Category Archives: Online Teaching and Learning

The Great Student Disengagement

With excitement and anticipation for a “return to normal,” faculty, staff and administrators were especially excited to launch Spring semester 2022.  People were vaccinated, students would be attending class with their peers on campus, and extracurricular activities would return to campus. However, it was soon discovered that a return to campus would not mean a return to “normal.”

In addition to the period of “great resignation” and “great retirement,” we soon discovered that a return to campus could be described as the “great student disengagement.”  Faculty observed concerning student behaviors that impacted academic success. Students on our campus have been vocal about their desire to remain at home and on MS TEAMS/ZOOM©. Classroom sessions were required to shift and were often a mixed modality (high flex) as students and faculty underwent COVID protocols that required remote attendance. In a curriculum in which all sessions are mandatory (approximately 20 hours each week in a flipped environment), students requested far more absences in the spring semester than ever before. Even when students were physically present in class, blatant disengagement was observed by faculty.  Attempts to appeal to students’ sense of responsibility and professionalism had little impact in changing behavior.

In attending the Chairs of Physiology meeting at Experimental Biology (EB), student disengagement was an impactful topic of discussion. Somewhat surprisingly, it quickly became apparent that the environment on our campus was somewhat ubiquitous across all institutions of higher education represented in the room that day. Although we shared similar observations, few potential solutions were offered.

Serendipitously, on the final day of EB meetings, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article by Beth McMurtrie titled “A Stunning Level of Student Disconnection.”  The article shared insight gained from faculty interviews representing a wide range of institutions:  community colleges, large public universities, small private colleges, and some highly selective institutions. Ms. McMurtrie shared stories of faculty who described how students’ brains are “shutting off” and limiting their ability to recall information. The article reports that far fewer students show up to class, those who do attend often avoid speaking, and many students openly admit that they do not prepare for class or complete assignments. Faculty commonly described students as defeated, exhausted, and overwhelmed.

Although specific causes of the “great student disengagement” have not been substantiated, many believe it is the after-math of the pandemic. It seems plausible that the learning environment became more individualized and flexible with fluid deadlines and greater accommodations during the pandemic. Thus, a return to normal expectations has been difficult.

It also seems reasonable that amid the more pressing issues of life (deaths within families, financial struggles, spread of disease), students are reporting high levels of stress, anxiety and general decline in mental health. Perhaps being absent or disengaging while in class (being on cell phones/computers, frequently leaving the room) are simply avoidance mechanisms that allow the student to cope.

Although post pandemic conditions have brought student disengagement to our awareness, some faculty have seen this coming for years.  In a 2020 Perspectives on Medical Education article by Sara Lamb et al. titled “Learning from failure: how eliminating required attendance sparked the beginning of a medical school transformation,” the authors reported low attendance rates, at times as low as 10%, which they attempted to fix with a mandatory attendance policy.  However, over the next six years, student dissatisfaction rose due to the inflexible and seemingly patronizing perception of the policy. This led students to strategize ways to subvert the policies while administration spent significant time attempting to enforce them.  To address the situation, the school transitioned away from required to “encouraged” and “expected” for learning activities.  This yielded both positive and negative results, including but not limited to: increased attendance to non-recorded activities which students deemed beneficial to their learning; reduced attendance to activities that were routinely recorded and posted leading to increased faculty discouragement; reduced administrative burden and tension; and increased student failure rate and feelings of isolation and loneliness.  The authors go on to describe efforts to mitigate the negative outcomes including empowering faculty with student engagement data, and training in active learning pedagogies to enhance student engagement.

As the definitions and root causes of student disengagement pre-date COVID and are somewhat ambiguous, finding effective solutions will be difficult. Perhaps the rapid evolution of teaching and learning brought about by COVID now dictates an evolution of the academic experience and the rise of scholarly projects to address both causes and solutions.

Suggestions on solving the disengagement crisis were published by Tobias Wilson-Bates and a host of contributing authors in the Chronicle of Higher Education dated May 11, 2022. Although we will leave it up to the reader to learn more by directly accessing the article, a list of topics is helpful to recognize the variety of approaches:

  1. Make Authentic Human Connections
  2. Respect Priorities
  3. Provide Hope
  4. Require Student Engagement
  5. Acknowledge that Students are Struggling
  6. Fight Against Burnout

Although we rely on faculty to address student disengagement, it is also useful to consider the stressful environment of faculty. In addition to experiencing the same COVID conditions that students experience, faculty are being asked to continue to provide up-to-date content, utilize engaging teaching modalities, become skillful small group facilitators, as well as advise, coach and provide career counseling.  It is perhaps not surprising that faculty may also feel stressed, isolated, and burned out, surmising that nothing they do makes much difference – opting instead to remain hopeful that students will bounce back.

Regardless of the learning environment on your campus, it is safe to say that now is the time to come together as faculty, students and administrators to discuss the best path forward. Collectively we can work together to set solutions into motion and gather evidence for our effectiveness. It is time to leverage our shared experiences and lessons learned over the past several years of transitioning away from and back into face-to-face classroom instruction. Such reflection and study will support teaching and learning as we all seek to find a “new normal” that meets the needs of students, faculty, and administration alike.

Lamb, Sara & Chow, Candace & Lindsley, Janet & Stevenson, Adam & Roussel, Danielle & Shaffer, Kerri & Samuelson, Wayne. (2020). Learning from failure: how eliminating required attendance sparked the beginning of a medical school transformation. Perspectives on Medical Education. 9. 10.1007/s40037-020-00615-y.

A Stunning Level of Student Disconnection  https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-stunning-level-of-student-disconnection

How to Solve the Student Disengagement Crisis https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-to-solve-the-student-disengagement-crisis

 

Mari Hopper, PhD, is an Associate Dean for Pre-Clinical Education at Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine where she facilitates the collaboration of faculty curricular leadership and their engagement with staff in curricular operations.  Dr Hopper’s areas of professional interest include curricular development, delivery and management; continuous quality improvement including process efficiency and the development of positive learning environments and work culture; and mentorship of trainees in medical education.
Leah Sheridan, PhD, is a Professor of Physiology Instruction at Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine where she serves in curriculum innovation, development and leadership. Dr. Sheridan’s areas of professional interest include the scholarship of teaching and learning, physiology education, and curriculum development.
Assessing Students’ Learning — Not Their Googling Skills! — in an Online Physiology Course

As of March 2020, when the SARS-COV-2 pandemic sent teachers and students home to figure out online instruction and learning, I had been teaching high school biology/AP biology for 27 years and anatomy & physiology at the two local community colleges for 7 years. Since I had been practicing flipped coursework for years, I knew that my biggest challenge would be how to fairly assess my students and their learning. This challenge would be compounded by an at-home virtual testing environment without any proctoring.

As I pondered the best approach to my assessment challenge, I was naturally drawn to the College Board’s 2012-13 redesign of the AP (Advanced Placement) Biology curriculum and examination. In the redesign, the AP curriculum focuses on four “Big Ideas” or broad themes covering a number of subtopics/concepts that are further broken down into learning objectives for students. The examination focuses on measuring student learning and skills using what the College Board (AP Higher Education, 2012-2013) calls an “evidence-centered-design approach that parallels the curriculum’s understanding-by-design approach.” The examination consists of a mix of multiple-choice and short-answer/free-response questions. I know from my many years of grading student AP essays/short answers that, when students turn to Google for their answers, they often fail. Students will frequently regurgitate the rubrics for grading the prompts rather than dissecting and answering the question. Subsequently, the students fail to demonstrate their own learning or understanding of the material. This is unfortunate as it is also a missed opportunity for feedback, correction and/or remediation.

In designing a new accelerated online physiology course, I really wanted the course assessments to mimic the AP Biology style of assessments. I wanted them not only to be aligned with course objectives, but to require students to think about and demonstrate the skills and concepts they were learning. I was skeptical, but hopeful I could also find an approach in which I would not have to rewrite the entire examination from scratch each term. In my search for related pedagogies, I ran across an article in the May 2020 HAPS Educator, “Testing in the Age of Active Learning: Test Question Templates Help to Align Activities and Assessments,” and recognized the name of one of the authors, Dr. Greg Crowther (Everett Community College, Everett, WA) from a previous association. I reached out to Greg and requested some more details about Test Question Templates (TQTs). What I found was a pedagogical gold mine!

The TQTs are based on somewhat general learning objectives, much like the four Big Ideas of the AP Biology exam. Students often ignore these learning objectives because they don’t know what they mean or how they will be assessed, but TQTs are formatted as input-output statements that tell the student exactly what they will be assessed on. Two examples (“Example A” and “Example B”) are provided for the students, followed by a prompt encouraging students to create their own test question following the template format.

The timing of my find was perfect for incorporating TQTs into the design of the new course. Since I am totally online, I took the time to video each TQT. On video, I present the input-output statement for each TQT and present Example A, along with approaches to answering the question or solving the problem. My TQT videos are attached to a weekly discussion board in the course management system, where students are then encouraged to work on solving Example B and creating a third example. I frequently visit the discussion board and provide feedback and guidance as needed throughout the week.

Below is an example of a TQT input-output statement and examples given to students ahead of the examination in the discussion board and used to model the examination question:

TQT 3.1. Given the chemical structure or chemical formula of an ion or molecule (chemical structure or text description), list the most likely mechanism(s) by which it crosses cell membranes.

  • Example A: See structure below left. By which process(es) is this molecule most likely to cross cell membranes? Explain your reasoning. [add chemical structure of a molecule like urea]
  • Example B: See structure below right. By which process(es) is this molecule most likely to cross cell membranes? Explain your reasoning. [add image of a peptide like insulin]
  • Example C: Make up an example (think of an ion or molecule that you’ve heard of) and ask your classmates!

In the previous unit, students had been instructed on chemical structures/formulas and bonding properties. In this unit, students are asked to extend and apply their understanding of chemical structures, bonding properties (polar, nonpolar, ionic) with their new knowledge of cell membrane structure (phospholipid) and cell transport mechanisms (passive or active).

Examinations are carefully aligned with the objectives, formative assessments and exact input-output statements given to students in the TQTs. The examination contains 10-11 short answer questions and approximately 25-30 multiple choice questions. I have added a statement on the examination for students to sign, reminding them not to use any outside resources (people, notes, internet….) along with the consequences for doing so. Students are reminded to use what they are learning in the course to answer and solve exam problems/questions. I explain to students how I will know if they don’t follow the rules.

I will admit that the new course has gotten off to a rough start. For reasons I can only guess at, more than half my students are procrastinating until the last minute to start assignments (lecture, reading, lab, formative assessments, TQTs…). This approach is not consistent with my suggestions to space out their learning, practice, or repetition of concepts that we know is so important to learning and applying the information to new situations.

Not surprisingly, students who participated during the week and spaced-out lecture segments, formative assessments and TQTs did much better on the examination than those who did not. Those who chose alternative approaches to the course material often googled their way through the examination and failed miserably. Using Google, they could identify a molecule, how it is made, and where it is found, but they couldn’t answer the questions asked.

It has taken several examinations to convince many of the students that physiology is not simply about googling or memorizing facts, but about developing critical thinking skills and a higher-order understanding of the material that will persist beyond the course. More students are now actively preparing, studying and asking more complex questions throughout the week than previously (as evidenced by the course management system analytics and student contact). Many have shown improvement not only on their overall exam scores, but in their demonstrations of reasoning on assignments and exams.

After the initial rough weeks of getting students on board, students are now reaching out via email to report progress in their learning, growth, and ability to connect the material to their work as CNAs and Medical Assistants.  For example, one young man in the course writes, “As we’ve progressed onward to future chapters I feel like my knowledge is increasing gradually and I personally feel that like I CAN do this, it has been a struggle I’m not going to lie and say it was a breeze but, I feel like I’m truly getting a ton of knowledge from these chapters, I’ve found much interest on the systems we’ve been studying especially with the TQT examples and formative questions that you help me with your feedback.” Another young lady states, “I am sorry I am not doing well. I have never been forced to study before and though the TQTs are hard I am finding that I am learning a lot and am really interested in learning more. I am glad I didn’t give up.”

In summary, both the AP Biology redesign assessment questions and the TQTs have allowed me to better assess my students’ knowledge and skills. These approaches have also given me insight into student misconceptions and helped me provide feedback, remediation, and other support as needed. I can easily write (or rewrite) questions based on the TQT input/output statements without having to rewrite entire examinations each term. Students are learning that simply googling will not let them ace the exams; instead, they are learning to more carefully read the questions and answer the questions based on their own understanding.

“ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: The author thanks Greg Crowther for help implementing TQTs and for feedback on this blog post.”

References:

  1. AP Higher Education (2012-2013). AP Course and Exam Redesign. https://aphighered.collegeboard.org/courses-exams/course-exam-redesign
  2. Crowther, G., Wiggins, B., Jenkins, L. HAPS Educator (May 2020). “Testing in the Age of Active Learning: Test Question Templates Help to Align Activities and Assessments.”
    Julie Gallagher, professor of anatomy and physiology, has been teaching at Barstow Community College (Barstow, CA) since 2014 and was a high school AP Biology teacher for 27 years at Serrano HS (Phelan, Ca).  Believing in equity and inclusion, Professor Gallagher has built state-of-the-art online anatomy and physiology courses, focused on helping all students succeed.
Flipped and Distant Multi-Section Teaching: An A&P Course Director’s Perspective, Pandemic Plan, and Transition Back to the Classroom.
Historically, flipped classrooms have been around since the mid-2000s and began as bottom-up pilot experiments in a single classroom or section of a course at the will of an inventive instructor. With a robust body of literature deeming these modern content delivery models effective in achieving student success in the classroom and beyond, many educators in the sciences have adopted this approach to active learning. However, I doubt very few decided the pandemic-forced transition to distance learning was the right time to pull the trigger on flipped classroom implementation at the course director level in a multi-section course. I’m happy to share my wild idea and the wild ride we (myself and the A&P faculty at Jefferson) have been on while we were “building the plane as we flew it” over the past 2 years.

I direct A&P undergraduate courses at Thomas Jefferson University and manage a large staff (12 faculty) consisting of myself and a largely part-time adjunct workforce serving about 300 undergrads spread across 12 sections of lecture and 20 sections of lab. Since 2019 when I took the job at Jefferson we have been ballooning with growth and the demand for A&P courses has nearly doubled in the past 3 years. I was just getting used to the new course director role, when we were all challenged in March of 2020. Overnight I went from settling into my new job, to calling upon every skill and resource I had in my academic tool bag.

This unique choice to flip at the director level was borne out of pandemic-generated necessity for a means to deliver a single series of digital content of core A&P concepts, remotely, to all students to ensure an equitable experience across sections. The A&P courses at Jefferson have historically been face-to-face only with the exception of a few “snow days” with “take-home” assignments across the Spring semester during hard Philadelphia winters. The decision to flip a classroom in general aligns well with Jefferson’s active (Nexus) learning approaches, however a flipped distant digital classroom taught in a course director-led multi-section, multi-instructor course is something only a pandemic makes one crazy enough to dream up.

Additional rationale for the implementation of the flip in Fall of 2020 was to seize the day, using March of 2020 as an opportunity to fully revamp a dated class, albeit in a very stressful crisis mode. At that very infamous time, during widespread lockdown, emergency recordings of A&P lectures over slides were the go-to tool to preserve the integrity of the course. With a small amount of course director forethought and rock star faculty teamwork, those initial post-spring break A&P II content videos were recorded with the thought and intention to not waste any effort as the entire sequence would in all likelihood need to be converted to a digital format to carry the FA20/SP21 rising cohort of students though the standard 2 semester A&P sequence.

While I can currently say from the perspective of the course director/major course designer that the goal of generating a flipped classroom that works both at distance and in person was absolutely, successfully, met.  I cannot yet speak to the experience of the faculty members who were handed the curricula and directed to teach in a new modality adopted over a short summer break in July of 2020. In hindsight, the A&P faculty ended up being tested much more than the students with little prep time, and direction to teach in a way they may be unfamiliar with, the flipped classroom, online. A plan for reflection and a revelation of the faculty member experience is in the works.

To better describe the design, active learning is implemented both equitably and autonomously across sections. All sections share the same assignment types, but not necessarily identical assignments nor the same instructor. All students must give two “teach-back” presentations where the student is tasked with becoming an expert on a single learning outcome (LO), and then “teaching-back” that learning outcome to a classroom audience of students. “Teach backs” account for about 25-30% of synchronous class time. The other 70-75% of synchronous class time is devoted to reviewing core concepts, demonstrating study strategies, and facilitating active learning activities. The active learning activities are curated by the course director with the intention that the individual instructors modify and adjust activities as they go, but have a safety net of resources to deliver the course as is.

Noteworthy, not all activities were totally unknown to the faculty with institutional knowledge when the new core curricula materials were shared. There were some upcycled former laboratory activities that were really “dry” classroom friendly labs. For example, basic sensory tests could be done at home with any willing quarantine mate. Activities requiring materials did have to wait for in person days. The future goal is to add more in-house generated collaborative work to the shared instructor pool to elevate each iteration of the course. However, “not fixing anything that wasn’t already broke” was deemed a resourceful jumping off point.

The course, now, is robust and both A&P I & II lab and lecture have run online in FA2020/SP2021. The course is now mid re-test during our first in person semester back, FA2021/SP2022, with the same content and resources generated in crisis mode March 2020-Summer2020-Fall 2020. We, transitioned synchronous lecture back to masked-face-to-masked-face in person learning in Fall of 2021 and the course is running as planned. No major changes needed to be made to Canvas sites housing core lecture content to make the shift back to in person. Courses were relatively easy to share and copy over to individual instructors prior to the start of the semester to allow time for autonomous course personalization.

The story is still in progress as we have only just begun to experience Spring of 2022. The course is being tested in another way now, with a virtual start and a mid-semester transition back to in person as the pandemic distance learning challenges keep coming. At this point I’m very grateful to say the course can also seamlessly transition with little notice from remote-to-face-to-face and back again. Collaborative drawing activities on white boards work on digital white boards with screen sharing. Paper worksheets can also be completed digitally and collaboratively in small digital break out rooms. Not every activity will transfer perfectly, but that is what makes a growing pool of shared instructor resources important and valuable. The flipped classroom does not have to be grassroots anymore. A growing body of generous teacher networks, education organizations, and professional societies continue to share and widely make active learning resources available to all and often, free.  And finally, there is also nothing like a global pandemic bearing down under uncompromising deadlines to force a little creativity and development of new ideas to share back to the community.

**Illustration by Andrea Rochat, MFA

Dr. Nanette J. Tomicek is an Assistant Professor of Biology in the College of Life Sciences at Thomas Jefferson University, East Falls where she has been a faculty member since 2019. Currently, she directs the undergraduate introductory A&P courses serving a variety of basic science, and clinical-track majors. Dr. Tomicek specializes in large lecture course, and multi-section course management and has previously done so at both Penn State (2006-2017) and Temple Universities (2017-2019). Her current work focuses on pedagogy, active learning, laboratory, and excellence in biology education. Dr. Tomicek is also an adjunct faculty member for Penn State World Campus in the Eberly College of Science. She has been teaching a special topics course, The Biology of Sex for almost 10 years and is an expert in reproductive physiology and digital course delivery. Past doctoral work at Penn State and research interests include developing targeted cardiovascular therapeutics for aging women, examining downstream estrogen receptor signaling pathways in the heart in an ovariectomized rat model of aging and estrogen deficiency. Dr. Tomicek earned her Ph.D. in Spring of 2012 at Penn State in the Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Physiology, and is a proud active member of the Human Anatomy and Physiology Society.
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
The COVID-19 Pandemic: An Opportunity for Change in my Teaching

As the 2020-21 academic year ended, I sighed with relief. I had survived the switch to an online teaching format, wearing a mask while teaching when I had to have a class in-person, and the loss of my father. But as quickly as my sighs of relief subsided, I began to wonder, “What will happen next academic year?” Will I be teaching all my classes in-person, will my classes be online, or will I have some classes or labs online and others in-person? As these questions swirled in my head, I began to reflect on this past year. Teaching online was tough. There were activities that bombed. But there were activities that rocked. And there were activities that could be improved. And believe it or not, there were some great things that came from teaching online. Some had to do with content, some had to do with skills, and some had to do with community. Now comes the challenge of choosing what I should take with me, and what I should leave behind? And as I reflected, I realized there are two experiences from this past year I want to use this year, whether I am teaching in-person or online. One had to do with the idea of community and the other had to do with skills. While others came up, I decided to be kind to myself and focus on two.

1. Forming an Inclusive Scientific Community
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, I had never taught a course online nor had I taken a class online. I had attended webinars but had never presented an online seminar either. Now I was being asked to teach courses online to students I had never met, and these students had never met each other in-person either. When I reflected on my teaching in-person, I realized I had never worried about whether I knew the students immediately or whether they knew each other. I assumed their presence in class with me and with the other students would allow relationships to form and a learning community to be built. But now they were just images on a screen and often, just names since cameras were not always on.
Now that I was teaching online, I had to be more intentional about building a learning community. This was to help not only me but also my students. Research has shown that students do not just want to be faces in a crowd (1, 2). They want to be recognized by the professor and by their peers. And as the pandemic progressed, they needed this more personal interaction. Creating a community would foster interaction and make students comfortable to share in an online environment (1, 2). To begin, I included icebreaker activities to allow me and the students to learn more about each other. And these icebreakers were not a one and done activity. They continued throughout the first several weeks of class. As the semester continued, polls or questions replaced the icebreakers. These were questions anyone could answer. They could be content questions, well-being checks, or simple questions about plans for the weekend or favorite ice cream. All meant to foster community. When in the classroom, peer interactions can be observed by the instructor. In the online classroom, it was more difficult to monitor interactions and those who were uncomfortable with group work could disappear when the breakout rooms opened.
Including these activities online allowed me and the students to feel like we were in this class together. While I was not a student, I was no longer “The Sage on the Stage.” We, the professor and the students, were in this online learning community together. When an online activity was successful, we celebrated together. If something did not work, what discussed the activity and what we could change. This community was most evident when my father fell ill and then passed away. These students I had been working with stepped up and helped me during this emotionally challenging time. While I still guided their learning, they took more on themselves, and they helped each other and me. The entire year we had spoken about grace and that we all needed to give and receive it. They gave me grace when I needed it most. Who would not want to take this community into the in-person classroom?


2. Promoting Scientific Soft Skills
With the initial move to online teaching, one of the challenges faced was laboratory experiments. Many laboratory exercises require specialized equipment (3). In my case, this was the Biopac Student Lab System®. One of the benefits of this system is that students get to record physiologic data on each other. The cost of and logistical issues regarding supervision and liability for the Biopac® home system prevented me from using this as an option. However, one of the benefits of the Biopac Student Lab System® is the free access to sample data and the free analysis software for downloading offered by the company (Figure 1). Additionally, as I had been using these systems for over 10 years, I had previously recorded student data at my fingertips (Figure 2). Students could download the software to their personal computers and open any shared data for analysis. While the students were not actually recording the data themselves, this provided an alternative for learning about physiological processes with data from subjects. This also allowed me to have the students focus more on how they presented the results and how they discussed the science behind the results. We could focus on the writing of the results and the understanding of the science because the students were no longer focusing on the possibility of user error as to why they did not get the results expected.
As I was reflecting, I realized that with lab exercises moving online that the reduction in focus on learning how to use equipment and collect data was a positive (3). This allowed students to focus on writing and understanding what they were writing. This made me think that I could expand the use of pre-recorded data to include other skills such as inter-rater reliability and statistical analysis. As stated earlier, in my physiology courses, students consistently would state user error was the reason they did not get the results they expected. While this may have been the case for some experiments it was not always the case. This is where sample raw data, whether the raw data was from the equipment company or recordings from prior years’ labs, is useful. Students can be provided with the same raw data to be analyzed. Students could then compare results with each other and determine if they were following the same directions for analyzing the data. The closer the values to their peers suggested they were analyzing the data in a comparable manner.
Another interesting opportunity that pre-recorded data provides is the ability to discuss statistical significance in a more detailed fashion. Often when students are collecting and analyzing their own raw data, there is not enough time to aggregate the data for statistical analysis. Now students could all be given multiple sets of raw data to analyze, these results could be aggregated, and statistical analysis performed. In upper-level courses, students can then learn when to use t-tests versus ANOVA, learn about post hoc tests, and p-values. As journals and professional societies recommend more in-depth presentation of statistical analysis, this can be added as well. In more introductory courses, this could be modified to focus on mean and standard deviation. Finally, by focusing on inter-rater reliability and statistics, students can further improve their writing of the results and discussion sections.
One of the reasons labs are often popular is because students get to be the scientist. I do not want this to disappear when in-person labs return. I still want students to learn how to use the Biopac® systems and record data from each other when we return to class; seeing the excitement in the students’ eyes when they see the ECG or EMG recording of their own bodies is one of the joys of teaching. But I want to find ways to keep the positive aspects of using pre-recorded data. Could this be a pre-lab activity? Could I take one or two of the experiments we do and provide the data rather than record the data? Could I have students record their own data and exchange the raw data with each other? I am still trying to decide how this might look in my class. Maybe that is my next blog?
In conclusion, the COVID-19 pandemic created a flurry of change in a short period of time. In higher education, we are not used to this quick a change. And as humans, we are typically resistant to change. However, I suggest that instead of being anxious to return to the way we used to be that we look back at this time as a needed push for some change. We should use this opportunity to see what we changed that made our teaching better.

1. Faulkner SL, Watson WK, Pollino MA, Shetterly JR. “Treat me like a person, rather than another number”: university student perceptions of inclusive classroom practices. Communication Education. 2021;70(1):92-111. doi: 10.1080/03634523.2020.1812680.
2. Kirn-Safran CB, Reid AC, Chatman MM. Peer Mentors Prove to be Strong Assets in Virtual Anatomy & Physiology Labs. Imprint. 2021:16-8.
3. Xinnian Chen CBK-S, Talitha van der Meulen, Karen L. Myhr, Alan H. Savitzky, Melissa A. Fleegal-DeMotta. Physiology Labs During a Pandemic: What did we learn? Advances in Physiology Education. 2021;In Press.

Figure 1: Image of free download Biopac Student Analysis Software®. Note you can review a saved lesson, analyze sample data from the company, or analyze data collected in the lab.

Figure 2:  Image of pre-recorded spirogram with vital capacity indicated. Values are indicated in the boxes on the top of the spirogram.

Opening image Creator: Victoria Bar; Credit: Getty Images

Melissa DeMotta, PhD is currently an Associate Professor of Biology at Clarke University in Dubuque, IA. Melissa received her BS in biology from Lebanon Valley College. After working for three years at Penn State’s College of Medicine in Hershey, PA, she received her PhD in Physiology and Pharmacology from the University of Florida in Gainesville. Following postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Arizona and Saint Louis University, Melissa joined the Biology Department at Clarke University. Melissa currently teaches Human Physiology and Exercise Physiology to physical therapy graduate students and undergraduates. She also enjoys teaching non-majors life science courses as well.
Pandemic, Physiology, Physical Therapy, Psychology, Purpose, Professor Fink, Practical Exams, and Proficiency!

Pandemic

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

Physiology for Physical Therapy Students

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

Psychology and Purpose

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

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

Professor Fink

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

Practical Exams

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

Proficiency

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

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

Closing Remarks

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

REFERENCES:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her hobbies include anything outdoors, running, amateur photography, and enjoying various arts, specifically music.
Synchronous and asynchronous experiences in Advanced Exercise Physiology Courses: what teaching tools work best for my students?

Covid-19 caught all of us off guard, but educators were hit particularly hard and uniquely. I already have flipped classroom teaching and active learning, so the transition was not too difficult for me. However, I found myself incorporating many technological innovations. Was I doing too much? Which features were helping my students, and which ones were overwhelming? In this blog, I want to share some of the strategies I used with undergraduate students taking Advanced Exercise Physiology synchronously and asynchronously.

 

Additionally, within this blog, I am sharing the student’s perceptions of these technological innovations. In total, fifty-two students enrolled in different sections of “Advanced Exercise Physiology” culminating undergraduate experience (CUE) were invited to participate in a short survey regarding their learning experiences during this current Spring 2021 semester. A total of thirty-nine (n=39) students completed the confidential survey about whether different technological innovations helped them understand the material and study.

Who completed the survey?

Figure 1: Fifty-two students enrolled either in synchronous or asynchronous undergraduate advanced exercise physiology sections were invited to participate, and thirty-nine (n=39) responses were obtained. Seventy-two percent of the responders were enrolled in the asynchronous section, and 27.78% were enrolled in the synchronous section.

 

 

Video assignment for glucose metabolism

 During pre-COVID-19 times, I would teach using active-learning team-based instruction. For the first team-based assignment, student teams were asked to discuss and explain in easy terms one of the most difficult topics for my students: glucose metabolism. For this activity, I would bring Legos, markers of different colors, magnets, and other toys; and students were asked to use the materials and make a video of the complete oxidation of a glucose molecule. This in-class, graded assignment seem to help students to understand the metabolic pathways.  I modified the project due to distance learning, so each student has to create a video using any material desired to explain in simple words (without chemical formulas). This assignment is based on the constructivism theory of learning. It makes it innovative because the students learned that glucose is a six-carbon molecule that has to be fully “broken down” (oxidated) through different stages. Once they understand the steps, they could “name” each step and each enzyme. Some students used coins, Legos, or wrote down the step while explaining the process verbally. Some examples of the submissions can be seen in the links below:

Example submission glycolysis  one and example complete glucose oxidation.

 Students perception on making a video assignment for glucose metabolism

Figure 2: Students’ responses to the question “Having to make the video of metabolism in assignment two helped me understand glucose metabolism.” 71.43% responded true (it was helpful), and 28.57% responded false (it was not helpful)

 

 

 

Incorporation of Virtual Lab Experiences using Visible Body and Lt Kuracloud platforms.

One of the main concerns for me was to maintain and increase engagement while teaching virtually or remotely. I incorporated the Lt Kuracloud, a platform for interactive assignments, immediate feedback, videos, and physiology laboratory experiences in all my courses. I took advantage of the free trial, and I used it for some assignments. I received unsolicited emails from students expressing how helpful they found these assignments.  I also used Visible Body Anatomy and Physiology, which I used for lectures. I recommended it to students as supplemental material and for self-graded quizzes. Visible Body Anatomy and Physiology is available at no cost to students as our Institution’s library obtained the subscription for all the students.

Students’ perceptions: “How helpful do you find the following features? “

Figure 3: Responses to the question: How helpful do you find the following features (from 0 to 100 being 0 not useful to 100 very useful). The mean value for assignments in Lt Kuracloud was 79.08/100 (sd= 21), and for Visible Body was 74.74/100 (sd= 24)

 

Old Reliable Discussion Board

I recently completed my training on Quality Matters (QM) certification (1), and so my courses follow the rubrics of QM Higher Education General Standards. Specifically, QM Module 1 suggests using an introductory welcoming video encouraging the students to introduce themselves to the class using a video, a meme, a photo, or text. The best, and probably the only feature on Blackboard to do this is the “Discussion Board.” The discussion board is a great feature that allows students to increase participation. After all, students are the biggest consumers of social media, videos, and memes. The Discussion Board should be the closest FERPA approved version of TikTok or Facebook, right? WRONG! It worked fine for the first thread entitled “welcome,” most of the students responded by typing to answer the questions. Nobody made a voice thread, a meme, or a video. Afterward, I encouraged participation on the discussion board by posting questions and suggesting posting questions on the discussion board. After a few “virtual crickets” on Discussion Board, I quit posting questions there and developed interactive lectures with pop-up quizzes. As expected, Discussion Board was not very popular among my students.

Students’ perceptions: “How helpful do you find the discussion board on Blackboard? “

 Figure 4: Responses to the question: How helpful do you find the following features (from 0 to 100 being 0 not useful to 100 very useful). The mean value for the discussion board was 43.08/100 (sd= 25).

 Interactive pre-recorded lectures

Pre-recorded lectures are integral components of my synchronous and asynchronous course sections. These are developed using the interactive feature in Camtasia, in which I developed animated lectures. Thus, students are asked to watch the lessons and complete short quizzes that provide immediate feedback. If the concept is mastered, the student continues watching. If not, they are redirected to the lecture or part of the lecture where the concept is explained.

 Students’ perceptions: “How helpful do you find the interactive pre-recorded lectures? “

Figure 5: Responses to the question: How helpful do you find the following features (from 0 to 100 being 0 not useful to 100 very useful). The mean value for interactive pre-recorded lectures was 79.27/100 (sd= 16.8), and for Visible Body was 81.74/100 (sd= 17.8)

 

Quizlet and Quizlet live game

Like many educators worldwide, I teach my students and support their learning throughout our virtual synchronous meetings. Indeed, this is not easy. One day, as I was finishing my class, I heard screams and laughs! My ten-year-old was having so much fun in his most favorite subject. What is going on? I asked, “it was a close one,” my son said, “I got second place.”  It turned out that he was playing a “Quizlet Game.” Quizlet and Quizlet live have been used by teachers and students to reinforce learned material. I decided to try it, and I created a teacher profile to play games during the remote lectures. Every class, I started a Quizlet game; students use their phones or computers to play a race (team and individual). They play a “race” at the beginning of the class and again at the end of the class. This low-risk activity provides me with important information about misconceptions or concepts that are not mastered yet. Students play again towards the end of the class. This simple activity takes 10 minutes of instruction (5 minutes each “race”). However, it has been proven to be both helpful and fun for the students. Quizlet live was used only in my synchronous classes, but the Quizlet study sets were available to both synchronous and asynchronous sections.

I used this with graduate students enrolled in Human Physiology in the previous semester, and it was a hit! Students loved it, and class after class, this became very competitive. Not only were my students very well prepared for class, but also the competition made it so much fun!

Similar to Quizlet are such programs as Kahoot, Brainscape,  and others that are available for free or very affordable options.

Students’ perceptions: “How helpful do you find Quizlet study sets and Quizlet live? “

Figure 6: Responses to the question: How helpful do you find the following features (from 0 to 100 being 0 not useful to 100 very useful). The mean value for Quizlet sets was 76.86/100 (sd= 24), and for Quizlet live was 68.31/100 (sd= 28). One limitation is that most responders were students in the asynchronous section who did not participate in Quizlet live games.

 

MS Teams meetings and/or virtual office hours

 I chose Microsoft Teams (MS) for my virtual meetings simply because it is widely adopted at my Institution, and I prefer to keep it simple for students. For my synchronous section, I used a flipped virtual model, in which we meet once per week, and the other day they work on their own on assignments. I did this to avoid screen burnout students in the synchronous section. However, I have been happily surprised with students attending remote classes and the various office hours I provide. Yes, I do provide different office hours; very much this semester, I made every space available on my calendar as extra office hours. I realize that for many, meeting online for “virtual office hours” is more accessible to them (and perhaps less intimidating) than attending office hours in my office, as we did pre-pandemic.

Why did I offer so many office hours? First of all, because I could. Since I can’t conduct research studies with humans during the pandemic, it freed some time I had set aside for data collection to teaching.

Additionally, not driving to and from campus saved me an average of 75 minutes per day, which allowed me to have another office hour option. In reality, I did not use all these hours in meetings with students. Many times nobody needed to meet. However, there were a couple of times in which I’d meet with a student who was struggling. Not with the class or the content. But struggling with life, some students had somebody close to them sick or dying; some lost their job or financial aid, some were working exceptionally long hours as essential workers. For some, isolation was too much. One student, in particular, told me recently, “I do not have any questions today; I just needed some social interaction.” Flexible and various virtual office hours seemed beneficial for students, particularly for those in asynchronous e-learning experiences.

Students’ perceptions: “How helpful do you find the MS Teams meetings and virtual office hours? “

 

Figure 7: Responses to the question: How helpful do you find the following features (from 0 to 100 being 0 not useful to 100 very useful). The mean value for MS Teams and Virtual Office Hours was 75.86/100 (sd= 21).

 

 

 Conclusions

 Like most higher education instructors, I had to adapt quickly and shift to e-learning due to the pandemic. Fortunately, I had already taught online several times before and introduced several components to my flipped courses. However, I still struggled to find more interactive ways to keep my students engaged. Not only educators have to deal with the mental exhaustion of finding pedagogical tools that work in this new scenario when we have not had the time to produce evidence-based successful approaches to teaching remotely. But also, we are teaching distraught students. From the scarce but rapidly growing literature, we know that “our college students are currently struggling to stay hopeful and positive in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic” (2). When asked about their feelings during the transition to virtual classes, students reported that they felt “uncertain” (59.5%), “anxious” (50.7%), “nervous” (41.2%), and “sad” (37.2%). (3) We have to teach students that are dealing with a lot of negative emotions and stress. We, educators, are also living with many of those emotions. My goal with this blog was to share some of my experiences teaching virtually and provide some ideas for any physiology educator that may need them.

References

Standards from the Quality Matters Higher Education Rubric, Sixth Edition. Quality Matters. Retrieved from Specific Review Standards from the QM Higher Education Rubric, Sixth Edition

  • Munsell, S. E., O’Malley, L. & Mackey, C. (2020). Coping with COVID. Educational Research: Theory and Practice, 31(3), 101-109.
  • Murphy, L., Eduljee, N. B., Croteau, K. College Student Transition to Synchronous Virtual Classes during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Northeastern United States. Pedagogical Research,5(4), em0078. https://doi.org/10.29333/pr/8485
Dr. Terson de Paleville teaches Advanced Exercise Physiology, Neuromuscular Exercise Physiology, and Human Physiology courses. Her research interests include motor control and exercise-induced neuroplasticity. In particular, Dr. Terson de Paleville has investigated the effects of activity-based therapy on respiratory muscles and trunk motor control after spinal cord injury. Additional research project involves the assessment of the effects of exercise training in elementary and middle school students on balance, visual efficiency, motor proficiency, motor control and behavior in the classroom and at home. Dr. Terson de Paleville is interested in elucidating any links between physical activity and academic skills and performance.

 

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].
Poster sessions: not just for Experimental Biology

At the University of Minnesota, we teach a large physiology lecture/lab class directed at nursing and other allied health focused students. Around week 12 or 13 of a 14-week semester, we host a lab exercise we call “Project Day.”  In this lab, students choose a learning objective, from one of the class sessions previously during the semester, and develop a way to teach this learning objective to their student peers.  Students can make a poster, a work of art or a model.  They can compose a song, write a poem or record a video.  The sky is the limit as long as the project relates to a course objective, emphasizes physiology rather than anatomy and demonstrates a good faith effort.

After more than 15 years of project days, I have experienced an amazing variety of topics and approaches.  I heard about the cardiac cycle in a song called “It’s how your heart works” sung by the Lady Lub Dubs.  Cookies can be primary and secondary active transport proteins and M & Ms can be Na and K ions.  A beaded bracelet can illustrate the phases of the menstrual cycle. Students can learn about renal physiology by playing a game called “Kidney Land.” Lady Gaga’s song, “Poker Face”, can be turned into a parody about the SRY gene. Pipe cleaners can be converted into contractile apparatus. Beer caps can be calcium ions.  The functions of the autonomic nervous system can be dramatized in a play in which Mr. Sympathetic and Mrs. Parasympathetic are in divorce court because they cannot agree on anything.

Over the years, what I have enjoyed the most were the poster presentations.  A song or a video can be a one-way performance but the posters spark interactions. Students stand by their posters during half the class, the TAs and the faculty circulate around the lab rooms.  At the half way point we call “Switch” and the second half of students present as the first presenters circulate. The beauty of project day is the conversations sparked by all those posters.  Conversations about the difference between negative and positive feedback, the difference between skeletal and smooth muscle, the difference between graded potentials and action potentials and the difference between steroid and peptide hormones.

During Project Day, the lab is brimming with enthusiastic questions.

·         Do both cardiac and skeletal muscles have troponin? 

·         Are gamma motor neurons involved in the stretch reflex?

·         Can you help me understand why norepinephrine stimulates the heart but inhibits the intestines?

·         When does the menstrual cycle go from negative feedback to positive feedback?

·         Why do you need a bigger stimulus during the relative refractory period?

·         Are you telling me that T3 works just like the steroids?  How did I not know that?

As I circulated through the lab, I often asked, “why did you choose this topic?”

Sometimes students would say, “I picked this topic because I already knew it and felt confident about it”.  Through my smile, I felt a twinge of sadness that the student decided to play it safe.  More often, a student would say, “Well because I didn’t understand it and I wanted to.”  Or they might say, “I got this wrong on the last exam and I want to make sure I get it right on the final.”

My next question was, “Do you understand it now?”  A beaming smile would show me their answer.

At the end of the lab, we ask the students to engage in a metacognition exercise.  After viewing the posters and other projects we ask, “Can you list three concepts that are still “muddy” for you?  Are there three concepts that you realize you need to study more for the final?”  We ask the students to write down those three concepts and then we ask them to promise that they will intentionally include those three concepts in their studying for the cumulative final exam.

During the Spring of 2020, we suddenly had to switch gears.  The students submitted videos or PowerPoint slides of their projects.  They were posted on the learning management site and students were invited to view them.  Unfortunately, Project Day was not the same. We were missing a vital component……….the conversation! 

What will we do this semester?  We are going to ask the students to make a poster and take a picture of it or craft a poster from one power point slide to present on Zoom (https://zoom.us/).  The students will be sent to breakout rooms and given the ability to share their posters.  TA will be assigned to break out rooms to coordinate the poster presentations of the students.  We are thinking about groups of 8-10 students.  With 5-minute presentations and 5 minutes of questions for each poster, it should take 40-50 minutes.  We will scramble the groups and have them present again. We will grade based on a simple rubric: did it address a learning objective, did it emphasize physiology, was it a good faith effort.

I can imagine that a poster session in zoom breakout sessions could lend themselves to a number of presentation types.  Students could present on famous physiologists, on their own lab work or on a pathophysiologic application of a physiologic concept.  Instructors could adjust their grading rubrics accordingly to meet their specific learning outcomes.

This activity would not have to be done synchronously either.  Students could record a 5-minute presentation of their poster using a software called Flipgrid (https://info.flipgrid.com/). Students could upload their poster into Flipgrid, record their video and view the videos of others.   This software then permits students to post a video response or question.  Students could post a video, comment on 4 other videos and then return to record follow up videos, answering the questions of their peers about their own projects.  This would make a great final project in a lab or a class. 

Synchronous or asynchronous, the important element is that student poster sessions get students talking. As our friend Mary Pat Wenderoth often says, “The students who are doing the talking are the students who are doing the learning.” 

Lisa Carney Anderson is an Associate Professor and Director of Education in the Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology at the University of Minnesota. She completed her doctoral training in muscle physiology at the University of Minnesota. She directs the first year medical physiology course. She also teaches nurse anesthesia students, dental students and undergraduates. She is the 2012 recipient of the Didactic Instructor of the Year Award from the American Association of Nurse Anesthesia.  She co-authored a physiology workbook called Cells to Systems: Critical thinking exercises in Physiology, Kendall Hunt Press. Dr. Anderson’s teaching interests include encouraging active learning through retrieval and assessment of student reflection.  She serves on APS Teaching Section Steering Committee as Secretary.