstorm about concepts and mechanisms, and to learn to enjoy the satisfaction that comes with thinking deeply about a problem.

In reading about other approaches to evaluation, I also realized that my previous approach to grading rewarded those who came into the course with a better background (2).  This did not seem fair to me. I am still struggling with the best way to account for the different skills and levels of the students when they enter the course.  Going back to the physical fitness training analogy, if a student comes into the course being able to run a 5 minute mile and finishes the course running a mile in 4:50 should they get a better grade than a student who entered the course not being able to run a complete mile and finishes the course running a complete mile in 10 minutes? (2)

One small difficulty with the approach is the dissonance of reading a fine assignment and then entering 0 in that grade column. Similarly, some students initially get concerned seeing a 0 in the grade column, so now I remind them when I reveal the grades for the first few evaluations that a 0 means they have done a satisfactory (or better) job.

I have found that the students find this grading system reduces their anxiety and makes them more comfortable in taking creative risks when doing their assignments.  It also makes evaluation an easier process as I am focused on helping the students improve and not on ranking them.

In summary, I hope some readers find that the ideas and questions that prompted me to adopt this grading system may help them reflect on how well their goals for the course match up with how they evaluate and reward students, even if they are not interested in adopting this grading system.

REFERENCES

  1. Elbow P, Ranking, Evaluating, and Liking: Sorting out Three Forms of Judgment. College English 55: 187-206, 1993
  2. Jones JB. Experimenting with Specifications Grading Chronicle of Higher Education, March 23, 2016 https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/experimenting-with-specifications-grading/61912 accessed 8/17/2021
  3. Kahneman D, Tversky A. Prospect theory: an analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica. 47:263–91, 1979
  4. McGill BM, Foster MJ, Pruitt AN, Thomas SG, Arsenault ER, Hanschu J, Wahwahsuck K, Cortez E, Zarek K, Loecke TD, Burgin AJ. You are welcome here: A practical guide to diversity, equity, and inclusion for undergraduates embarking on an ecological research experience. Ecol Evol. 11(8):3636-3645, 2021.
  5. Morewedge CK, Giblin CE. Explanations of the endowment effect: an integrative review. Trends Cogn Sci. 19(6):339-48, 2015.
  6. Ogdie, A, Asch, DA. Changing health behaviours in rheumatology: an introduction to behavioural economics. Nat Rev Rheumatol 16, 53–60, 2020.
  7. Patel MS, Asch DA, Rosin R, Small DS, Bellamy SL, Heuer J, Sproat S, Hyson C, Haff N, Lee SM, Wesby L, Hoffer K, Shuttleworth D, Taylor DH, Hilbert V, Zhu J, Yang L, Wang X, Volpp KG. Framing. Financial Incentives to Increase Physical Activity Among Overweight and Obese Adults: A Randomized, Controlled Trial. Ann Intern Med.164(6):385-94. 2016 .
  8. Persky AM. Intellectual Self-doubt and How to Get Out of It. Am J Pharm Educ. 82(2):6990, 2018
  9. Potts, G. A Simple Alternative to Grading . The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges 15 (1):29-42, 2010.
  10. Winzeler EA. An improbable journey: Creativity helped me make the transition from art to curing malaria. J Biol Chem. 294(2):405-409, 2019.

Figure legend.

Outcomes from different grading systems. In all 4 cases, the course has 3 different areas (e.g., attendance, homework, and project). The percent of the total points possible for each area is determined. The right column (in red) are the percentages obtained in one area and the top row are the percentages obtained in the two other areas. Using the traditional cutoffs of 90%, 80%, for grades, the orange shaded areas would get A’s, the purple shaded areas B’s, and the blue shaded areas C’s.

A). Outcomes from an additive or average grading system.  In this system, one takes the average of the 3 areas. In this case, someone could get as low as 70% in one area and still get an A if they get 100% in the other two areas.

  1. B) Outcomes from a geometric mean grading system. In this system, one takes the cube root of the product of the grade in each of the 3 areas. In this system, getting 80% in one area and 100% in the other two still gets an A, but 70% in one area and 100% in the other two is now a B.
  2. C) Outcomes from a multiplicative system. Here one multiplies the percentages from each area. In this system, there are many fewer A’s.
  3. D) Outcomes from a loss aversion or endowment system. In this system, each student starts with 1,000 points and loses points when they do not satisfactorily complete an assignment in any area.  In this system, a student can only lose 10% of the points in one area and still get an A.  Even if the student gets 100% in two areas and 80% in the third area, they get a B.

    Mark Milanick

    		 Mark grew up in Novelty, OH and went to high school in Harmony, PA.  He attempted to double major in physics and English literature at Swarthmore, but ended up just majoring in English. He took a year abroad at the University of St. Andrews, taking pure Maths, Pharmacology and Modern Literature. After doing lab rotations with Ed Taylor and Richard Miller, he did his PhD with Bob Gunn in the Biophysics and Theoretical Biology at the University of Chicago.  His postdoctoral training was with Joe Hoffman in physiology at Yale.  He had over 20 years of NIH funding on red blood cell membrane transport and physiology. He particularly enjoys teaching physiology and general education classes, such as Toxins, the Good, the Bad and the Beautiful; Bodily Fluids and their Functions; Filtering Fact from Fiction in TV Crime and Medical Dramas; and the Science of Sex, Drugs, and Rock’n’Roll.

 

The Capstone Experience: Implementing lessons learned from a pandemic educational environment to create inspirational real-world educational experiences
Historically, physiology undergraduate students across the world have undertaken a laboratory-based, fieldwork or critical review research project, their educational purpose for students to gain research experience. However, decreasing numbers of physiology graduates are going onto careers in research, many are leaving science altogether. It is therefore imperative that we, as educators, better prepare the majority of our students, through their projects, for the diverse range of careers they go onto.

Pre-pandemic opportunities

Over the last twenty years, physiology and the broader global bioscience educator community, recognizing this diversity of graduate career destinations, have been expanding the range of projects available to their students, introducing for example, public engagement, educational development or enterprise projects.  However, the focus and purpose of these projects remained for students to gain research experience. They were traditional research projects but outside of the laboratory. The literature and Accrediting Bodies project criterion still talked about students undertaking “hypothesis-driven research” and “project/research-based assignments”.

Whilst these traditional research projects may have been relevant fifty years ago, they do not enable the majority of current Bioscience graduates to be “work-place ready”. The world is currently going through its fourth industrial revolution (4IR), a world and workplace governed by robotics, artificial intelligence, digitization and automation. Graduate recruiters require graduates with different skillsets, the so-called 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) skills1.

I recognized that radical change was required, not only in my School of Biomedical Sciences, but across bioscience Higher Education globally. Collectively, bioscience educators needed to rethink the purpose, practices and outcomes of undergraduate research projects in order to better prepare our students for an increasingly challenging 21st Century global workplace.

My solution was to introduce project-based capstone experiences into my program. their purpose to provide students with opportunities for personal and professional development, and to gain real life work experience.

A highly experienced science communicator, I facilitated ethical debates in High Schools.  I realized that this would make an ideal opportunity for my undergraduates – something different as their research project. Starting small, I collaborated with one of my project mentees to co-create and co-deliver an ethics-focused workshop for High School students at the 2005 Leeds Festival of Science2. The capstone experience, as an alternative to traditional research projects, was born.

Over the last sixteen years, I have progressively expanded the range of capstone opportunities in my course. Colleagues within my School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Leeds (UK), recognizing the benefits of capstones to students, joined me. In partnership with our students, we have created a sector-leading portfolio of traditional research projects offered alongside science or industry-focused capstones, and those with a civic or societal focus in the same course (Figure 1)3. Students select the project that best addresses their individual developmental needs and/or future career intentions. By offering this broad portfolio of sixteen opportunities, it is inclusive, there is something for each and every student to realize their full academic potential and personal goals.

 

Figure 1: Research and capstone project opportunities available to students

My students have wholeheartedly grasped this opportunity, excelling academically.  Their course marks are significantly higher than students undertaking traditional research projects (2020: mean ± SD = 71.4±4.4% vs 68.4±5.8%, p<0.05).  In 2020-21, 27% selected capstones as their first choice of project, a massive cultural shift given we are a research-intensive (R1) Institution where laboratory projects have traditionally been viewed by both students and Faculty as the “gold-standard”.

Our work as a team has resulted in the award of a prestigious national (UK) higher education prize, an Advance HE Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence.

My work came to the attention of other Bioscience educators. I was invited to run workshops at Institutions across the UK seeking to introduce capstones into their program. I re-wrote one of the two UK Bioscience Accrediting Bodies project accreditation criteria, incorporating my capstone ideas.

And then Covid struck!

With restricted or no access to research facilities, Bioscience educators globally struggled to provide alternatives to traditional research projects.  To support colleagues across the world, in partnership with Sue Jones (York St John University, UK) and Michelle Payne (University of Sunderland, UK), I ran virtual workshops, sharing my capstone ideas and resources.  I created and shared globally, guides for students4 and educators5, and resource repositories6,7. The workshops were attended by over 1000 educators from as far afield as Australia, Africa and America. The resources viewed 12,000 times from over 50 countries.

A year on, we surveyed both students and Faculty globally. All responding institutions had introduced capstone projects into their programs in 2020-21. More importantly, they are here to stay. Recognizing the benefits to their future employability and careers, a massive 94% of students wanted capstones to be provided alongside traditional research projects. Faculty thought the same. All are not only keeping capstones, but more importantly, are broadening their portfolios going forward. Each new format developing different skill sets and attributes, and therefore preparing students for additional career destinations. We have inspired sector-wide curriculum change!

Going forward, we cannot return to our old ways!

As the world opens up and returns to a new “normal”, we cannot go back to our old ways of just offering traditional research projects. We would be massively letting our students and wider Society down. We need to take the best from what we have learnt and achieved, both before and during the pandemic, and continue to develop and evolve our collective capstone provision going forward.

We are at the start of an exciting Global journey.  Capstones across the world are predominantly conservative in nature, for example taught courses, senior seminar series or extended essays. Educators globally have yet to fully realize the transformative (massive uplift in skills and attributes) and translational (preparation for the workplace) potential of capstones.

We need to create capstones that are more representative of the work place for example, multi-disciplinary teams and sub-teams working on the same capstone, and capstones that run over multiple years, with current students taking the previous year’s project outputs and outcomes to the next stage.  The events of the past two years have made Universities realize they need to better address their local and global civic and societal responsibilities and missions, so capstones that facilitate societal engagement. We need to move away from traditional dissertations or reports to more authentic real-world assessments.

Within my School of Biomedical Sciences and the broader University of Leeds, we have started down this journey. Ninety percent of the capstones in my course are now team-based. Students choose their primary assessment method (e.g. academic paper, commercial report, e-portfolio) – the one most suited to their particular capstone format and which best showcases their knowledge, skills and attributes. I have introduced Grand Challenges capstones where students work as to teams to create evidence-driven solutions to global Grand Challenges or UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The intention to develop these into trans-national educational opportunities, where students from the Global North and South work collaboratively on the same SDG or Grand Challenge capstone. We have an Institutional requirement that all undergraduate students, regardless of discipline, must undertake a major research-based assignment in their final year of study. I have been awarded a Leeds Institute of Teaching Excellence to work with Faculty across the University to introduce capstones into their programs and to create pan-university multi-disciplinary capstone opportunities for our students.

I do not do things by halves. My vision is not just limited to Leeds, the UK or the Biosciences, but Global!

I have created a global Community of Practice for stakeholders across the world to work collaboratively together, sharing ideas, expertise and resources, to co-create and introduce inspirational multi-disciplinary, multi-national team-based capstone projects that address globally relevant issues into undergraduate and taught postgraduate degree programs across the world.  I want to make it a truly global and inclusive community, to include all stakeholders- students, alumni, educators, employers, NGOs, social enterprise, Global North or South, all disciplines or sectors….The list is endless.

If you would like to join this Community of Practice and be part of this exciting journey, please email me (d.i.lewis@leeds.ac.uk). Please share this opportunity amongst your colleagues, networks and across your Institution. The broader the membership, the greater the collective benefits for all.

If we pull this off, the benefits for students, other stakeholders and Society will be phenomenal. Our graduates would be truly global graduates, equipped with the skills and attributes to become leaders in whatever field they enter. As Faculty, we would be providing an exceptional educational experience for our students, properly preparing them for the workplace. Universities, through student capstones, would be better able to address their civic and societal responsibilities and missions. Employers would have graduates able to take their businesses forward and to thrive in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. We would be creating solutions to some of the complex problems facing mankind.

Figure 1: Research and capstone project opportunities available to students

1.    Gray, A. (2016). The 10 skills you need to thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-10-skills-you-need-to-thrive-in-the-fourth-industrial-revolution/

2.    Lewis DI (2011) Enhancing student employability through ethics-based outreach activities and OERs. Bioscience Education 18, 7SE https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3108/beej.18.7SE

3.    Lewis DI (2020a). Final year or Honours projects: Time for a total re-think? Physiology News 119: 10-11.

4.    Lewis DI (2020b). Choosing the right final year research, honours or capstone project for you. Skills career pathways & what’s involved. https://bit.ly/ChoosingBioCapstone

5.    Lewis DI (2020c). Final year research, honours or capstone projects in the Biosciences. How to Do it Guides. https://bit.ly/BiosciCapstones

6.    Lewis DI (2020d) E-Biopracticals (Collection of simulations & e-learning resources for use in Bioscience practical education. Available at: https://bit.ly/e-BioPracticals

7.    Lewis DI (2020e) Open access data repositories (Collection of large datasets, data analysis & visualization tools).  Available at: https://bit.ly/OADataRep.

 

Dr. Dave Lewis is currently a Senior Lecturer (Associate Prof) in Pharmacology and Bioethics in the School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Leeds, UK. A student education focused colleague, he creates inspirational educational and professional educational interventions designed to promote learner personal and professional development, and prepare them for the workplace.  He is the architect of the introduction of capstone projects into Bioscience programs across the UK and beyond.  He also Chairs the International Union of Basic & Clinical Pharmacology’s Integrative & Organ Systems Pharmacology Initiative, working with Professional and Regulatory Bodies, and NGOs in India, China and across Africa to co-create and co-deliver professional education in research animal sciences and ethics.

In recognition of his exceptional contribution to Bioscience Higher Education globally, he has received multiple prestigious education awards including a UK Advance HE National Teaching Fellowship and its Collaborative Teaching Excellence Award, the (UK) Biochemical Society’s Teaching Excellence Award, the (UK) Physiological Society’s Otto Hutter Teaching Prize, and Fellowship of the British Pharmacological Society & its Zaimis Prize.
Reworking the recipe: Adding experimentation and reflection to exercise physiology laboratories

What do you get when you follow a recipe? We suppose it depends on how carefully you follow the instructions, but assuming you stay true to the steps and have the requisite skills, you get something that approximates the taste described on the food blog (it never looks as good). While following a recipe can get you an expected result in the kitchen, it does not make you a chef—you probably will not learn to create new dishes, improve tired ones, or reverse-engineer your favorite take-out order. What do you do if you run out of vanilla!? We think the same is true in a science laboratory: You don’t develop the skills of a scientist by just following instructions. Sure, scientists follow instructions, but they also need to choose, create, and improve instructions. How do scientists become nimble with their craft? They experiment, make mistakes, troubleshoot, and iterate (or “Take chances, make mistakes, and get messy” for those who grew up with Miss Frizzle). If we asked you where undergraduate students learn to become scientists, we expect “laboratories” would be the most common answer, but unless laboratory activities are intentionally designed to develop the curiosity, creativity, and skills to pose and answer questions, they won’t produce adept scientists. In contrast to traditional laboratory activities, inquiry-based laboratory activities allow learners to develop important scientific skills.

Two years ago, we began a project aimed at improving student learning by replacing recipes with authentic science in exercise physiology laboratories. With one year remaining in our project, this blog post will explore our rationale, progress, and future plans.

Section 1: Put the scientist cookie-cutter back in the drawer

In undergraduate exercise physiology courses, laboratory-based learning is common, but it focuses more on students learning techniques than experimenting (9). In our experience, a typical undergraduate laboratory activity requires students to follow step-by-step procedures to measure one or more variables in a limited number of participants, most commonly their lab mates. Students administer exercise protocols on bikes, treadmills, and dynamometers to collect a variety of data, including oxygen uptake, heart rate, and muscle strength. These labs are largely descriptive. For example, a quintessential undergraduate exercise physiology laboratory involves performing a graded exercise test to measure the maximal rate of oxygen uptake (V̇O2max). Students assume the role of physiologist, repeatedly increasing the speed of a treadmill (or power output of a cycle ergometer) while sampling expired gases until the participant is unable to continue due to exhaustion. Students are discouraged (actually, prohibited) from altering the protocol and rarely given the chance to fix mistakes in a future laboratory (don’t forget the nose clips!). While the specific results may not be known in advance—they depend on characteristics of the participant—this activity is not an experiment. This traditional approach to laboratory teaching is standard (8, 11, 13). In contrast, an inquiry-based approach allows students to act like scientists and experiment.

There is a terrific description of levels of student inquiry in science for interested readers outlined in Bell et al. (4) and summarized in Table 1 below. The authors describe four levels of inquiry, and in our early stages of reforming labs, we found these levels very helpful for grappling with and revising laboratory learning activities and assessments. In our experience, only level 1 inquiry-based activities are regularly included in undergraduate laboratories: For example, our students compare post-exercise blood lactate concentration responses to passive and active recovery. Even though the results are known in advance and students are following the instructor’s procedures for level 1 inquiry, learners are frequently assessed on their ability to create laboratory reports where they find themselves toiling over uninspired post hoc hypotheses and rewriting a common set of methods in their own words. This process is disingenuous. Furthermore, knowing that they are attempting to verify a known result may lead some students to engage in questionable research practices to obtain that result (14).

Table 1. The four levels of inquiry, as described by Bell et al. (4).

Level Type Description of student activities
1 Confirmation Students verify or confirm known results
2 Structured inquiry Students investigate instructor-determined question using instructor-determined procedures (results not known in advance)
3 Guided inquiry Students investigate instructor-determined question using student-determined procedures
4 Open inquiry Students develop questions and procedures for rigorously answering them

 

We think traditional laboratory teaching goes against the spirit of what science actually is: The application of rigorous methods in the pursuit of answers to questions. Although students may develop technical skills by completing descriptive activities and low-level inquiry activities (e.g., data acquisition, data analysis, technical writing), there is a missed opportunity to develop the habits of mind and skills of a scientist in traditional laboratories. More than that, there is a misrepresentation, or at least obfuscation, of science. If we pretend these laboratories represent the scientific process, how do we expect students to become curious about, inspired by, and ultimately capable of doing science on their own? Students need to progress to higher levels of inquiry-based learning, but implementing these types of laboratories can be challenging in exercise physiology.

It is understandable that exercise physiology laboratories tend to exclude inquiry-based learning, as all tests are performed on human participants. First, there are legitimate safety concerns in exercise physiology laboratories, as participants are asked to exert themselves, often maximally; manipulations have physiological consequences; and some techniques are invasive. It would be irresponsible to let students change data collection protocols on the fly and jeopardize the health and safety of their peers. Second, as multiple testing sessions may be required to collect experimental data, manipulating independent variables may also be impractical for an undergraduate course aiming to cover a broad curriculum. For example, with sessions spread over multiple weeks, standardizing for diet is difficult. Third, the types of interventions that would have large enough effect sizes to be observable with small sample sizes (with a reasonable amount of “noise”) may be impractical or inappropriate in an undergraduate laboratory. For example, learners may not want to exercise for prolonged durations in the heat or deplete their muscle glycogen in advance of an exercise test. And finally, laboratory instructors may be uncomfortable or inexperienced with facilitating inquiry-based laboratories that go beyond level 1 (to say nothing of the confidence and ability of the learners themselves).

In addition to the practical concerns of adding more inquiry to undergraduate labs, we know students must learn the technical skills associated with fitness assessment, as exercise physiology is a health profession. If students pursue exercise physiology as a career path, they will apply advanced technical skills to accurately measure variables that impact exercise prescription, health assessments, and disease prognosis. Technical rigor is paramount in this profession, and imparting these skills is a major reason to offer exercise physiology laboratories. Unless specializing in research, exercise physiologists may not perform scientific experiments in their occupation. It is also challenging to collect most physiological data, and certainly learners cannot become scientists without acquiring data collection skills. Students need to practice and develop confidence using laboratory equipment before they can answer their own questions.

We understand that performing true experiments (especially student-led experiments) is difficult in undergraduate exercise physiology laboratories and we also appreciate why technical skills are essential. Yet, we do not believe that an exclusive focus on technical skills is the best strategy for students to learn scientific reasoning, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills. Regardless of a students’ career path, these are transferrable skills, and a laboratory is the ideal venue to nurture scientific thinking.

Section 2: Can we move beyond cookbook style laboratories?

What makes a good scientist? This answer probably varies across disciplines: Some scientists may be skilled in animal surgery, some may interrogate enormous data sets, and others may focus on theoretical concepts and proofs. There is probably no single skill set that is common among all scientists. But, if we put the specific technical skills aside, students need to ask questions, create hypotheses, solve problems, and think critically in order to conduct experiments. The mechanism for developing any skill is practice: Learners need opportunities to develop and refine their skills, whether they are technical or cognitive. Some students may be able to walk into a first-year laboratory and create an experiment, but many more will need additional support to reach this level of competency. In short, students need to practice being scientists. To be effective, this practice must be authentic: As scientists do not just follow instructions, a recipe-based approach to laboratory learning will not develop a good scientist. The higher levels of inquiry, (see Table 1), are where students get to practice being scientists.

Including higher level inquiry-based learning in exercise physiology isn’t entirely novel. For example, Kolkhorst et al. (11) described the implementation of an inquiry-based learning model in an undergraduate exercise physiology course. The structure of this course was (i) an introductory laboratory session; (ii) five laboratory sessions focused on key concepts in exercise physiology; and (iii) nine laboratory sessions to complete two separate research projects (4-5 sessions each). In the latter portion of the course–an example of level 4 inquiry (Table 1)–students proposed research questions and hypotheses and worked with instructors to devise an experiment, collected and analyzed data, and presented their results to the class. After addressing one research question, students repeated this process with a new research question focused on a different physiological system. Following the initial iteration—from which Kolkhorst et al. (11) noted students were not sufficiently prepared for undertaking the research projects—the authors devised a more structured transition, providing students with more opportunities to practice answering research questions and developing technical skills (i.e., level 2-3 inquiry). The results of this shift in laboratory learning were largely positive: The authors reported that students were more enthusiastic about the inquiry-based labs and better able to describe and discuss physiological principles. A separate study (8) indicated that students reported preferring high-level as opposed to low-level inquiry in exercise physiology laboratories, crediting the independence, responsibility, freedom, and personal relevance as key influences on their satisfaction. These qualitative results are further supported by quantitative data from Nybo and May (13), which demonstrated greater test scores for students who completed an inquiry-based laboratory session related to cardiopulmonary exercise physiology compared to a traditional laboratory on the same topic. Collectively, these studies demonstrate that enabling students to experiment in undergraduate exercise physiology is possible and beneficial.

Although writing specifically about physics education, Drs. Emily Smith and Natasha Holmes (14) advise us to eliminate confirmation (level 1) work and attempts at learning theory in laboratories. Based on extensive research, they suggest increasing the amount of laboratory time students spend (i) making predictions about what they think might happen; (ii) doing activities that involve trial-and-error; (iii) practicing decision making; and (iv) processing how things went. By allowing students to devise questions, design experiments, and collect data (with the opportunity to fix mistakes), students are practicing being scientists. By design, inquiry-based laboratory activities facilitate the first three suggestions; however, whether Smith and Holmes’ fourth recommendation occurs in inquiry-based laboratory activities is hard to determine, but this recommendation is important. This processing phase of laboratory learning improves students’ capacities to make good decisions over time. Including this reflective step in laboratories is something we have taken to heart and into all of our reformed labs.

Section 3: Adding inquiry and mixing reflection into exercise physiology laboratories

In our project, we are focused on two specific exercise physiology courses, an introductory undergraduate course (n = 80-200 students, depending on the semester) and an advanced graduate course (n = 10), both of which have a weekly 3-hour laboratory session. Prior to intervening, we surveyed the nature of laboratory teaching in each course, finding that students indeed followed step-by-step instructions without the opportunity to make decisions or investigate new questions. The only form of inquiry-based learning was level 1 (Table 1). We planned to make two broad types of changes: (i) provide students with more autonomy in the laboratory, and (ii) encourage students to reflect on the activities they were completing. As the graduate course was much smaller, this was deemed the easier place to start, and because of its size, this course was also allowed to remain in-person during the COVID-19 pandemic. Accordingly, most of our progress to date has been in revising this graduate exercise physiology course.

Initially, our changes to the graduate course’s laboratory focused on asking students to make and validate predictions while using a standard set of protocols (i.e., level 1 inquiry). In our first iteration, we modified four laboratory sessions to focus on the “unexpected” breakdown in the linear relationship between oxygen uptake and cycling power output that occurs during exercise with constant-load efforts and the difficulty in identifying the boundary between the heavy and severe exercise intensity domains (10). We (and students in the course) felt these activities were successful, so we modified the laboratory again the following year to allow students to focus on answering novel questions rather than verifying results. Using a gradual implementation approach similar to Kolkhorst et al. (11), students were first asked to create and test unique hypotheses for a set of data they collected over four laboratory sessions, combining aspects of level 2 and 4 inquiry (i.e., instructor-led procedures and student-led questions). Next, based on an article read earlier in the course (1), students worked as a group to determine whether fatiguing one limb influenced measures of exercise performance and fatigue in the contralateral limb when contractions were isometric (level 2). Finally, with a focus on inquiry-based learning and professional development, students were challenged to develop their own laboratory activity for a hypothetical course, which required devising an experiment to teach an important concept in exercise physiology and collecting pilot data to demonstrate feasibility (nearing level 4). To fully understand the impacts of these changes, we have collected survey and semi-structured interview data from students in reformed laboratories, which we hope to formally report at the end of the project.

Despite teaching our undergraduate exercise physiology course online this year, we attempted to create a virtual exercise physiology laboratory that focused on developing the skills needed to answer research questions. Learning activities focused on hypothesis creation, research design, data analysis, and statistical analysis. For one activity, we asked students to design a hypothetical study comparing mechanical aspects of sprinting for two groups of athletes (e.g., bobsleigh vs. fencing). Although new to research design, students were given the freedom to choose the sample size, the variable of interest, and the two types of athletes (selected from normative data published by Haugen et al. (7)). Martin used the students’ choices to simulate datasets, and students performed statistical analysis to test their hypotheses. While students couldn’t collect their own data, this activity allowed them to pose and answer a question, while learning about sprinting and research design. When this lab returns to in-person learning, plans are being formulated to include inquiry-based learning, similar to the structure that Kolkhorst et al. (11) and Henige (8) reported.

After two years of tinkering with our graduate course and beginning to reform our undergraduate course (despite its online format), we have realized that we simply need to give students more time in the laboratory to work on their own questions. Note that Kolkhorst et al. (11) and Henige (8) each provided 4-5 sessions for their level 4 inquiry laboratory activities. This can be a tough sell for instructors (ourselves included): It means we need to cover fewer topics. But, sometimes the best addition to a recipe is a subtraction (e.g., prohibiting pineapple on pizza). The battle over which absolutely essential topic has to be removed has already begun!

While we think increasing autonomy and inquiry in the lab is an important part of enhancing student learning, we also think students need to be able to debrief learning activities and process their experiences to enrich their learning. For both courses described above, students were asked to engage in reflective activities each week. We know reflection can move learning from surface to deep and even transformative levels (12). Reflection is a form of cognitive housekeeping and processing that enables students to develop their understanding of complex or unstructured ideas (12). When students actively engage in a constructive sense-making process, they understand complex systems and concepts better (6). Metacognitive practices are shown to improve self-regulation and commitment to lifelong learning; however, instructional strategies often neglect or assume students are engaging in metacognition (2). Evidence suggests metacognition at the end of STEM learning activities enriches learning (17). Based on this evidence and our experiences with reflection as a catalyst for curiosity and connection-making, we integrated a small amount of reflection with learning activities and added a low-stakes assessment in both courses. Students were asked to thoughtfully reflect on and respond to a specific prompt in approximately 100 words at the end of each lab. Questions like those listed below acted as a call to metacognition:

What did you find most challenging (or surprising, or interesting) in this lab and why?

What did you learn in this lab? What would you still like to know?

What do you think is the major obstacle to performing high-intensity interval training?

How would you explain the importance of fat oxidation to a lay person interested in exercise?

By asking students to connect their experience, knowledge, ideas, and sometimes uncertainty to their lab learning activities, we hoped to support them in deepening, extending, and amplifying their learning.

As we reformed student learning activities and move away from recipe-only laboratories, our teaching practices needed to change too. Recognizing that the laboratory instructors had mostly been trained through traditional style laboratories, we identified a need for some targeted professional development for our group of educators. To meet this need, Cari developed an asynchronous learning module called “Teaching to Enable Learning in Exercise Physiology,” for the instructional team to complete prior to the start of term, and we debriefed this 6-8 hour module together at our first meeting. This meeting set the tone and expectation in many ways for the teaching practices we were expecting teaching assistants to try in labs. We took a community of practice (CoP) approach to supporting laboratory teaching and learning throughout the semester. A CoP is a group of practitioners who meet regularly, reflect and problem solve collaboratively to learn to do their practice (for us, teaching) better (16). CoPs have been used to facilitate teaching and learning change in many higher education projects (5, 15). Each week, we (Martin and Cari) invited the lab technician, the teaching assistants (i.e., laboratory instructors), and a graduate student researcher (Joy Camarao) to reflect on and share both positive and negative teaching experiences from the week that was.

Conclusion

Years after completing an undergraduate degree in biology, the laboratory activities that stuck with me (Martin) the most are those that let me experiment. My favorite laboratory activity involved transplanting barnacles from the exposed side of a breakwater to the inner harbor on the coast of Nova Scotia to examine phenotypic plasticity in leg morphology. My lab mates and I chose the topic and designed the experiment, basing our question on a relationship observed in a related species of barnacle (3). We drove to the coast to find and transplant the barnacles, and we returned weeks later to collect the barnacles for analysis, hypothesizing that they would increase their leg length to optimize feeding in the calmer waters. Unlike most of my other laboratory experiences, we were performing a real experiment with real hypothesis and a (somewhat) novel question. Our study had flaws, and our results weren’t perfect, but the laboratory report was authentic, and so was my excitement. This type of lab is a challenge in exercise physiology, but it’s possible and worthwhile. As we enter the final year of our project, we hope to give students more opportunities to experiment.

Image Credits: Image 1- Nicole Michalou, Image 2- Maarten VanDenHeuvel, Image 3 William Choquette, Image 4- Frans VanHeerden.

 

References

  1. Amann M, Venturelli M, Ives SJ, McDaniel J, Layec G, Rossman MJ, Richardson RS. Peripheral fatigue limits endurance exercise via a sensory feedback-mediated reduction in spinal motoneuronal output. J Appl Physiol 115: 355–364, 2013.
  2. Ambrose SA, Bridges MW, DiPietro M, Lovett MC, Norman MK. How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching. John Wiley & Sons., 2010.
  3. Arsenault DJ, Marchinko KB, Palmer AR. Precise tuning of barnacle leg length to coastal wave action. Proceedings Biol Sci 268: 2149–2154, 2001.
  4. Bell RL, Smetana L, Binns I. Simplifying inquiry instruction. Sci Teach 72: 30–33, 2005.
  5. Elliott ER, Reason RD, Coffman CR, Gangloff EJ, Raker JR, Powell-Coffman JA, Ogilvie CA. Improved student learning through a faculty learning community: How faculty collaboration transformed a large-enrollment course from lecture to student centered. CBE—Life Sci Educ 15: 1–14, 2016.
  6. Eyler JR. How humans learn: The science and stories behind effective college teaching. West Virginia University Press, 2018.
  7. Haugen TA, Breitschädel F, Seiler S. Sprint mechanical variables in elite athletes: Are force-velocity profiles sport specific or individual? PLoS One 14: e0215551, 2019.
  8. Henige K. Undergraduate student attitudes and perceptions toward low- and high-level inquiry exercise physiology teaching laboratory experiences. Adv Physiol Educ 35: 197–205, 2011.
  9. Ivy JL. Exercise Physiology: A Brief History and Recommendations Regarding Content Requirements for the Kinesiology Major. Quest 59: 34–41, 2007.
  10. Keir DA, Paterson DH, Kowalchuk JM, Murias JM. Using ramp-incremental VO2 responses for constant-intensity exercise selection. Appl Physiol Nutr Metab (2018). doi: 10.1139/apnm-2017-0826.
  11. Kolkhorst FW, Mason CL, DiPasquale DM, Patterson P, Buono MJ. An inquiry-based learning model for an exercise physiology laboratory course. Adv Physiol Educ 25: 117–122, 2001.
  12. Moon JA. A handbook of reflective and experiential learning: Theory and practice. Routledge, 2013.
  13. Nybo L, May M. Effectiveness of inquiry-based learning in an undergraduate exercise physiology course. Adv Physiol Educ 39: 76–80, 2015.
  14. Smith EM, Holmes NG. Best practice for instructional labs. Nature 17: 662–663, 2021.
  15. Tinnell TL, Ralston PA, Tretter TR, Mills ME. Sustaining pedagogical change via faculty learning community. Int J STEM Educ 6: 1–16, 2019.
  16. Wenger-Trayner B, Wenger-Trayner E. What is a community of practice? [Online]. 2011. https://wenger-trayner.com/resources/what-is-a-community-of-practice/ [25 Jun. 2021].
  17. Wieman C, Gilbert S. The teaching practices inventory: A new tool for characterizing college and university teaching in mathematics and science. CBE—Life Sci Educ 13: 552-569., 2014.
Dr. Martin MacInnis is an assistant professor who studies exercise and environmental physiology from an integrative perspective, focusing on the skeletal muscle mitochondrial content, red blood cell volume, interval training, and applications of wearable technology. Martin teaches courses in exercise physiology at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and his SoTL research, in collaboration with Dr. Cari Din, focuses on using labs to develop scientific thinking.
Dr. Cari Din, PhD,  is an instructor, leadership fellow, and teaching scholar at the University of Calgary in the Faculty of Kinesiology. She works closely with Dr. Martin MacInnis, to support continuous improvement in teaching and learning experiences for students and graduate teaching assistants in the courses Martin leads. Cari works to enable agency, curiosity, and connection between learners in all of her work. She lives near the Rocky Mountains and appreciates hiking in them.
Pandemic, Physiology, Physical Therapy, Psychology, Purpose, Professor Fink, Practical Exams, and Proficiency!

Pandemic

To say that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected education would be an understatement.  Physical distancing measures that were introduced across the world to reduce community spread of SARS-CoV-2 (the COVID-19 pathogen), necessitated a cessation or reduction of in-person instruction, and the introduction of what has come to be known as “emergency remote education”(1, 2).  Emergency remote education or teaching (ERE or ERT) is different from remote or online education in that, it is not planned and optional, but rather, a response to an educational emergency (3).

Physiology for Physical Therapy Students

Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, as I was trying to keep my primary research program on regenerative and rehabilitative muscle biology moving forward (4), engaging with the scientific community on repurposing FDA-approved drugs for COVID-19 (5, 6), and working on the Biomaterials, Pharmacology, and Muscle Biology courses that I teach each year; I was requested to take on a new responsibility.  The new responsibility was to serve as the course master and sole instructor for a 3-credit, 15-week course on Physiology and Pathophysiology for Professional Year One (PY1) Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) students.  I had foreseen taking on this responsibility a couple of years down the road, but COVID-19 contingencies required that I start teaching the course in January 2021.  I had always believed that within the Physical Therapy curriculum, Anatomy, Physiology and Neuroscience, were courses that could only be taught by people who were specialists – i.e. you had to be born for it and should have received a level of training needed to become a master of Shaolin Kung Fu (7).  With less than a year to prepare for my Physiology and Pathophysiology course, and with the acknowledgment that I was not trained in the martial art of Physiology instruction, I looked for inspiration.  The Peter Parker Principle from Spider-Man came to mind – “With great power comes great responsibility” (8).  Unfortunately, I realized that there was no corollary that said “With great responsibility comes great power”.  Self-doubt, anxious thoughts, and frank fear of failure abounded.

Psychology and Purpose

Call it coincidence, grace, or anything in between; at the time when I started preparing to teach Physiology and Pathophysiology, I had been working with a psychological counselor who was helping me process my grief following my father’s passing a couple of months before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic.  In addition to processing my grief, through counseling, I had also started learning more about myself and how to process anxious thoughts, such as the fear of failing in my new superhero role of teaching Physiology and Pathophysiology to Physical Therapy students.  Learning how to effectively use my “wise mind” (an optimal intersection of the “emotional mind” and “reasonable mind”), writing out the possible “worst outcomes” and “likely outcomes”, practicing “self-compassion”, increasing distress tolerance, working on emotional regulation, and most importantly embracing “radical acceptance” of the things I cannot change, helped me work through the anxiety induced by my new teaching responsibility.  This does not mean that my anxiety vanished, it just means that I was more aware of it, acknowledged it, and worked my way through it to get to what I was supposed to do.  I also learned through counseling that purpose drives motivation.  I realized that my anxiety over teaching Physiology was related to the value I placed on the teaching and learning of Physiology in Physical Therapy and other health professions.  Being a Physical Therapist and Physiologist who is committed to promoting movement-centered healthcare, I found motivation in the prospect of training Physical Therapists to serve as health educators with the ultimate goal of improving human movement.  Therefore, the idea of developing a course that would give my students a solid foundation in the Physiology and Pathophysiology of Human Movement began to excite me more than intimidate me.  The aspects of my personality that inspired me to publish a paper on the possible pathophysiological mechanisms underlying COVID-19 complications (5), stirred in me the passion to train the next generation of Physical Therapists, who through their sound knowledge of Physiology would likely go on to transform healthcare and promote healthier societies through movement (9).

The point about purpose being a positive driver of motivation, mentioned above, has been known to educational psychologists for a while.  When students see that the purpose of learning something is bigger than themselves, they are more motivated to learn (10).  So, rather than setting up my course as a generic medical physiology course, I decided to set it up as a Physiology and Pathophysiology of Human Movement course that is customized for human movement experts in training – i.e. Student Physical Therapists.  I set my course up in four modules – Moving the Body (focused on muscle and nerve), Moving Materials Around the Body (focused on the cardiovascular and pulmonary systems), Fueling Movement (focused on cellular respiration and the ATP story), and Decoding the Genetics of Human Movement (focused on how genetic information is transcribed and translated into proteins that make movement possible).

Professor Fink

For those of you who have not heard of Professor Steven Fink, you should look him up (11).  A Ph.D.-trained Physiologist and former member of the American Physiological Society (APS), Professor Fink has posted over 200 original educational videos on YouTube, covering Anatomy, Physiology, Pharmacology, and other subjects.  I had found his YouTube videos several years ago, while looking for good resources for my Pharmacology course, and never stopped watching them ever since then.  I would watch his videos while exercising, and listen to them during my commute (and sometimes even during my ablutions!).  There were two topics in Physiology that scared me the most – cellular respiration and genetics.  I had learned these topics just well enough to get me through high school, four years of Physical Therapy School, one year of Post-Professional Physical Therapy training, six years of Ph.D. training in a Physiology laboratory, six years as a Postdoctoral Fellow (also in a Physiology laboratory), and several years as an Assistant Professor in Physical Therapy.  However, despite the “few years” I had spent in academia and my 10+ years being a member of the APS, I never felt that I had gained mastery over the basic physiology of cellular respiration and genetics.  So, when I started preparing to teach Physiology, I decided to up my number of views on Professor Fink’s videos on cellular respiration and genetics.  Furthermore, I reached out to Professor Fink and asked him if he would serve as a teaching mentor for my new course and he very kindly agreed.  I am fortunate to be a teacher-scholar in a department and university, which places a high priority on teaching, and supports training in pedagogy and the scholarship of teaching and learning through consultation with experts within and outside the university.  As part of our mentoring relationship, Professor Fink gave feedback on my syllabus, course content, testing materials and pedagogical strategies.  He also introduced me to “Principles of Anatomy and Physiology, 16th Edition, by Gerard J. Tortora, Bryan H. Derrickson, which proved to be a useful resource (ISBN: 978-1-119-66268-6).  Through all these interactions, Professor Fink demonstrated that a person can be a “celebrity professor” and still be a kind and gentle human being.  Having him as my teaching mentor played a significant role in building my confidence as a physiology teacher.  Research shows that academic mentoring is related to favorable outcomes in various domains, which include behavior, attitudes, health, interpersonal relations, motivation, and career (12).

Practical Exams

As the COVID-19 pandemic rolled on through the Winter, Spring/Summer, and Fall semesters of 2020, it became certain that I would have to teach my Physiology and Pathophysiology course in a virtual environment come January 2021.  I had to figure out a way to make sure that the learning objectives of my course would be met despite the challenges posed by teaching and testing in a virtual environment.  Therefore, I came up with the idea of virtual practical exams for each of the four modules in my course.  These practical exams would be set up as a mock discussion between a Physical Therapist and a referring health professional regarding a patient who had been referred for Physical Therapy.  Students would take the exam individually.  On entering the virtual exam room, the student would introduce themselves as a Student Physical Therapist and then request me (the referring healthcare professional) to provide relevant details regarding the patient, in order to customize assessment, goal setting and treatment for the patient.  With the patient’s condition as the backdrop, I would ask the student questions from the course content that was relevant to the patient’s condition.  A clear and precise rubric for the exam would be provided to the students in keeping with the principles of transparency in learning and teaching (13).

Proficiency

As we went through the course, the virtual practical exams proved to be an opportunity to provide individualized attention and both summative and formative feedback to students (14).  As a teacher, it was rewarding to see my Physical Therapy students talk about cellular respiration and gene expression with more confidence and clarity than I could do during my prior 12+ years as a Ph.D.-trained Physiologist.  It was clear to me that my students had found a sense of purpose in the course content that was bigger than themselves – they believed that what they were learning would translate to better care for their patients and would ultimately help create healthier societies through movement.

In the qualitative feedback received through a formal student evaluation of teaching (SET) survey, one student wrote “Absolutely exceptional professor.  Please continue to do what you are doing for future cohorts.  You must keep the verbal practical examinations for this class.  Testing one’s ability to verbally explain how the body functions and how it is dysfunctional is the perfect way to assess if true learning has occurred.”  Sharing similar sentiments, another student wrote “I really enjoyed the format of this class. The virtual exams in this class forced us to really understand the content in a way that we can talk about it, rather than learning to answer a MC question. I hope future students are able to learn as much as I did from this class.”

Closing Remarks

When I meet students for the first time during a course, I tell them that even though I am their teacher, I am first a student.  I let them know that in order to teach, I first need to learn the content well myself.  Pandemic pedagogy in the time of COVID-19-related emergency remote education has reinforced my belief that, the best way to learn something is to teach it.  Thanks to my Physiology and Pathophysiology of Human Movement course, I learned more about myself, about teaching and learning, and of course about cellular respiration and genetics.  Do I now consider myself a master of Physiology instruction?  No!  Am I a more confident physiology teacher?  Yes!  Has writing this article made me reflect more on what worked well and what needs to be fine-tuned for the next iteration of my Physiology and Pathophysiology course?  Yes!

REFERENCES:

  1. Williamson B, Eynon R, Potter J. Pandemic politics, pedagogies and practices: digital technologies and distance education during the coronavirus emergency. Learning, Media and Technology. 2020;45(2):107-14.
  2. Bozkurt A, Jung I, Xiao J, Vladimirschi V, Schuwer R, Egorov G, et al. A global outlook to the interruption of education due to COVID-19 pandemic: Navigating in a time of uncertainty and crisis. Asian Journal of Distance Education. 2020;15(1):1-126.
  3. Hodges C, Moore S, Lockee B, Trust T, Bond A. The difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning. Educause review. 2020;27:1-12.
  4. Begam M, Roche R, Hass JJ, Basel CA, Blackmer JM, Konja JT, et al. The effects of concentric and eccentric training in murine models of dysferlin-associated muscular dystrophy. Muscle Nerve. 2020.
  5. Roche JA, Roche R. A hypothesized role for dysregulated bradykinin signaling in COVID-19 respiratory complications. FASEB J. 2020;34(6):7265-9.
  6. Joseph R, Renuka R. AN OPEN LETTER TO THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY ON THE POSSIBLE ROLE OF DYSREGULATED BRADYKININ SIGNALING IN COVID-19 RESPIRATORY COMPLICATIONS2020.
  7. Wikipedia contributors. Shaolin Kung Fu – Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia 2021 [Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shaolin_Kung_Fu&oldid=1026594946.
  8. Wikipedia contributors. With great power comes great responsibility – Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia 2021 [Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=With_great_power_comes_great_responsibility&oldid=1028753868.
  9. American Physical Therapy Association (APTA). Transforming Society – American Physical Therapy Association [Available from: https://www.apta.org/transforming-society.
  10. Yeager DS, Henderson MD, Paunesku D, Walton GM, D’Mello S, Spitzer BJ, et al. Boring but important: a self-transcendent purpose for learning fosters academic self-regulation. Journal of personality and social psychology. 2014;107(4):559.
  11. Fink S. ProfessorFink.com [Available from: https://professorfink.com/.
  12. Eby LT, Allen TD, Evans SC, Ng T, Dubois D. Does Mentoring Matter? A Multidisciplinary Meta-Analysis Comparing Mentored and Non-Mentored Individuals. J Vocat Behav. 2008;72(2):254-67.
  13. Winkelmes M. Transparency in Learning and Teaching: Faculty and students benefit directly from a shared focus on learning and teaching processes. NEA Higher Education Advocate. 2013;30(1):6-9.
  14. Alt D. Teachers’ practices in science learning environments and their use of formative and summative assessment tasks. Learning Environments Research. 2018;21(3):387-406.
Joseph A. Roche, BPT, PhD.  Associate Professor.  Physical Therapy Program.  Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.  

I am an Associate Professor in the Physical Therapy Program at Wayne State University, located in the heart of “Motor City”, Detroit, Michigan.  My research program is focused on developing regenerative and rehabilitative interventions for muscle loss arising from neuromuscular diseases, trauma and aging.  I have a clinical background in Physical Therapy and have received intensive doctoral and postdoctoral research training in muscle physiology/biology.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Joseph-Roche-2

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=-RCFS6oAAAAJ&hl=en
Down the custom path: Adaptive learning as a tool for instruction and assessment in science education

The spread of COVID-19 via the SARS-CoV-2 virus led colleges and universities around the world to close on-campus instruction for the safety of students, faculty and staff.  This left many instructors, specifically those in the sciences, struggling to find effective methods to present information to students in a manner that both encouraged learning and allowed for assessment of knowledge attainment.  Non-traditional colleges and universities, those that offer most or all of a degree to students in the online environment, were poised to transition easily; continuing to use the tools available in the virtual world to both guide students and assess learning.  As institutions wrestle with the decision to move courses back to the on-campus setting, this blog implores those in higher education, even science education, to consider adaptive learning as a vital component of curriculum.

Prior to my appointment as Lead Faculty at Colorado Technical University, I taught a variety of science courses in on-campus class and laboratory settings.  Both exams and laboratory practica could be cumbersome, both in prep and in grading.  While the questions could be mapped back to unit and/or course learning outcomes, this would require input of each student’s response to each question into a data sheet for analysis.  Even with online administration of exams, assessment methods were limited and instructors like myself were reliant on continuous creation of lectures, worksheets, activities, and online simulations to present course materials.  When it came time to transition to online, students would navigate through a learning management system and open a variety of files, videos, interactive activities, practice sheets, and practice quizzes for one unit in a course.  There had to be a better way to incorporate all the things we know drive student inquiry into one area while allowing assessment of their knowledge, right?  There was.

Enter adaptive learning technology.  Colorado Technical University relies upon Intellipath™ to deliver content to students in the asynchronous classroom in a variety of subjects, including natural sciences, math, engineering, nursing, and health studies.  I entered into teaching and managing faculty as a novice in this tool, and now I want to sing its praises to anyone who will listen. Adaptive learning does just as the title suggests.  It adapts based on the student’s knowledge, adding questions in areas where they need additional practice and allowing those already determined to have a certain understanding of topics to skip on to new materials.  Once these lesson nodes are designed, they can be used over and over again and questions can be delivered in a variety of ways to assess the same outcome. Gone is the need to continuously upload materials as they are all housed within the adaptive learning platform.  Instructors have the ability to see how a student is doing not just in terms of their progress through the unit but also their mastery of a specific topic.  Students have the ability to earn high marks when they demonstrate competency in the subject on their first attempt but are able to improve their score when they didn’t do as well as they had hoped.

The system rolls instruction, interaction, and formative and summative assessments all in together in one data rich place.  Instructors can tailor their outreach and additional instruction to specific students or overall trends within a specific cohort.  Those tasked with the assessment of effectiveness portion of curriculum can pull these data to discern what outcomes are being met.  In modern higher-ed, what students know is important but how we know they know what they know is also a priority.  We have to be able to paint a quantitative picture that our curriculum is effective.

Students are re-evaluating their choices for universities and it is wise of all of us to consider our options for content delivery and knowledge assessment.  I think many educators in colleges or universities have attended at least one meeting at this point to discuss the decline in the number of “traditional” college students and some of us may have even been tasked with figuring out what to do about it.  More and more students are faced with the dilemma of needing to manage being caregivers, members of the workforce, or other life challenges while also attaining a degree.  This is our time to be bold and innovative in the classroom and really personalize a student’s experience.  Will there always be “traditional” college classes?  Only time will tell.  I cannot predict where we will be as educators in a decade but I can say that it will be my goal to evolve to meet the demands of the profession.  Science leads us to advances and adaptations so shouldn’t we be advanced and adaptive in science education?

Dr. Tiffany Halfacre (she/her) earned undergraduate degrees from Berea College (Biology) and Saint Petersburg College (Funeral Services), an MSMS from Morsani College of Medicine at the University of South Florida, and a DHSc from A.T. Still University College of Graduate Health Studies.

She has a varied background as an educator spanning over 10 years.  She has taught courses in general biology, human biology, anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, and health sciences in addition to interdisciplinary work in medical humanities.  She has been involved in course development, programmatic and institutional accreditation, and institutional research and effectiveness.  Her research and service interests include exploring health and nutrition literacy as they relate to geographical and socioeconomic differences. Outside of the classroom, she has been involved in chapel series lectures including one on “Truth in Grief” and was awarded the Excellence in Academic Advising award during her tenure at Carson-Newman University for her work advising pre-health professions students.  Dr. Halfacre currently serves as a Lead Faculty and an Assistant Professor of Health Studies at Colorado Technical University where she not only focuses on faculty preparation and support but also initiatives to retain and encourage success in first year and first generation college students.

Her hobbies include anything outdoors, running, amateur photography, and enjoying various arts, specifically music.
Less is more – focusing on the core concepts

When it comes to teaching a subject in depth and breadth, an instructor may face the challenges of limited time versus unlimited contents. To this end, the instructor may focus on covering as much as possible material in a lecture, or on the key concepts that help prioritize contents and overarch a myriad of information. The former strategy is highly content-centered and can be overwhelming to both the instructor and students, and in fact, studies have shown that instruction time is not necessarily proportional to learning outcome [1]. By contrast, the latter strategy makes time for the instructor and student to interact, discuss, and apply the key concepts to problem solving activities, which fosters an active and interactive learning environment. In line with the evidence showing that students benefit more from an active and interactive learning experience [2], educators have called for less coverage and more inquiry aiming high beyond just the facts so that student’s learning can be enhanced by talking, writing, and collaborating [3-4].

How can one effectively prioritize contents by focusing on the key concepts pertaining to the latter strategy? One of the possible ways is to use learning objectives or anticipated learning outcomes to navigate content prioritization. It is overwhelming to start with materials for teaching planning due to fast growing research and knowledge explosion. However, using a backward design may change the game. Backward design of a course starts with developing clear learning objectives, which aligns selection of lecture contents with anticipated learning outcomes [5-6]. For instance, to accomplish the objective of building students’ critical thinking skills, an instructor will strategically plan time for not only covering materials but also information processing and application. Other than concentrating student learning on facts only, the class will be fueled by problem-based collaborative learning. To this end, it is critical for the instructor to elaborate the key principles or concepts, the very guides students need to address complex problems that demand more than simple factual answers. The collection of facts relevant to the class can be provided as supplemental information or resources for students to look up for problem solving, while it can limit student learning as a major commitment of memorization.

Mastery of basic principles plus being detail-oriented is required for success in experimentation and authentic research in a lab course [7]. To this end, students are expected to pay attention to experimental details in addition to core concepts, raising the question as to how course contents can be prioritized. First, the strategy of backward design still applies. Secondly, the learning objectives or anticipated learning outcomes can be defined such that they focus on core principles and transferrable or interchangeable skills. For instance, the course Laboratory Techniques in Molecular Nutrition covers several sets of lab techniques, one of which is immunoassays. Immunoassays represent a set of methods based on antigen-antibody binding reactions, including Western blotting (WB), immunoprecipitation (IP), co-immunoprecipitation (co-IP), chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP), ChIP sequencing (ChIPsec), immunohistochemistry (IHC), immunocytochemistry (ICC), and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Each method may take 1-2 weeks (5 hours/week) to cover the principles and operational procedures, and the set of immunoassays alone may occupy a semester. Obviously, it is very challenging to elaborate on each of the immunoassays within a semester given the limited time and resources, plus the needs to cover non-immunoassay techniques. However, it is practical for students to learn about the techniques within 4-5 weeks (5 hours/week) with a prioritized focus by elaborating on the core concepts shared by the eight immunoassays and contrasting the major differences among them. The core principles are shared by all the immunoassays regarding immobilization, blocking, immunobinding, washing, and detection processes. Yet, they are different in assay microenvironments including the solid phases, blocking solutions, antibodies, targets of interest, washing solutions, and detection reagents and instruments. Priority can be given to elaborating the core concepts and major differences (1-2 weeks) and to practicing the most used and accessible immunoassays such as WB, IP, and ELISA (3 weeks).

Practically, use of flipped classrooms can further enhance students’ mastery of key concepts and their ability to apply the concepts to solving problems. In a flipped classroom, the instructor lectures less in class but the course materials and recorded lectures are uploaded to the course management site (e.g., Canvas) for students to study in advance. Students tend to learn more through problem-solving activities with the instructor and peers in class that build critical thinking skills. As such, the learning outcomes can be increased and go beyond the contents by enhancing students’ critical thinking skills, which will benefit their lifelong learning after college.

Taken together, focusing on facts less in class but targeting core concepts and knowledge application more may serve as an effective strategy to build students’ critical thinking skills. The “less” by no means refers to an easy class. Instead, both the instructor and students spend more time outside the class preparing and studying course materials. This is to prepare everyone for more higher-order-thinking activities (e.g., analysis, evaluation, and application) in class. The “less” for “more” pedagogy may benefit student’s lifelong learning experience.

 

References and further reading

[1] Andersen SC, Humlum MK, Nandrup AB. Increasing instruction time in school does increase learning.

Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2016 Jul 5;113(27):7481-4.

[2] Dolan EL, Collins JP. We must teach more effectively: here are four ways to get started. Mol Biol Cell. 2015 Jun 15;26(12):2151-5.

[3] Luckie DB, Aubry JR, Marengo BJ, Rivkin AM, Foos LA, Maleszewski JJ. Less teaching, more learning: 10-yr study supports increasing student learning through less coverage and more inquiry. Adv Physiol Educ. 2012 Dec;36(4):325-35.

[4] DiCarlo SE. Too much content, not enough thinking, and too little fun! Adv Physiol Educ. 2009 Dec;33(4):257-64.

[5] Allen D, Tanner K. Putting the horse back in front of the cart: using visions and decisions about high-quality learning experiences to drive course design. CBE Life Sci Educ. 2007, 6(2): 85–89

[6] Hills M, Harcombe K, Bernstein N. Using anticipated learning outcomes for backward design of a molecular cell biology Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience. Biochem Mol Biol Educ. 2020 Jul;48(4):311-319.

[7] DiCarlo SE. Cell biology should be taught as science is practiced. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol. 2006 Apr;7(4):290-6.

Dr. Zhiyong Cheng received his PhD in Analytical Biochemistry from Peking University, after which he conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Cheng is now an Assistant Professor of Nutritional Science at the University of Florida. He has taught several undergraduate- and graduate-level courses (lectures and lab) in human nutrition and metabolism (including metabolic physiology). As the principal investigator in a research lab studying metabolic diseases (obesity and type 2 diabetes), Dr. Cheng has been actively developing and implementing new pedagogical approaches to build students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills.