Category Archives: COVID-19

Pandemic Adaptations for PECOP and the 2022 ITL!

The American Physiological Society (APS) Physiology Educators Community of Practice (PECOP) and Institute on Teaching and Learning (ITL) were created to build connections among physiology educators and to promote the sharing of evidence-based teaching practices in physiology education. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 ITL and other PECOP activities were shifted to a virtual format. Virtual ITL Week included daily two-hour interactive sessions. Session topics and speakers were selected from the original conference schedule, with emphasis on topics that would assist educators during the pandemic. Registration was free, attracting nearly 500 registrants, a five-fold increase over normal ITL attendance. International educator participation was more than double that of previous ITL meetings. Long-term impacts of this unplanned “experiment” include plans for virtual components at some future ITL meetings, a PECOP webinar series open to the public, and an online professional skills training course for new physiology educators. An editorial describing these outcomes has recently been published in Advances in Physiology Education (https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/advan.00245.2020).  Please join PECOP for free by registering your email at the LifeSciTRC (https://www.lifescitrc.org) and select “PECOP Member” in your user profile.  The 2022 APS Institute on Teaching and Learning will be June 21-24 in Madison, WI (https://www.physiology.org/professional-development/meetings-events/itl-2022?SSO=Y).  The institute will engage educators in interactive sessions on best practices in teaching, learning and assessment.  Whether you are an experienced educator or new to teaching, ITL will challenge you to gain the skills needed to design and implement educational research in your classroom and learn how to share your findings with colleagues.  The institute includes plenary talks, concurrent workshops, poster sessions and time to network and connect with your colleagues.  Please keep checking the website to see when registration is ready!

Barbara E. Goodman, Ph.D., Professor of Physiology

Fellow of the American Physiological Society

Editor-in-Chief, Advances in Physiology Education

Division of Basic Biomedical Sciences

Room 224 Lee Medicine

Sanford School of Medicine of the University of South Dakota

 

When will my teaching return to normal?

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced me to shift all teaching online in March 2020, I scrambled to modify and adapt my course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) as well as my student-centered discussion-based animal physiology course to a remote format. Working fully from home I felt like I never left my computer. And I got a taste of what some of my students were experiencing in dealing with unstable Wi-Fi, constant interruptions, and a less than ideal learning environment. In the animal physiology course, modifying a flipped teaching format that was being used prior to the pandemic helped smooth the transition to online instruction; the pre-class preparation resources and the active learning materials that were already in place for flipped teaching were helpful in this transition, letting us focus on reconfiguring learning activities and assessments from the face-to-face format to the online platform (1, 2). In my lab courses, students prepared research proposals rather than research progress reports since they were unable to work in the lab and generate their own data.

In the second half of the spring 2020 semester, assignment due dates morphed into shifting targets rather than fixed goals, and other assignments were just dropped as I was simply too tired to adapt them to an online format. That summer, I spent hours and hours thinking about the structure of each of my courses, including the assignments, activities, and assessments, and what I could/would/should revise for the next offering of the course. I struggled with the uncertainty of planning for teaching in the Fall 2020 semester without knowing “how” classes would be. As the pandemic spiked in Houston and I continued to work from home, there was one key question that was always in the back of my mind: “What do I really want my students to learn and how can I help them get there?” (see 2).

Although I had requested an exemption from dual delivery for my lab courses, which were scheduled to meet in person, I wasn’t sure we would meet for class until the semester actually started. In over 20 years of teaching undergraduate labs, I have never seen students as happy to come to lab as they were last year – and none of them complained on those days when lab sessions went longer than scheduled. For most of them, this course was their only face-to-face class and they were genuinely hungry for in-person interactions.

For both semesters of the 2020-2021 academic year, faculty and students at Rice faced the challenges of not only the mode of instruction but also shortened semesters. The Fall 2020 semester was shortened from 15 to 13 weeks – students did not return to campus after the Thanksgiving holiday. The Spring 2021 semester started 3 weeks later than usual, and in-person classes were delayed until the fourth week of the semester due to a spike in COVID-19 cases in Houston. To add to this stress, we lost a full week of classes the fourth week of the semester due to a freak winter storm in Texas – so in-person meetings for my lab classes that had exemptions from remote delivery did not begin until Week 5 of the semester. Because of the winter storm, the spring semester was also shortened to 13 weeks of instruction. Additionally, throughout the spring semester there were 5 days that classes were not offered – these “Sprinkle Days,” which were in lieu of a week-long spring break, were especially challenging for faculty because we were not permitted to have any assignments due the day of or the day after a Sprinkle Day. These days with no classes disrupted the rhythm and flow of a “normal” semester for both faculty and students, especially for courses with multiple sections, where we had to stagger work and assignments over multiple weeks.

With shortened Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 semesters, faculty had less time to offer course material, and students had less time to work on projects in the lab and less time to learn content in lecture courses.  Lab courses were mostly in-person for the entire year but with limited occupancy in each lab room, which was the biggest adjustment for student teams to work on their open-ended research projects together – the entire team of students was not always able to work in the lab at the same time; whole class meetings were held via Zoom. Additional safety precautions, such as wearing face shields in addition to masks and having plexiglass dividers at the student work benches, made communication more challenging as it was harder to talk and hear each other during lab. Lecture courses that were less than 25 or 40 students (Fall 2020 and Spring 2021, respectively) were allowed to be in-person in larger rooms that allowed for a 6-foot physical distance. Lecture courses that were greater than 25 or 40 students, respectively, were all online and were dual delivery.

The Fall 2021 semester was supposed to return to normal, with all classes meeting fully in-person. But due to some problems with COVID tests for the incoming class of students, we had yet another delay to the start of the semester – and when we started mid-week, we were online only for the first couple of weeks. We have now returned to full occupancy in the teaching labs, and face shields and plexiglass dividers are no longer required so the lab environment is much improved. We continue to use Zoom for some of the class meetings as it is easier for students to share presentations and for instructors to create short course videos. Although we anticipate an on-time, fully in-person start to the spring semester, we still must plan for alternative instruction as we do not know what will happen over the winter break with the omicron variant and the infection rate in Houston and elsewhere.

These past two years have been mentally draining and physically exhausting! The pandemic definitely heightened the need for empathy and compassion in my teaching (see 3). In both lab-based and lecture-based courses, I modified my teaching to

  • Balance flexibility, expectations, and rigor: in addition to reducing the number of assignments, I established flexible due dates for most assignments with “soft” or “hard” deadlines
  • Adapt assessments and feedback: assignments were modified so students could submit them online in our Learning Management System (Canvas), and I gave them more opportunities to revise their work throughout the semester
  • Make the syllabus “An Invitation to Learn:”
  • Connect with students: I now hold my “office hours” via Zoom, which gives me more flexibility for meeting with students outside of regular class hours
  • Create/seek new opportunities for learning: I seek ways to give students more choice and ownership of their work and expand the course content by bringing in guest speakers from Rice or other institutions, either over Zoom or in-person
  • Think of learning goals more broadly: I considered what outcomes are important to help students learn how to think like a scientist and be a good citizen.

One positive outcome of the pandemic-motivated changes to my teaching is confirmation that authentic assessment of student learning is about so much more than just exams or grades! Incorporation of formative assessments that are either low-stakes or completion grades give students opportunities to engage in learning both during and outside of class. Scaffolding of major assignments throughout the semester encourages students to focus on individual components, improve their time management skills, and incorporate my feedback into revisions of their work. In the classroom, students work on both team and individual projects throughout the semester, encouraging collaboration and creativity.

Many of the adaptations I made for instruction during the peak of the pandemic increased student engagement and improved learning, and I will continue to use these approaches post-pandemic. For example, two major changes I implemented as a direct result of the pandemic in the animal physiology course were to 1) shift the weighting of exams from 70% of the overall course grade to 25-30% and 2) make all exams “open resources.”  (Illustration of Kristin Neff’s three steps for self-compassion, graphic recording by Johnine Byrne)

I realize more than ever the role I can and must play in helping students focus on the “big picture” as they learn critical concepts and skills so they don’t get overwhelmed with facts and details. I now incorporate these meta-questions into an end-of-the-semester reflection where I ask students to think about what they have learned:

  • What is one thing from this course that you want to take with you?
  • What one thing did you learn in this course that you will never forget?! How has that changed you?
  • What was the hardest part of this course? What did you do to cope with the difficulty of that aspect?
  • What was your favorite part of this course?

After overcoming my initial resistance to change and dealing with much angst about whether or not my efforts were actually helping students learn, I now accept and have even come to embrace this “new normal” of teaching, which includes both face-to-face and synchronous and asynchronous online instruction for lecture- as well as laboratory-based courses. The silver lining in the COVID-19 cloud is I am much more adaptable and confident in my abilities to change my teaching strategies when necessary to prioritize supporting students and creating learning experiences that include everyone.

As we enter year three of the pandemic, most of us recognize that our teaching will likely never return exactly to the way it was pre-pandemic and appreciate that it shouldn’t be the same as before. That being said, Michael S. Roth reminds us that “Everything Won’t Be Different” (5) and the lessons we have learned during the pandemic with regards to “inequality, connection, and compassion” should continue to shape and guide our teaching as we resume in-person interactions with students and colleagues. I end this post with a reminder that the mental health of faculty and staff is also important – for us to create a compassionate learning environment for our students, we must be kind to ourselves (5,6).

 

  1. Beason-Abmayr B, Caprette DR, Gopalan C. Flipped teaching eased the transition from face-to-face teaching to online instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic, Adv Physiol Edu 45: 384-389, 2021; https://doi.org/10.1152/advan.00248.2020.
  2. Beason-Abmayr B. What do I really want my students to learn about animal physiology? January 2021; https://blog.lifescitrc.org/pecop/2021/01/11/what-do-i-really-want-my-students-to-learn-about-animal-physiology/
  3. Schacter HL, Brown SG, Daugherty AM, Brummelte S, Grekin E. Creating a Compassionate Classroom. INSIDE HIGHER ED, December 1, 2021; https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2021/12/01/compassionate-teaching-yields-most-benefits-opinion.
  4. Roth MS. Everything Won’t Be Different. INSIDE HIGHER ED, January 18, 2021; https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2021/01/18/three-lessons-pandemic-should-guide-colleges-future-opinion.
  5. Illustration of Kristin Neff’s three steps for self-compassion, graphic recording by Johnine Byrne; https://www.lionsroar.com/three-steps-for-self-compassion-illustrated/
  6. Neff KD. The Development and Validation of a Scale to Measure Self-Compassion, Self and Identity 2: 223-250, 2003; DOI: 10.1080/15298860390209035
Beth Beason-Abmayr, PhD, is a Teaching Professor of BioSciences at Rice University in Houston, TX, and a faculty fellow of the Rice Center for Teaching Excellence. She has developed multiple course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) and a student-centered animal physiology course. She is a past recipient of the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching and the Teaching Award for Excellence in Inquiry-Based Learning at Rice. She is a leader with the National Institute on Scientific Teaching (NIST) and co-director of a 2022 Regional Summer Institute (SI). She also is a longtime judge for the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition and a member of the iGEM Judging Program Committee. Beason-Abmayr is chair of the American Physiological Society’s 2022 Institute on Teaching and Learning and is an associate editor for Advances in Physiology Education. She earned her PhD in physiology and biophysics at The University of Alabama at Birmingham.

 

The trepidatious return to in-person instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic: valuable lessons applied from online teaching using Lt in the face-to-face classroom

 

To say that the past 20 months of higher education have been a hardship is a gross understatement. The speed at which educators have embraced new technologies to bridge the pivot to virtual instruction has been remarkable.

This has been particularly difficult in courses where hands-on experiences are the norm, such as in anatomy and physiology laboratory courses. Instructors of laboratory courses where students must gain practical skills and experience the process of science found themselves relying on new (to them) technologies to fill the gap in their newfound teaching methods during the forced switch to virtual instruction (1, 4). As such, many platforms stood out amongst a sea of offerings for physiology educators.

Adapting pedagogical approaches in the virtual landscape is not a new phenomenon for anatomy and physiology educators with many successful reports providing best practices to adapt didactic and laboratory methods to online or hybrid learning (2, 3) long before the COVID-19 pandemic. Although online approaches have demonstrated an effectiveness in achieving course objectives, effective combinations of both online and face-to-face instruction must be investigated to help accommodate the convenience that online approaches offer students as we adjust to the return to in-person modalities.

Our experiences at the University of the Incarnate Word (UIW) have mirrored our colleagues in the scramble to identify suitable stand-ins for laboratory courses that still provide as robust an experience as possible. Thanks to a fortuitous introduction during the January 2020 CrawFly Workshop we now host annually at UIW in association with ADInstruments, we were introduced to the Lt suite of laboratory courses, most notably their Human Physiology and Anatomy packages. While we were impressed by the capabilities of their labs and lessons, any thoughts of immediate use were placed on the backburner as we already had the Spring 2020 curriculum planned out – or so we thought.

During the confusing and uncertain switch to virtual instruction in March of 2020, fraught with pandemic panic, we haphazardly pieced together the second half of our virtual lab curriculum relying on any lab simulations we knew of that were free and easily accessible to our students. Following this “dumpster fire” of a semester, we reassessed our future directions for what we were sure was going to be another traipse into the virtual landscape, and we knew that our Frankenstein approach would not be suitable going forward. That is when the decision to completely redesign our Anatomy and Physiology I and II Lab curriculum using Lt was made.

Beginning in the Fall of 2020, 12 laboratory activities were selected from the pre-built modules and lessons available in Lt for human anatomy and physiology that met our pre-determined course objectives for both BIOL 2121 (Anatomy and Physiology I Lab) and BIOL 2122 (Anatomy and Physiology II Lab). We used these pre-built lessons as the outline for each lab and edited the material to accommodate an online lab experience. Where the ADInstruments PowerLab stations, sensors, and electrodes would normally be used for data acquisition with Lt software, we replaced these sections with either videos or descriptions of how data would be collected for each lab. These sections providing the theory and sample protocols were followed by using the Lt sample data sets for students to complete data analysis and formulate conclusions. To help facilitate virtual dissections, we took advantage of the dissection videos and guides provided in the pre-built Lt labs that students could refer to in lieu of having their own specimens at home. The final product allowed us to replace the hands-on experience preferred in an undergraduate anatomy and physiology lab in the best way possible when virtual instruction was our only option.

To gauge student satisfaction with this new platform, and importantly to determine if the educational goals for our students were being met, a survey was designed and administered to students at the end of the semester. This was used to adjust the lab offerings and fine-tune the activities that were used again in proceeding semesters. Figure 1 shows an improvement in the overall rating for Lt where students provided scores in between 1 and 5 with 5 being the highest rating from Fall 2020 to Spring 2021 by just over 8% (from a score of 4.18 to a score of 4.53 in the spring semester). Both semesters were conducted using remote instruction; therefore, the increase is attributed to improvements made to the existing labs in spring based on student feedback.

Moving forward to Fall 2021, our labs returned to mostly in-person instruction with only 30% offered with either asynchronous online or synchronous online instruction. The same Lt Student Survey was administered as the current semester has come to an end and the data demonstrate a further increase in the overall rating for Lt with an average rating of 4.7 (Figure 1). Although we hypothesize that this increase is mostly attributed to the transition back to in-person instruction as students mostly cited comments similar to, “Visually and physically being able to carry out the experiment and dissection labs,” or “Being able to learn things in person and on Lt really helped my learning and broadened my knowledge,” when asked, “What are one to three specific things about the course or instructor that especially helped to support student learning?” This indicated to us that the more hands-on approach with the return to in-person instruction was helping to support our students’ learning.

Importantly, when asked, “If you took an Anatomy and Physiology Lab online in a previous semester, and are currently taking an Anatomy and Physiology Lab in-person with Lt, what about your experience has changed or improved?” students replied with comments such as, “Definitely improved from A&P1 lab, still used Lt in lab but in person as well helped,” or “The labs have definitely improved and the course work… I think that I learned better in person than online.”

Given the data we have collected thus far, we are learning that while students appear to prefer in-person lab instruction, the flexibility provided by the online Lt lab platform still allows for the inevitability of students in quarantine who are unable to attend in-person labs. And although we are still in a period of uncertainty and flux, we think we are finding an effective combination of online and in-person lab instruction to best serve our students and maintain the rigor expected of an undergraduate anatomy and physiology lab experience.

References:

1.       Alves, N., Carrazoni, G. S., Soares, C. B., da Rosa, Ana Carolina,de Souza, Soares, N., & Mello-Carpes, P. (2021). Relating human physiology content to COVID-19: a strategy to keep students in touch with physiology in times of social distance due to pandemic. Advances in Physiology Education, 45(1), 129.

2.       Anderson, L. C., & Krichbaum, K. E. (2017). Best practices for learning physiology: combining classroom and online methods. Advances in Physiology Education, 41(3), 383.

3.       Attardi, S. M., Barbeau, M. L., & Rogers, K. A. (2018). Improving Online Interactions: Lessons from an Online Anatomy Course with a Laboratory for Undergraduate Students. Anatomical Sciences Education, 11(6), 592-604.

4.       Lellis-Santos, C., & Abdulkader, F. (2020). Smartphone-assisted experimentation as a didactic strategy to maintain practical lessons in remote education: alternatives for physiology education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Advances in Physiology Education, 44(4), 579.

Dr. Bridget Ford is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of the Incarnate Word (UIW) in San Antonio, Texas. She obtained her bachelor’s degree at St. Mary’s University in Biological Sciences with a minor in Chemistry. She then went on to earn her Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine at UT Health San Antonio in 2012. Bridget completed her postdoctoral fellowship training at the United States Army Institute of Surgical Research in the Extremity Trauma and Regenerative Medicine task area and at UT Health at San Antonio between the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Division and the Department of Medicine.

 

Bridget serves as the Anatomy and Physiology I and II Lab Course Coordinator and teaches Anatomy and Physiology I and II lecture courses, Endocrinology, and Cell Biology at UIW. She is dedicated to mentoring undergraduates in the research laboratory where her research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms involved in renal cell injury in diabetic kidney disease. The overall goal she has for all her trainees is to apply what they learn in the classroom to ask scientific questions in the quest to become independent and creative thinkers.

 
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
Things about self-care during the pandemic that you already know but should hear again anyway.

As the pandemic begins to show signs of weakening its grasp on the world, the stress and pressures of the past 15 months continue to wear on educators everywhere. This blog covers some aspects of self-care that may provide helpful reminders to us all for managing the ongoing situation, and a call for us to be honest with ourselves about how we’re doing, to give permission to ourselves to ask for support, and when we need it, to ensure that we get the help that we need.

I don’t actually know how long it feels like it has been since I first learned we went virtual last March. It simultaneously feels like it’s been forever and just a few weeks. I do know that by the time I got to 18 December, the last day of the fall semester, I had nothing left in reserve. I woke up on Saturday morning and I have no idea how long I sat there on the edge of the bed staring at the wall before I realized it. The fatigue and the burnout had been mounting for months and I knew that my self-care had been slipping. It took about 2 weeks of intense rest and recovery before I was able to resume any sort of work and I still find myself fatiguing mentally more quickly than ever before.

I’d outlined this article talking about self-care months ago, and in the spirit of this article, will admit that it was originally due on 18 September. Between asking how I was qualified to talk about this topic as I felt that I was barely holding things together myself, and challenge that there was always one more thing on my to-do list that needed doing, that date came and went on the calendar. So here we are, at the end of another semester, but the topic is as relevant as ever. I’ll focus on 3 key areas here, and share what I can about my successes and challenges in meeting my own self-care needs.

Meet your basic needs

As physiologists, we KNOW that bodies need rest, exercise, and sustenance. But how often do we make sure that we’re getting everything that we need?

The initial work-from-home situation meant that one of my first realizations of the new pandemic reality was that I needed to make myself go outside the house or else I would spend days in a row trudging between the bed, the refrigerator, and my at-home work area. I have added a daily, recurring to-do item on my task manager, “Get outside and move!” Most days this works. I have better success if I do it early in the day, as sometimes I find that I don’t have the energy or motivation after a long day on Zoom. Looking ahead to the fall and returning to campus, my challenge will be to preserve this time for walking, running, and other outdoor activities when my daily commute resumes.

The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recommends that we get at least 30 minutes of moderate intensity exercise 5 times per week, or vigorous activity for at least 20 minutes 3 times per week. Everyone should also engage in muscle-strengthening activities at least 2 times per week.1 That looks like different things to each of us, but the trick is to find something that you enjoy doing. Or at least, that you don’t hate doing.

The average adult needs between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per night. This amount slowly decreases as we age. This hasn’t ever been an area that I’ve struggled with. I actively use the sleep management features on my phone, with wind-down times, do not disturb hours, and reduced brightness and color hue settings. During the pandemic, however, sleep has been an important marker of my stress and fatigue. As the fall semester progressed, I found my nightly sleep creeping up, at one point getting 10-11 hours of sleep per night and still feeling tired. Make sure to get an appropriate amount of sleep to meet your rest needs, and use any changes in your sleep pattern to help identify changes in your stress and overall mental health.

And finally, I know that I am preaching to the choir telling you that a well-balanced diet is key to both maintaining energy levels throughout the day, supporting your immune system, and keeping up with other aspects of your general health. On this note, I would also bring up that occasionally indulging in a favorite meal or treat can often be mentally restorative, but that moderation is key here. I’m now on my second 50-lb bag of flour of the pandemic and while most of my baking has been breads, pastas, and other staple foods, the occasional cake or batch of cookies can be very powerful in keeping me feeling like my normal self.

Tracking priorities

Someone once explained priority management to me as juggling. Some of the balls in your hands are made of glass, some of them are made of plastic. A few of those balls may be the size of softballs or even a bowling ball, most of them are going to be smaller and more manageable. The trick is to know which of your priorities are the glass balls, the ones that have to be managed and kept up in the air until they are completed. The plastic balls can occasionally be set down, or when things get away from us, sometimes even dropped. I felt bad every time I looked at my task manager and postponed working on this piece for the PECOP blog, but I also knew that it wasn’t one of the balls that were mission-critical for me to keep in the air, so it got set down or shuffled around.

To keep track of which of my to-do items are made of glass and which are plastic, I set them to different priorities in my task manager. There are lots of to-do list and task manager apps. My personal favorite is Todoist, but there are some other fantastic ones out there, including Habitica, Things 3, and others. Find one that works for your organizational style and keeps you motivated to get things done. I’ll admit that I was hesitant to move away from using stickie notes for my to-do lists, but I find that I’m far more organized now then I was with my old system, and it allows me to stay on top of my responsibilities much more accurately. Even if I do postpone some of those tasks a few (or more) times when I know that they have flexibility to them.

Take a break

I think this one is the hardest, especially during the pandemic. Work-from-home has made it easier than ever to get a few more things done since we didn’t have to commute to the office anymore. Add in the pressure of social media posts telling us how others have had time to learn new musical instruments, pick up hobbies, and engage in elaborate projects, it’s easy to feel like we are underachieving in our own personal lives. For me personally, I’ve spent more time in office hours with students and the email flow has at least doubled compared to pre-pandemic levels when the semester is in session. That feeling of always having something to do and never being done makes it hard for me to disengage at the end of the day. Not only does this lead to prolonging our working hours, but it may have negative health consequences. A new report from the World Health Organization gives new evidence that work weeks longer than 55 hours may lead to increased risk of ischemic heart attacks, strokes, and other adverse events.2

I’ve talked about using a task manager with my list of things I need to be working on; I use that tool in concert with my calendar app to tell me where I need to be and when I need to be there. As much as possible, I will only add things to one or the other, but not both. The two exceptions that I make to this is scheduling my exercise on busy days when I’m likely to put it off or get side tracked into other tasks and blocking out periods of time where my explicit task is to walk away from work and relax for a little bit. Another useful tool is using the in-office hour settings on my calendar app and do-not-disturb features on my mobile devices to help enforce no-work hours when I am done for the day.

The difficult thing about our current situation is that I don’t think I’ve said anything that we don’t already know, that we haven’t been told numerous times by others, and that we probably often repeat to our colleagues when we provide words of comradery and support to one another. As educators, we often find ourselves in the role of care givers, so it’s far easier for us to tell others to take care of their basic needs, manage our priorities, and take breaks then it is for us to follow our own advice. On that note, the one thing that I will add to this article is this:

It’s okay to not be okay. The stress and pressure are real and we are each dealing with the current situation in ways that may or may not be keeping us together. Just because someone has their stuff together on the outside doesn’t show us what they need on the inside. I love that we’re asking each other how we’re doing more often, but I fear that we’re giving the easy answers and not taking full advantage of our wonderful community for the support that it can provide. Give yourself permission to take those breaks, to leave those emails unanswered for an extra day, and to make sure that you’re getting the self-care that you need. And for those times when everything is too much? Reach out and utilize your support networks and health care options to make sure that you are getting what you need. Finally, as a community of educators, we see you, we feel you, and together, we’ll get through this together.

1 ACSM. Physical Activity Guidelines. https://www.acsm.org/read-research/trending-topics-resource-pages/physical-activity-guidelines. Last accessed 15 May 2021.

2 Pega F, et al. (2021). Global, regional, and national burdens of ischemic heart disease and stroke attributable to exposure to long working hours for 194 countries, 2000–2016: A systematic analysis from the WHO/ILO Joint Estimates of the Work-related Burden of Disease and Injury. Environmental International. In press, corrected proof. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2021.106595

Ryan Downey is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology & Physiology at Georgetown University. As part of those duties, he is the Co-Director for the Master of Science in Physiology and a Team Leader for the Special Master’s Program in Physiology. He received his Ph.D. in Integrative Biology from UT Southwestern Medical Center. His research interests are in improving science pedagogy and in the sympathetic control of cardiovascular function during exercise. When he’s not working, he spends time as a certified scuba instructor, baking bread, and playing board games.

Ryan Downey, Ph.D., M.A.
Assistant Professor
Co-Director, Graduate Physiology Program
Team Leader, Special Master’s Program in Physiology

Department Pharmacology and Physiology
Georgetown University Medical Center
Washington, D.C.

 

A Teaching Carol: The past, present and future of my teaching
The pandemic has been a time of introspection for some. The lack of places to go, people to see, and things to do has been coupled with a forced reevaluation of how we go about almost every aspect of our lives. There is also a measure of concern about what the world will look like once we exit this pandemic. Many of us who are in regular staff and faculty positions are fortunate enough to be safe and secure in our own little bubbles, and thinking about emerging from that brings with it some anxiety.

In talking through ideas for this post, my wife suggested A Christmas Carol and the idea of taking stock of my career and feelings about teaching. Where am I? Where do I want to be? Questions that we all struggle with, and questions that may have been brought to the forefront during the pandemic. Please forgive me publicly doing a little self career counseling, as well as a little license with the A Christmas Carol concept…

The Ghost of Teaching Past (Pre-pandemic):

The Ghost of Teaching Past takes the form of my 4-year Review Committee, which just submitted my letter a couple of days ago. Preparing my materials for my 4-year review, I had to sit down and reflect on both my recent work and on my long-term accomplishments since coming to University of Delaware. Before the pandemic, if I had been asked to briefly describe my teaching I’d have said it was a “work in progress”.

I was fortunate the Department of Physiology at University of Kentucky valued teaching, and that I had the mentorship of Dr. Dexter Speck (among others) to get me started on the right track as an educator. Actually getting started as a full-time college instructor in 2011 made me realize that although I was aware of what I should be doing, that didn’t really mean I knew how to actually put in practice while actually doing that job. I was thrown in the deep end, and had to do a lot of on the job learning (sorry NJIT students!). As time progressed, I figured out that I preferred to have students focus on really learning a few fundamental concepts, as opposed to conducting a whirlwind tour through everything. I began using more case studies and data in my courses, but grand plans for massive course overhauls were subsumed by the day-to-day. I still lectured a bit too much, and although I talked a lot about testing higher order concepts in my classes, we probably ended up in the border country between lower and higher more often than not. I was neither universally loved by my students nor universally despised. Somewhere in the middle of things, I suppose. But always at least vaguely improving as I learned and became more experienced.

Starting off, there was nothing in my career but the teaching. I wasn’t as involved in APS as I am currently. I had no scholarship or research of any sort. No expectations of university or professional service. Plenty of time to focus on my teaching and on my students. But then that changed. I began to get “career aspirations”. I started pursuing opportunities to be more involved in things I was interested in, beyond just the teaching, and forgot how to say no when asked to be involved in things I was maybe a little less interested in.

Maybe a bit like Scrooge, I wandered away a bit from my initial focus, in pursuit of that career. But, that is what you are supposed to do right? Get involved. Publish. Get promoted. Become well known in your field. Move into administration someday.

The Ghost of Teaching Present (Pandemic):

The Ghost of my Teaching Present takes the form of our newest puppy, Ladybird, who arrived in the opening days of quarantine. Early after we got her, she would sit on the desk and fall asleep while I taught, providing the perfect commentary on my work. Later, she would come bouncing downstairs to check-in on what was happening when she remembered that there were other people in the house, and pee on the rug at my feet if I didn’t get up and take her outside.

All summer my institution debated their fall plans, alternating between the optimism of a fully in-person semester, various versions of hybrid curricula, and being fully online. We ultimately settled on almost exclusively online, with only a handful of small and specialized courses meeting in person. The constantly changing plan made it difficult to actually move forward with preparing, both because you didn’t actually know what you were preparing for and also because just the idea of preparing for all of the potential possibilities was mentally exhausting. This led into a very difficult and dispiriting semester. I was burnt out.

Spring then proceeded in largely the same fashion, just (thankfully) without the same back and forth on in-person vs. remote course delivery plans. If this was the montage segment of the movie, you’d see the fast-forwarding of the days going by, with me sitting in slightly different places around the house, wearing slightly different college hoodies, dogs coming and going from wherever I was to see what I was doing and bark at me for not taking them for walks, and any of those days could really be any other.

This is a common story though. For many educators around the country, and around the world, it has not been a matter of IF someone will experience burn out during the last 12+ months, but WHEN. And, of course, a large portion of our ranks were already teetering on the brink of burn-out before the pandemic ever began (1,2). There are many reasons for faculty burn-out in 2020, and that has been written about extensively (3,4) – for example, did you know there is a burn-out scale? (5). For me, it was the constant time in front of the computer and the blurring of the line between work and personal time even further than it was before the pandemic. Back when things were “normal” I had a fairly long commute, but that allowed me to mentally and emotionally shift from work mode to home mode and vice versa. During the pandemic my commute has been about 15ft. We also can’t forget the overriding stress that was 2020 regardless of what you do for a living and where in the world that you are.

It was also that teaching just didn’t feel as fulfilling. I actually hated teaching towards the end of the fall 2020 semester. I didn’t look forward to classes. There was a feeling of isolation. Teaching to a computer screen full of black boxes with names, but mostly no faces. No feedback. Conversations via the chat box. Turning down letter of recommendation requests because even though I know the name, I can’t attach a face to that name, or a single interaction that I had with them. We’d gotten away from what made me like teaching in the first place.

As we catch back up, it is the middle of the spring 2021 semester. I have actually come to realize that I was starting to make better connections with students than I typically would have most semesters. Yes, I wasn’t chatting with the handful of people who sat in the front row every day anymore, but I was learning more about more of the students than I had before. And, they were learning more about me. Having the glimpse into my life through the lens of my webcam, seeing my pets and kids, all of my stuff and my wife’s stuff on the bookshelves and walls. This leads to conversations that might not have happened otherwise. For example, during an office hours appointment, one of my dogs came downstairs to bark at me, and this made the student’s dog start barking, and that led to a 20min conversation about dog adoption and training. Surprisingly, no one has said a word about the life-size Slimer from Ghostbusters that sits over my shoulder…

In class, though much of what I hear from my students is via the chat box and direct messages, I am hearing from what feels like a wider cross-section of the class. Even when teaching online there are the students who always volunteer to answer questions, but now for some questions I’ll get numerous responses all at once. I think this also helps me avoid some of my implicit biases, because I am not calling on people, but fielding what comes in. Despite being terrified to look at my course evaluations from spring and fall as part of my review process, I actually found them to be much more positive and supportive than I could have possibly imagined.

The pandemic forced me to reorganize all of my course materials so that students could largely navigate through them on their own. Since it was miserable to talk at a computer screen, I finally ditched all my lecturing and made over class time to be solely focused on working on and talking through problems, and then just-in-time teaching built off of group quizzes and surveys asking students what they needed more time/explanation. I try to be more intentional with my communication to the class, but I am still working on the whole “sending a weekly email announcement” to my classes routine.

Do I enjoy teaching again? No, not yet. But, it is better. My courses are better organized though, and I think I have gotten back on track with fully flipping my courses and being more student centered. As difficult as it was, 2020 did positively impact my teaching for the long-run. I encourage everyone to look for those positives amidst all of the negative feelings, and think about how they can carry forward to the future.

The Ghost of Teaching Yet to Come:

The Ghost of my Teaching Yet to Come doesn’t seem to have arrived yet. I don’t think it will come in quite as bleak a form as the one seen by Scrooge in A Christmas Carol though, and that in and of itself is a progress from a few months ago.

At the moment, it looks like in the upcoming fall semester we will still be online for the large class that I teach and others of that size, but moving back to in person for most (if not all) smaller classes. This means sort of a transition semester back to “normal” – but how does that transition work, and do I even want to make it?

Do I want to go back to campus? Honestly, I am not sure. But, I am definitely not as excited about it as many of my colleagues and my students. I don’t miss my office on campus, I prefer my home office. I definitely don’t miss the lecture halls that I am stuck teaching in. Of course, the feeling of a campus full of students will probably help me warm to the idea once we get back to “normal”. In the short term, I do know that I am not looking forward to teaching in person in the fall. Many of you have conquered this already, but I am not looking forward to trying to teach through a mask, or figure out how to run my new human physiology lab course with the students socially distancing.

For my big physiology course, I actually feel like I might be a better teacher online, at least when compared to being forced to teach in old, out-of-date, stadium seating lecture halls. It is easier to field responses from all of my students via chat in zoom. It is easier (at least it seems so) to have students work in small groups than it is in that cramped lecture hall, with no space for laptops, or the ability to actually turn and face each other. And, I feel less pressure to lecture since I am not spending class standing behind a lectern in an auditorium.

The pandemic has initiated a change in approach for educators – a widespread, forced adoption of technology and new teaching practices (6,7). How will the increased comfort with technology, on the part of the both teachers and students change education going forward? Now that more teachers and students have had experience with online education, will preferences shift? (8) As a parent and teacher, I’ve joked with others that there will be no more snow days because we have set up these systems to allow remote learning.

Will students want and expect more of an on demand, 24-7 approach to their courses? Will students (and parents) feel that the “college experience” is worth the extra costs associated with coming to campus, or will they flock to institutions where they can learn online wherever/whenever they want?

Or, will the future look like what I think my fall semester will look like? Big “lecture” courses online; small classes and labs in person. Many of us already taught a combination of in person and online courses before the pandemic, but will that become the norm? How much will we as educators even have a say in it?

Those are the details, but what about the big picture? As for what directions my career takes, I have even less answers. Despite the nice, neat boxes quantifying our time devoted to particular tasks on a distribution of effort report, I don’t think any of us have really figured out the proper balance between our teaching, our scholarship, our service and the rest of our lives.

May we all gain the insight of the next steps to take and emerge from this pandemic sure of our directions!

Dr. Chris Trimby earned his Bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences from Northern Illinois University, and a Doctorate in Physiology from the University of Kentucky. In graduate school he realized that bench research wasn’t the career direction that he wanted to pursue, and so he started teaching more and more. Instead of doing a post-doc after graduate school he instead took a lecturer position at New Jersey Institute of Technology, where he had the opportunity to design and teach a wide range of biology courses. Dr. Trimby was able to parlay that experience into a position at the Wisconsin Institute for Science Education and Community Engagement (WISCIENCE) directing the Teaching Fellows program. Wanting to get back into the classroom himself, instead of just mentoring instructors, Dr. Trimby moved to the University of Delaware to teach in the Integrated Biology & Chemistry Program (iBC) and Department of Biological Sciences. Not wanting to completely leave the world of helping the next generation of science educators, Dr. Trimby helped to develop APS’s Teaching Experiences for BioScience Educators (TEBioED) program, which enrolled its first cohort in 2020 as an extension of the virtual APS Institute on Teaching & Learning (APS ITL).

Citations:

  1. Alves, P.C., Oliveira, A.d.F., Paro, H.B.M.d.S. (2019). Quality of life and burnout among faculty members: How much does the field of knowledge matter? PLoS ONE, 14(3), 1–12. https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0214217
  2. Khan, F., Khan, Q., Kanwal, A., & Bukhair, N. (2018). Impact of job stress and social support with job burnout among universities faculty members. Paradigms: A Research Journal of Commerce, Economics, and Social Sciences, 12(2), 201–205. https://doi.org/10.24312/paradigms120214.
  3. Petit E. Faculty Members Are Suffering Burnout. These Strategies Could Help. [Online]. CHE 2021.https://www.chronicle.com/article/faculty-members-are-suffering-burnout-so-some-colleges-have-used-these-strategies-to-help [22 Mar. 2021]
  4. Gewin V. Pandemic burnout is rampant in academia. Nature 591: 489-491, 2021.
  5. Maslach, C., & Jackson, S. E. (1986). The Maslach Burnout Inventory: Manual (2nd ed.). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.
  6. Burnett J, Burke K, Stephens N, Bose I, Bonaccorsi C, Wade A, Awino J. How the COVID-19 Pandemic Changed Chemistry Instruction at a Large Public University in the Midwest: Challenges Met, (Some) Obstacles Overcome, and Lessons Learned. Journal of Chemical Education 97: 2793-2799, 2020.
  7. Lashley M, Acevedo M, Cotner S, Lortie C. How the ecology and evolution of the COVID‐19 pandemic changed learning. Ecology and Evolution 10: 12412-12417, 2020.
  8. Diep F. The Pandemic May Have Permanently Altered Campuses. Here’s How. [Online]. CHE 2021.https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-pandemic-may-have-permanently-altered-campuses-heres-how?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_2126204_nl_Academe-Today_date_20210322&cid=at&source=&sourceId= [22 Mar. 2021].
Spring 2020*: The asterisk denotes community made all the difference.

Spring 2020 is often denoted with an asterisk.  The asterisk means different things to different people.  For many people it means, “Things will never be the same.”  COVID-19 has changed the venues from which we teach, but not our commitment to continually improve our teaching.  We have adapted our lectures, labs, and office hours to online platforms to keep students and ourselves safe.  I am no seer, but once classes moved online in mid-March I knew this would be a long haul from which I must learn and never forget.  After submitting final grades, I asked myself, “What have you learned?  Which practices will you continue to implement to create a better learning environment for students irrespective of world health status or platform?”  My asterisk on Spring 2020 is community.

For Spring 2020 I was assigned three sections of an upper level exercise nutrition course and one section of basic exercise physiology.  Each was a critical course.  Kinesiology majors must pass exercise physiology before any other upper level kinesiology course; this was a new course for me.  The exercise nutrition course, which I taught the prior semester, includes an in-class presentation with a hefty point value; it also is the departmental assessment tool for communication skills.  Over the last several years the level of stress and anxiety among undergraduate students in my physiology courses has been progressively increasing, nearly choking their joy of learning.  Colleagues in other fields observe similar trends.  The majority of students taking physiology courses seek careers in health professions.  Given the competitive nature of the respective training programs, students are driven to earn that A.  Add to that the worry of paying for tuition, rent, food, books, computers, and transportation and complicated academic and social transitions from high school to college.  Their family expectations loom over them.  Some students are full-time students, but also full-time parents.  For first-generation college students these circumstances may bear even greater weight.  Thus, while preparing for Spring 2020 I decided to approach that semester with greater compassion for students.  This led to my forming a community of learners in each class a priority.  Ultimately, this helped me better meet the needs of my students during that first phase of the pandemic.

Webster defines compassion as “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.”  In preparing for Spring 2020, I identified aspects of each course that presented major challenges for students and represented sources of stress, anxiety, frustration, and discouragement.  I hoped to address those challenges and thereby, alleviate a source of stress.  Most exercise physiology students had not taken biology or basic physiology; thus, I had to teach them basic cell biology and basic physiology so they could better understand the significance of acute responses to exercise.  Based on my past experience teaching the exercise nutrition course, students needed more confidence speaking in public.  Furthermore, any given student might have known just two or three other students by name and were hesitant to speak in general.  I had to help them feel more at ease so they could talk and think out loud among their peer group.  We each want to belong to a community.  We value our individuality, but we are social beings.  Students must feel accepted and comfortable in class, so they can ask and answer questions within a small group or entire class.  A critical component of learning is not answering a question, but verbally defending that answer and exchanging ideas with others.  Many are afraid to answer incorrectly in front of others.  The classroom must be a safe place.  As the teacher, I am responsible for creating a sense of community.  While I did a great job getting to know my students’ names, faces and fun facts, I wasn’t helping students know each other.  For both courses I decided to include more activities that required students to talk directly to each other and become accustomed to speaking out loud.  With 20-25 students per class, it was feasible.  I would sacrifice class time and not be able to cover as much material.  So be it.  Students would master the fundamentals, learn to apply the knowledge, and have a shot at enjoying learning and becoming life-long learners.  Coming to class and learning might even become a reprieve from other stressors. 

How could I create community among unacquainted 20+ students?  Provide opportunity to interact as a class or in pairs or groups as often as possible.  I had to be persistent, kind, and patient.  The first day of classes I explained my intention was that students become familiar with each other, so that they were comfortable asking and answering questions and contributing to discussions.  This would facilitate learning and help me better gauge their understanding.  This also might help them find a study partner or even make a new friend.  I told them I made it a point to learn everyone’s name as soon as possible and would call on each student numerous times.  I made it clear that I know when people are shy; I promised to be kind and not call on them until they were ready.  Each day I arrived as early as possible and cheerfully greeted each student by their preferred name and asked open ended questions, e.g., ‘How are your other classes going?”  At least once a week, students worked in pairs to complete worksheets or quizzes; we would reconvene as a class and I would call on different pairs to answer.  I called on different pairs each time, so every group had chance to speak.  I encouraged them to work with different classmates for different in-class activities.  Initially, there was resistance, but I consistently commended them for their efforts.  Gradually, more students would proactively raise their hands to be called on, and it could get pretty loud.   

On the first day of the nutrition classes I also announced the presentation assignment and that we’d get started on it the 1st week of classes by forming pairs and by becoming accustomed to talking in front of the class.  To let them know that dread of public speaking is shared by all, I confessed to feeling nervous before every lecture; however, I love teaching and channel that nervous energy to keep the lectures upbeat.  I explained they might never get over the nervousness of public speaking, but they can learn nothing is wrong, being nervous is expected; it will become easier.  The trick is to start small.  So, at the start of every class period, one or two students would be asked to stand up, introduce themselves, and tell the class what they found most interesting from the last lecture.  The other students would give the presenter their undivided attention.  For shy students, I spoke directly but quietly to them before class and suggested that they could focus on me while they spoke.  After each introduction I cheerfully thanked students as positive re-enforcement.  These introductions also served to highlight what was covered in the last class.  Because each nutrition course class met 3 times a week for 50-minute sessions, students interacted frequently.  For the exercise physiology course, students worked in pairs to complete a ‘1-2-3 plus 1’ worksheet with questions on three key concepts from the previous lecture and one question on new material in the upcoming lecture.  They worked on questions for 5 minutes, and then I would call on different pairs to answer questions and explain sticking points for about 10 minutes.  It also was the transition into that day’s new material.  This class met twice per week for 80 minutes each session; thus, plenty of time remained even after the 15-minute Q&A.  They were grasping the integration of cellular mechanisms at the cellular and systems levels.  The time and effort to plan and execute these activities was well worth it.  Students were learning and enjoying class, as well as getting to know each other.  By late February communities had formed.  Each class had a friendly and inclusive feeling, and attendance was nearly perfect.  Even shy students began echoing my greetings or waving and smiling at classmates arriving to class.  Individual classes had their own running jokes.   

The week before Spring Break universities were discussing whether or not students would return to campuses after the break.  COVID-19 was here.  The Thursday and Friday before Spring Break were the last days I met with students in person.  I confirmed the rumors.  Students would not return to campus after the break, and all courses would be entirely online.  I clarified that I would present lectures ‘live’ at the regularly scheduled class times.  I opened the floor to discussion.  If I knew their concerns, I’d have a better chance at maintaining the sense of community.  Students were completely honest.  Seniors were sad, because graduation would be cancelled.  Students were hoping they could keep their jobs here in town to pay rent.  Athletes on scholarships worried that if the season were canceled they’d lose funding.  Others would be learning from their parents’ homes, which had no Internet access.  The most common concern was whether they would be as successful learning online.  They were worried about the lack of accountability.  One student feared he’d stop attending lectures and miss assignments; one reason he came to class was that I called him by name and talked to him every day.  Another student doubted I’d have any personality when giving online lectures; I took this as a challenge.  Students in the nutrition classes were worried about presentations, which were taking shape and now had to be presented somehow.  They were scared.  Now, I was scared for them – but had the wherewithal to not say that out loud.  One student outright asked, ‘Is this even gonna’ work?!”  I admitted it would be a challenge, in part because I had never taught an online class, and this was my first pandemic!  They laughed nervously.  What a relief to hear them laugh!  Then, I remembered my goal to practice compassion and let that guide me.  I calmly stated the following, “This is not an ideal situation, but we will make it work, and I mean WE.  I will do my best to not make this situation any more difficult than it has to be.  I will communicate with you regularly, so read my emails.  If you have any problems or questions you must let me know immediately, so to give me a better chance to help you.  It will be ok.”  That this was the last time I would see my students in person.  It was a sad day.

I took my students’ concerns into account and still made my priority community.  If I could maintain that sense of community, they would be more likely to login to lecture and learn. I kept it as simple, direct, and familiar as possible.  I already had been posting all lecture notes and materials on the university’s learning management system (LMS) and using the drop box for homework submissions.  Thus, I opted to use the real-time video conferencing tool in the LMS to deliver, record and save lectures and hold office hours.  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  I established the practice of sending each individual class a weekly email on Sunday afternoon that listed the week’s lecture topics, specific links to each lecture and office hours, due dates for quizzes, upcoming exams, announcements, and miscellaneous reminders.  The very first email included step by step instruction for logging into the LMS video conferencing tool (which had been proofread and tested by a colleague), and I attached the revised syllabus.  I kept these emails as upbeat as possible.  On the class website, I also posted important announcements, along with links to the live and recorded lectures.  I kept the class website uncluttered and organized to make it easy for students to find what they needed.  In the middle of a pandemic, it was absolutely essential to keep my promise to my students and myself and not to make learning or teaching online any more difficult than necessary. 

I continued teaching the fundamentals and worked to maintain that sense of community.  I opened and logged into the virtual lecture room 10-15 minutes before lecture started and would allow students to do the same.  I would still greet them as they entered, asked them to turn on the video at least once, so I could see their faces and make sure they were doing ok.  They would also greet each other.  I encouraged them to ask questions or comment directly using their mics or in the chat message feature.  As I lectured, I kept track of questions and answers to my questions; I would address students by name just as I had in person.  They learned quickly that they could use the chat feature to communicate with each other, sometimes not about physiology or nutrition.  I didn’t mind.  I also knew they missed being on campus and seeing classmates and friends, and they were isolated.  For the exercise physiology course, we continued the practice of starting each lecture period with the 1-2-3 plus 1 worksheet and still spend about 15 minutes on that activity; the students really valued this activity.  Because the practice proved to facilitate learning, I posted these questions on the class website, but also emailed the class a copy the day before to be sure they had a copy – a 5-minute task to keep them engaged and coming to class.  For the nutrition class, I offered an extra credit assignment, ‘Who is this?’  For one class, I had a list of 10 walk-up songs from different students; students had to name the artist and tell me the full name of the student who claimed that as their ‘walk-up’ song.  Another class had to name the student learning online the farthest distance from campus and name the student whose birthplace was farthest from campus; they also had to list the exact city, state or country and distance in miles.  The third class had to list the first and last names of all graduating seniors in the class and their career goals.  For extra points, they all participated.  It was meant to encourage them to stay connected and think about something else. 

We had a share of glitches and mishaps, but my students stepped up to the plate.  The lack of equal access to the Internet could not be more painfully obvious.  One exercise physiology student informed me that his only access to the Internet was his cell phone.  He took the initiative to asked whether I would accept images of hand-written 1-2-3 worksheets sent to me by email.  He never missed an assignment and made arrangements to borrow a friend’s laptop for exams.  A nutrition student, I will call Brett was learning from home in a small town about 2 hours from the nearest ‘real’ town; his family home had no Internet and a poor mobile phone signal.  He emailed to explain that once his dad got paid he would buy the equipment and he would be online soon.  He was concerned about missed quizzes and the respective points and missed lectures.  What do you say to that?  When you know you have all the power, you must use that power to do good and not make anyone’s life harder than it has to be.  I re-opened quizzes and sent him links to the recorded lectures; he wasted no time catching up.  Then there was the matter of the nutrition presentations.  Another lifeline.  Students continued to work together, sending presentation files to each other and to me.  Students taught themselves to use Zoom, Google Slides, and the LMS video conference feature.  No one complained.  Multiple pairs wanted to present during the same session, so they could be an audience, lend moral support, and ask questions.  The presentations were impressive.  Students were so enthusiastic.  However, my favorite presentation was by Brett and ‘Josh’; they presented via the LMS conference feature.  Brett’s Internet cut out completely on second slide; he tried to reconnect to no avail.  I remained calm; they remained calm.  They decided Brett would call Josh; Josh would hold his cell phone to the mic on his computer so I could hear Brett narrate his part of the talk.  Teamwork!  Let your students inspire you.

I left time at the end of each lecture to offer encouraging words and reminders to stay safe and take care of themselves.  I also would state that I looked forward our next meeting.  As the semester was winding down end-of-lecture discussions and questions become more serious.  Across all classes the basic questions were similar.  “Will I graduate on time?  How will this impact my career plans?  Do you think this will be over by the Fall?  Do you think they’ll have a cure soon?”  There was no sugar coating this.  I would validate their concerns and offer my honest opinion in a kind-hearted manner.  My last virtual lecture was on a Friday in May.  I decided to name each graduating senior, so the class could congratulate and applaud for them.  A student asked me to give a commencement speech.  She was serious.  I remembered what my gut told me back in mid-March, and so I began.  “I cannot tell you how proud of how hard each of you has worked and how well you worked together.  Life is hard.  It’s ok to be scared.  You have risen to the occasion.  Keep rising.  Learn all you can from this situation.  You are meant to do great things, however subtle or grand.  You will fall and make mistakes.  You will need help along the way and must help others on their journey.  It has been a privilege to work with you.  I will think of you often and wish you well.”  Spring 2020*  *Helping my students form a community, an inclusive safe place to learn, think out loud, be wrong, correct mistakes, and help each other.  That is the practice I will continue to implement to create a better learning environment for students irrespective of world health status or platform. 

Alice Villalobos, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Medical Education at the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center in Lubbock, Texas.  She received her B.S.in biology from Loyola Marymount University and her Ph.D. in comparative physiology from the University of Arizona-College of Medicine.  Her research interests are the comparative aspects of the physiology and stress biology of organic solute transport by choroid plexus.  She has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in integrative systems physiology, nutrition and toxicology.  However, her most enjoyable teaching experience has been teaching first-graders about the heart and lungs!  Her educational interests focus on tools to enhance learning of challenging concepts in physiology for students at all levels.  She has been actively involved in social and educational programs to recruit and retain first-generation college students and underrepresented minorities in STEM. 
Protecting yourself means more than a mask; should classes be moved outside?
Mari K. Hopper, PhD
Associate Dean for Biomedical Science
Sam Houston State University College of Osteopathic Medicine

Disruption sparks creativity and innovation. For example, in hopes of curbing viral spread by moving classroom instruction outdoors, one Texas University recently purchased “circus tents” to use as temporary outdoor classrooms.

Although circus tents may be a creative solution… solving one problem may inadvertently create another. Moving events outdoors may be effective in reducing viral spread, but it also increases the skin’s exposure to harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun. The skin, our body’s largest organ by weight, is vulnerable to injury. For the skin to remain effective in its role of protecting us from pollutants, microbes, and excessive fluid loss – we must protect it.

It is well known that UV radiation, including UVA and UVB, has deleterious effects including sunburn, premature wrinkling and age spots, and most importantly an increased risk of developing skin cancer.

Although most of the solar radiation passing through the earth’s atmosphere is UVA, both UVA and UVB cause damage. This damage includes disruption of DNA resulting in the formation of dimers and generation of a DNA repair response. This response may include apoptosis of cells and the release of a number of inflammatory markers such as prostaglandins, histamine, reactive oxygen species, and bradykinin. This classic inflammatory response promotes vasodilation, edema, and the red, hot, and painful condition we refer to as “sun burn.”1,2

Prevention of sunburn is relatively easy and inexpensive. Best practice is to apply broad spectrum sunscreen (blocks both UVA and UVB) 30 minutes before exposure, and reapply every 90 minutes. Most dermatologists recommend using SPF (sun protection factor) of at least 30. Generally speaking, an SPF of 30 will prevent redness for approximately 30 times longer than without the sunscreen. An important point is that the sunscreen must be reapplied to maintain its protection.

There are two basic formulations for sunscreen:  chemical and physical. Chemical formulations are designed to be easier to rub into the skin. Chemical sunscreens act similar to a sponge as they “absorb” UV radiation and initiate a chemical reaction which transforms energy from UV rays into heat. Heat generated is then released from the skin.3  This type of sunscreen product typically contains one or more of the following active ingredient organic compounds: oxybenzone, avobenzone, octisalate, octocrylene, homosalate, and octinoxate. Physical sunscreens work by acting as a shield. This type of sunscreen sits on the surface of the skin and deflects the UV rays. Active ingredients zinc oxide and/or titanium dioxide act in this way.4  It’s interesting to note that some sunscreens include an expiration date – and others do not. It is reassuring that the FDA requires sunscreen to retain their original “strength” for three or more years.

In addition to sunscreen, clothing is effective in blocking UV skin exposure. Darker fabrics with denser weaves are effective, and so too are today’s specially designed fabrics. These special fabrics are tested in the laboratory to determine the ultraviolet protection factor (UPF) which is similar to SPF for sunscreen.  A fabric must carry a UPF rating of at least 30 to qualify for the Skin Cancer Foundation’s Seal of Recommendation. A UPF of 50 allows just 1/50th of the UV rays to penetrate (effectively blocking 98%). Some articles of clothing are produced with a finish that will wash out over time. Other fabrics have inherent properties that block UV rays and remain relatively unchanged due to washing (some loss of protection over time is unavoidable) – be careful to read the clothing label.

Some individuals prefer relying on protective clothing instead of sunscreen due to concerns about vitamin D synthesis. Vitamin D activation in the body includes an important chemical conversion stimulated by UV exposure in the skin – and there is concern that sunscreen interferes with this conversion. However, several studies, including a recent review by Neale, et al., concluded that use of sunscreen in natural conditions is NOT associated with vitamin D deficiency.5,6 The authors did go on to note that at the time of publication, they could not find trials testing the high SPF sunscreens that are widely available today (current products available for purchase include SPFs over 100).

Additional concern about use of sunscreens includes systemic absorption of potentially toxic chemicals found in sunscreen. A recent randomized clinical trial conducted by Matta and colleagues investigated the systemic absorption and pharmacokinetics of six active sunscreen ingredients under single and maximal use conditions. Seven Product formulations included lotion, aerosol spray, non-aerosol spray, and pump spray. Their study found that in response to repeat application over 75% of the body surface area, all 6 of the tested active ingredients were absorbed systemically. In this study, plasma concentrations surpassed the current FDA threshold for potentially waiving some of the additional safety studies for sunscreen. The authors went on to note that the data is difficult to translate to common use and further studies are needed. It is important to note that the authors also conclude that due to associated risk for development of skin cancer, we should continue to use sunscreen.

Yet another concern for using sunscreen is the potential for harmful environmental and human health impact. Sunscreen products that include organic UV filters have been implicated in adverse reactions in coral and fish, allergic reactions, and possible endocrine disruption.8,9 In some areas, specific sunscreen products are now being banned (for example, beginning January of 2021, Hawaii will ban products that include oxybenzone and octinoxate). As there are alternatives to the use of various organic compounds, there is a need to continue to monitor and weigh the benefit verses the potential negative effects.

Although the use of sunscreen is being questioned, there is the potential for a decline in use to be associated with an increase in skin cancer. Skin cancer, although on the decline in recent years, is the most common type of cancer in the U.S. It is estimated that more than 3 million people in the United States are diagnosed with skin cancers each year (cancer.net). Although this is fewer than the current number of Americans diagnosed with COVID-19 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, July 20, 2020) – changes in human behavior during the pandemic (spending more time outdoors) may inadvertently result in an increase in the number of skin cancer cases in future years.  

While we responsibly counter the impact of COVID-19 by wearing masks, socially distancing, and congregating outdoors – we must also continue to protect ourselves from damaging effects of the sun. As physiologists, we are called upon to continue to investigate the physiological impacts of various sunscreen delivery modes (lotion, aerosol, non-aerosol spray, and pumps) and SPF formulations. We are also challenged to investigate inadvertent and potentially negative impacts of sunscreen including altered Vitamin D metabolism, systemic absorption of organic chemicals, and potentially adverse environmental and health outcomes.

Again, solving one problem may create another challenge – the work of a physiologist is never done!

Stay safe friends!

Mari

References:

  1. Lopes DM, McMahon SB. Ultraviolet radiation on the skin: a painful experience? CNS neuroscience & therapeutics. 2016;22(2):118-126.
  2. Dawes JM, Calvo M, Perkins JR, et al. CXCL5 mediates UVB irradiation–induced pain. Science translational medicine. 2011;3(90):90ra60-90ra60.
  3. Kimbrough DR. The photochemistry of sunscreens. Journal of chemical education. 1997;74(1):51.
  4. Tsuzuki T, Nearn M, Trotter G. Substantially visibly transparent topical physical sunscreen formulation. In: Google Patents; 2003.
  5. Passeron T, Bouillon R, Callender V, et al. Sunscreen photoprotection and vitamin D status. British Journal of Dermatology. 2019;181(5):916-931.
  6. Neale RE, Khan SR, Lucas RM, Waterhouse M, Whiteman DC, Olsen CM. The effect of sunscreen on vitamin D: a review. British Journal of Dermatology. 2019;181(5):907-915.
  7. Matta MK, Florian J, Zusterzeel R, et al. Effect of sunscreen application on plasma concentration of sunscreen active ingredients: a randomized clinical trial. Jama. 2020;323(3):256-267.
  8. Schneider SL, Lim HW. Review of environmental effects of oxybenzone and other sunscreen active ingredients. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. 2019;80(1):266-271.
  9. DiNardo JC, Downs CA. Dermatological and environmental toxicological impact of the sunscreen ingredient oxybenzone/benzophenone‐3. Journal of cosmetic dermatology. 2018;17(1):15-19.

    All images from:
    Royalty Free Stock Pictures – Public Domain Images
    www.dreamstime.com/

Prior to accepting the Dean’s positon at Sam Houston State University, Dr Hopper taught physiology and served as the Director of Student Research and Scholarly Work at Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM). Dr Hopper earned tenure at IUSM and was twice awarded the Trustees Teaching Award. Based on her experience in developing curriculum, addressing accreditation and teaching and mentoring of medical students, she was selected to help build a new program of Osteopathic Medicine at SHSU. Active in a number of professional organizations, Dr. Hopper is past chair of the Chapter Advisory Council Chair for the American Physiological Society, the HAPS Conference Site Selection Committee, and Past-President of the Indiana Physiological Society.

Keeping the Connection Alive During Remote Instruction
Candace Receno, PhD
Assistant Professor, Exercise Science & Athletic Training
Ithaca College

As a first year Assistant Professor, making the shift to remote learning during COVID-19 was certainly a gamechanger. As many previous blog posts have highlighted, the way we needed to look at instruction changed and forced both students and faculty to rapidly adapt. There were so many things that needed to be considered when making the transition. How flexible can our students be, now that some have become primary caretakers or have fallen ill or need to seek employment? How do instructors tackle making significant changes to their course, now that they are also dealing with similar issues? How do both groups create and participate in a high-quality course experience with fewer resources and a very short amount of time to adjust? Many of the insightful blogs posted have really highlighted how to keep these considerations in mind in order to create online courses that still meet course objectives and foster a high-quality learning experience. I have learned so much through reading these posts, in addition to numerous resources provided to our community. Through integration of these resources into my own courses, I found myself also trying to think of ways that I could keep the courses inherently “me”. Engaging and connecting with students on a personal level has always been something that I found helpful to my own teaching, but becomes hard when the mode of communication has shifted. This can also be difficult when some classes must be delivered asynchronously, in an effort to accommodate the changing lifestyles of our students. Perhaps just as important to a high-quality learning experience as shifting our instruction methods, is finding new ways to create the human connection that is much easier developed with on-campus learning. Here, I highlight some of the methods I found to be successful in making sure that I was able to keep my students engaged in the course while miles apart. While these may sound like really simple ideas, I’ll admit that I didn’t realize how important they were to the student experience until I had reflective conversations with many students after the Spring semester. With times of uncertainty still ahead, I plan to continue using these methods in the future.

1. Staying online after the class has ended.

This is probably the simplest of the suggestions to integrate, but really seemed to make a difference in getting the students more comfortable opening up over the computer screen. For my synchronous courses, I always ended class time by reminding the students I would stay in the virtual classroom to answer any questions or just to chat. I found that once students realized I would be sticking around for a few minutes regardless of if anyone else stayed, they were more willing to hang around and ask questions they might not have felt comfortable asking in front of other students or e-mailing me about. This also gave me another opportunity to reflect on how I was constructing my online course materials. Hearing what points students needed extra clarification on forced me to consider how topics that were ordinarily well understood in the physical classroom needed to be shifted with remote instruction.

2. Integrating video/audio into online discussion boards.

I needed to teach asynchronously for a particular course where students had concerns about internet availability and meeting other personal obligations, which came with completely different issues from my synchronous course. Posting notes in addition to pre-recorded lectures allowed me to successfully get course material across, but it was still missing the personal component that is fostered via in class discussion. The use of discussion boards where both the students and I posed questions to one another helped with that. Importantly, I asked students to record their questions/answers for the discussion board via video or audio whenever possible. Students continually reported that it was nice to actually hear and see one another even though live sessions were not possible. Moreover, they described how it was nice to laugh and share with one another, as responses did not have to be rehearsed and could closely mimic what might have happened in the physical classroom. 

3. Holding several office hours, varying in day and time.

Disclaimer: This may be harder to implement for some individuals because with COVID-19 comes a host of additional responsibilities and stresses that need to be attended to. But, if possible even for one day, I highly recommend it. The traditional times for which we hold office hours may not be feasible when we take into account the added responsibilities of needing to stay at home. So, why not hold office hours at different times that lend themselves to our new schedules? I found that holding office hours much later than I normally would resulted in many more students coming to them. Moreover, similar to my first suggestion, I made sure that students knew I’d be in the meeting room for my virtual hours regardless of if students signed up or not. Previously, I had always had an “open door policy” where students knew they could stop by my office without prior notice as long as my door was physically open. The new virtual office hours I held helped to mimic that. By having drastically different hours on different days, I tried to make sure that students could stop in whenever suited them. An important memory that stuck with me about this particular method was an instance when I was available at 7 pm on a Tuesday night. I had a student who showed up just wanting to talk, and stated, “I figured I wasn’t bothering you since you were on here anyway.”  Prior to COVID-19, she often stopped in to talk about how things were going. Through our virtual conversation, I learned that this student wasn’t seeking any help related to the class, but just wanted to talk because it helped things feel “normal” again. Even if you can’t hold a large variety of office hours, I truly think that doing something that helps mimic the ways you previously interacted with your students is so helpful during this time.

4. Holding “unofficial” hours.

This was a tip that I originally learned from a colleague, and adapted to fit my own subject matter. This colleague would host “unofficial”  hours, where she would sporadically e-mail students to let them know she would be in an online meeting room partaking in some fun activity. For example, on a random weeknight, she e-mailed students and said they could join in on her quest to make enchiladas. Several students took her up on that offer, and she used it as a time for the class to come together without any defined learning expectations. This gave her students the opportunity to connect as they would have previously, in a class that was now asynchronous during remote learning. She began to take sessions one step further, and would ask her students to describe ingredients in her cooking sessions in the context of her speech language pathology lectures. In an effort to take her advice and put my own spin on it, I began asking students to join me when I would participate in online workouts. It became a great way to have students connect with their classmates using an activity that we all had some interest in. With students in my pathophysiology course, I’d sneak in questions about how students felt after participating in a particular exercise and how this might impact the clinical populations they work with, giving me a way to reiterate what they had learned in a real-world context. 

In my experience, a large part in keeping students engaged was understanding that the human component to a course has the potential to impact student learning irrespective of how well we can pivot our course formats to meet remote instruction needs. No matter how it’s done, showing the students that you are still on the other side of that WiFi signal is an important consideration for all of us. I hope that my experience helps to identify other ways you might do this, and I’d appreciate you sharing your own ways to cultivate the student-instructor relationships via online methods.

Candace Receno is an assistant professor in the Exercise Science & Athletic Training department at Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY. She earned her PhD in Science Education from Syracuse University and served as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Biological Sciences department at Le Moyne College for two years. Candace just completed her first year as an Assistant Professor at Ithaca College, where her undergraduate and graduate courses include Advanced Exercise Physiology, Cardiopulmonary Assessment for Exercise, Pathophysiology, and Foundations of Human Performance and Wellness. She also hopes to continue engaging undergraduates in research related to exercise performance in special populations.

Teaching an Integrated Human Anatomy and Physiology Course: Additional Lessons Learned and Online Course Adjustments
Jennifer Ann Stokes, PhD
Assistant Professor of Kinesiology
Southwestern University

In my previous blog post, I outlined the lessons learned in my first run teaching a year-long integrated upper-division human anatomy and physiology course. It has been about a year and a half since the original post and after having taught the course for a second time I will review and add to my list of initial lessons learned. Additionally, this spring semester brought new challenges with a very swift move to online coursework due to COVID-19, so I will also comment on the resulting course alterations. As a reminder, this course sequence (A&P I and II) is an upper-division junior and senior level course at my college and class sizes are very small (20-24 students) allowing for maximum time for interaction, questions, and instructor guidance both in lecture and lab.

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First, I will review the previous lessons learned and add additional commentary based on what I learned in my second year. If you haven’t yet, I would check out the previous blog for the initial notes.

1) Use an integrative textbook.

My textbook of choice is still Physiology: An Integrated Approach by Dee U. Silverthorn. For anatomy, I continued to supplement the anatomy information, such as the specifics of the skeletal system and joints, muscles, histology, etc., through the use of models and other reference material in hands-on lab activities. One addition made in the second year was the use of AD Instrument’s Lt online learning platform.  I discuss the addition of Lt in more detail later in this post, but I think it is important to note here too since the Lt lessons directly complemented the textbook material and helped bridge the gap between lecture and lab for the students.

2) Start building and assessing students’ A&P knowledge from the ground up, and build incrementally.

Laying the foundation for the core concepts is critical to the student’s understanding, application, and mastery of the complex integrative content that this course builds. I took this foundation building more seriously the second time around and, in the end, I did not have to spend more time on the basic content but instead I provided more formative assessment opportunities. This helped the students who did not have as strong a background or understanding of the basic material to recognize that they needed additional assistance. In addition to the weekly homework assignments which were graded for completion only, I added weekly low-stake quizzes using our learning management system (LMS). At first I thought the students would dislike the extra work, but an end-of-the-year survey indicated that they appreciated the extra practice and that the quizzes helped them feel better prepared for the exams.

3) Create a detailed course outline, and then be prepared to change it.

This lesson holds true for just about any course, but I found it especially true for an integrated A&P course – even when teaching it a second time. And it is even more important when you have to switch to online delivery. In the second year, I learned to appreciate that no two cohorts of students are the same and what took the previous cohort a day to master took the next cohort up to two days in some cases. Having the “flex days” at the end of each section was crucial for concept review and content integration. These are days where no new content is introduced, but instead we review and practice together.

4) Constantly remind your students of the new course format.

I cannot emphasize this enough: students will want to revert back to what they are comfortable with and what has worked for them in the past. I constantly remind students that their “cram and forget” method will not serve them well in this course and provide them with ample opportunity to practice this both on the formative and summative assessments. In the second year I continued the individual meetings with each student after their first exam to discuss study strategies and new ways to approach this material, but I also implemented additional check-ins throughout the year particularly with those students who were struggling. I continued to remind the students that the course content not only builds throughout the entire semester but also the entire year! I hammered this point home a bit more with the addition of “retention” quizzes which were delivered unannounced throughout the year and tested major core concepts and application.

5) Solicit student feedback.

Students can be brutally honest, so use that to your advantage. A lot of the new things I added in my second year teaching this course came from the first year-student feedback. I send out my own surveys with specific questions throughout the year which the students fill out anonymously. I find that students are happy to help, especially when they can see a course alteration mid-semester which was based on their feedback.

6) Be prepared to spend a lot of time with students outside of the classroom.

Still very true, but that’s probably my favorite part of this job. Even when we switched to online course delivery the virtual office hours were busy and students took advantage of the extra review and time to ask questions. 

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In this second section, I will add additional lessons learned in my second year of teaching this course and comment on the changes made when the course moved online mid-way through the second semester.  

7) Over-communication.

One of the things I am known for with my students is consistent and clear communication, probably to the point of over-communication. I also emphasize that communication is a two-way street, so just as I am constantly communicating information to them, I expect them to do the same to me, including any accommodations, sports travel, or general course questions. I model this behavior with regular use of our LMS announcement page and I use the start of each class to review important deadlines and open the floor for questions. The move to online instruction only made this over-communication even more important. Early on in the transition period I checked in often to let them know the new plan and opened discussion pages to allow them to ask questions and express any concerns. I checked in multiple times a day using the LMS announcement page, posted a “live” course schedule and tables of new homework and quiz due dates all in one central location, and I added silly memes to the discussion boards to up engagement. I also added resource pages on the basics of Zoom and how to be an online student since this was very new territory for them (and me). Looking back this was a lot of information that was constructed and disseminated very quickly, but an end-of-the-year survey indicated they appreciated the information and that it told them that I was prepared and willing to help them during the transition.

8) More assessments. More practice. More activity.

In my second year, I assigned more practice problems from the textbook to help the students prepare for the exams and held problem sessions outside of class for review. This additional time and practice was well received even when it was a greater time commitment for the students. With the move to online instruction I was thankful that I had already established a fairly homework-heavy course as these assignments became even more important. The assigned “lecture” time was switched to virtual problem solving sessions and the course moved even more toward a flipped-classroom model. Since the switch to online occurred after I had already built a pretty solid reputation with this class (about a semester and a half) they were used to reading and problem solving before class, even if that class was now online. All homework and quizzes moved online which allowed for quicker feedback to the students on their progress and, thus, more time for questions before the exams. The switch to fully online homework and quizzes I plan to keep even when the course moves back to in-person as the quick feedback for the students and less time spent hand-grading by me is worth the extra time it takes to set-up the online modules.

9) Utilization of LMS Discussion Forums.

Honestly, the use of the LMS discussion forums did not start until the course moved online, but their quick success made me question why I had not taken advantage of this tool earlier. When the course moved online I added discussion pages with titles such as “What is going on?!? General course questions.” and “What I am most nervous about with the course moving online is…” The goal was to provide an outlet for students to ask questions and share their concerns. I always started the discussion myself, giving them a sort of “jumping off” point and an example. These discussion pages were utilized by almost all members of the course and were rated very highly in the end. Students could comment any time of day enhancing the accessibility of the discussion. I will modify these to be used in my courses moving forward for both in-person and online courses.

10) Online presence for both lecture and lab.

I actually increased my A&P online presence prior to the mandatory switch to online coursework with the implementation of AD Instruments Lt learning platform in the fall semester. My students received free access to both the anatomy and physiology modules thanks to an award from the American Physiological Society. The Teaching Career Enhancement Award supported a year-long study assessing the use of the ADInstruments Lt learning platform and its interactive and immersive lessons aimed at enhancing knowledge, retention, and practical application of the integrative course content. The Lt platform was fully customized to the course material and was used both in the lecture classroom and in the lab. In the lab, students were able to interact with a data acquisition system that is more “game-like” and familiar, while still collecting high-level human physiology data. Lt also allowed for the creation of new lessons that engaged students with the use of embedded questions in multiple formats, including drag-and-drop labeling, drawing, short answers, and completion of tables. These lessons were used in many ways: for pre-lab preparation, in-lab and post-lab assessment, and for active learning activities in the classroom. Lessons were completed individually or in small groups, and questions were set up with hints, immediate feedback, multiple tries, and/or automatic grading.

These modules were also incorporated in the active-learning lecture component of the course, providing additional exposure and practice with the content. The Lt lessons directly complemented the textbook material and helped bridge the gap between lecture and lab for the students. When the course moved fully online I was incredibly thankful that Lt was already in use in my course and that the students were already comfortable and familiar with the platform. I used Lt exclusively for the online labs and supplemental lecture content for the remainder of the spring semester. Just as before, the lessons and modules were customized by me to fit my course learning objectives and prepare the students for their new online assessments. Students could complete the online coursework at their leisure and stop by the virtual office hours for help or post questions on the discussion boards for feedback. Student feedback indicated that the addition of Lt to this course enhanced accessibility of the course content, provided extra practice and exposure to the material, and overall was rated highly by the students.  

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And just as I did before, now I turn the conversation over to the MANY seasoned educators who read this blog. What did you learn in your quick move to online coursework? Did you implement any new pedagogical tools which you will continue to use even with in-person instruction? Please share!

Jennifer Ann Stokes is a soon-to-be Assistant Professor of Kinesiology at Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX, after spending the last three years at Centenary College of Louisiana. Jennifer received her PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and following a Postdoctoral Fellowship in respiratory physiology at UCSD, Jennifer spent a year at Beloit College (Beloit, WI) as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology to expand her teaching background and pursue a teaching career at a primarily undergraduate institution. Jennifer’s courses include Human Anatomy and Physiology (using an integrative approach), Nutritional Physiology, Exercise Physiology, Medical Terminology, and Psychopharmacology. Jennifer is also actively engaged with undergraduates in basic science research (www.stokeslab.com) and in her free time enjoys cycling, hiking, and yoga.