Tag Archives: classroom

How do you feel about sharing with the world? The Open Educational Resources (OER) phenomenon.

Joann May Chang, PhD
Professor of Biology & Director for the Center for Instructional Excellence at Arizona Western College
Yuma, Arizona

I recently attended a training on Open Educational Resources (OER) and what it truly means to offer an OER course. What is an OER course? If you offer a course that uses an e-text with other content found on the web to supplement without costing the student any money, this would be defined as being free of costs and not truly an OER course. Why? That leads to the key question Matthew Bloom, OER Coordinator for Maricopa Community Colleges, posed to our group during the training: “How do you feel about sharing with the world?”

OER has become a prominent topic in higher education to save students on textbook costs, but also a movement in building high quality accessible teaching materials for educators without being tied to a publishing company. In a 2017 blog post by Chris Zook, he provided infographics of data associated with the increase in textbook prices that have outpaced inflation, medical services, and even new home costs. [attached graphic 1 & 2] As Chris Zook also noted, community college students are two times more likely to purchase textbooks with their financial aid than four-year college students which increases their financial burden to complete their degree. When faculty build OER courses, they can decrease this burden and share their course content with others who are working towards giving equal access to higher education.

OER is at the forefront of Arizona Western College because it is an integral part of our institution’s strategic planning goals to make higher education more accessible for our student population where the average yearly salary is only $38,237. We are a year into this goal with our first formal OER training taking place in June 2019. When Matthew first asked us if we share our teaching materials, most of us said “Sure! We share with our colleagues often.” But then he followed that up with “How willing are you to share your developed content with the world?” And that is the difference between a free versus an OER course. If a faculty member develops open course content and licenses it under the Creative Commons License, the material can be retained, reused, revised, remixed, and redistributed (known as the 5R activities) by others. The creator of the open content can control how their material is used with the different Creative Commons licenses. [Creative Commons License gif] With the shared content, the OER movement aims to provide quality teaching materials that can be used in an open creative and collaborative manner while benefitting students in reducing textbook costs.

I did not realize the importance of Matthew’s question until I started my search for OER content with Creative Commons Licensing for our OER transitioning Anatomy and Physiology courses. We will be using the OpenStax A & P textbook starting this Fall and even though Matthew gave us some good starting points to search for open resources that follow the 5R activities, it has been difficult finding pictures and diagrams that can be used in lecture and activities. I have been able to find various posts to labs, power point slides, videos, and open textbooks that can be used for A&P. The most common issue is the lack of quality science pictures or diagrams offered as open content, which I have also heard is a problem from other colleagues transitioning to OER.

So, here’s my challenge question for you: Are you willing to share your developed content, pictures, and diagrams with the world? If you are, please license them and share so that you can be a part of this OER movement and others can also collaborate and build that open content. Ultimately, this is about the ability to be inclusive and provide quality higher education for our students without burdening them with textbook costs.

If you are interested in this OER movement and are looking for information or content, please check out the following resources:

Merlot
Oasis
Community College Consortium for OER (CCCOER)
OpenStax
Wikimedia Commons
Google Images – Use Tools to filter by usage rights

This list is in no way inclusive. There are many other resources out there, they just take time to find and to search through. I hope more of the scientific community takes part in this OER movement and can provide more resources for everyone to use or collaborate on. It truly makes a difference to our students and their education.

Joann Chang, Ph.D. is a Professor of Biology and the Director for the Center for Instructional Excellence at Arizona Western College (AWC), a community college in Yuma, Arizona. She currently manages the professional development for AWC and teaches A&P and Introduction to Engineering Design. When she’s not teaching or directing, she is keeping up with her twin daughters, son, husband, three cats and one dog. On her spare time, she is baking delicious goodies for her friends and family.

The Benefits of Learner-Centered Teaching

Jaclyn E. Welles
Cell & Molecular Physiology PhD Candidate
Pennsylvania State University – College of Medicine

In the US, Students at Still Facing Struggles in the STEMs

Literacy in the World Today:
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), there are approximately 250 million individuals worldwide, who cannot read, write, or do basic math, despite having been in school for a number of years (5, 8). In fact, UNESCO, is calling this unfortunate situation a “Global Learning Crisis” (7). The fact that a significant number of people are lacking in these fundamental life skills regardless of attending school, shows that part of the problem lies within how students are being taught.

Two Main Styles of Teaching – Learner or Teacher-Centered

Learning and Teaching Styles:
It was due to an early exposure to various education systems that I was able to learn of that there were two main styles of teaching – Learner-centered teaching, and Teacher-centered teaching (2). Even more fascinating, with the different styles of teaching, it has become very clear that there are also various types of learners in any given classroom or lecture setting (2, 6, 10). Surprisingly however, despite the fact that many learners had their own learning “modularity” or learning-style, instructors oftentimes taught their students in a fixed-manner, unwilling or unable to adapt or implement changes to their curriculum. In fact, learner-centered teaching models such as the “VARK/VAK – Visual Learners, Auditory Learners and Kinesthetic Learners”, model by Fleming and Mills created in 1992 (6), was primarily established due to the emerging evidence that learners were versatile in nature.

VARK Model of Learners Consists of Four Main Types of Learners: Visual, Auditory, Reading and Writing, and Tactile/Kinesthetic (touch)

What We Can Do to Improve Learning:
The fundamental truth is that when a student is unable to get what they need to learn efficiently, factors such as “learning curves” – which may actually be skewing the evidence that students are struggling to learn the content, need to be implemented (1, 3). Instead of masking student learning difficulties with curves and extra-credit, we can take a few simple steps during lesson-planning, or prior to teaching new content, to gauge what methods will result in the best natural overall retention and comprehension by students (4, 9). Some of methods with evidence include (2, 9):

Concept Maps – Students Breakdown the Structure or Organization of a Concept
Concept Inventories – Short Answer Questions Specific to a Concept
Self-Assessments – Short Answer/Multiple Choice Questions
Inquiry-Based Projects – Students Investigate Concept in a Hands-On Project

All in all, by combining both previously established teaching methodologies with some of these newer, simple methods of gauging your students’ baseline knowledge and making the necessary adjustments to teaching methods to fit the needs of a given student population or class, you may find that a significant portion of the difficulties that can occur with students and learning such as – poor comprehension, retention, and engagement, can be eliminated (4, 9) .

Jaclyn Welles is a PhD student in Cellular and Molecular Physiology at the Pennsylvania State University – College of Medicine. She has received many awards and accolades on her work so far promoting outreach in science and education, including the 2019 Student Educator Award from PSCoM.

Her thesis work in the lab of Scot Kimball, focuses on liver physiology and nutrition; mainly how nutrients in our diet, can play a role in influencing mRNA translation in the liver.

Embracing the Instability of Positive Feedback Loops

Feedback loops are a physiology professor’s bread and butter. From blood sugar to body temperature, negative feedback ensures that no physiological variable strays from its set point (or range) and that homeostasis is maintained. Positive feedback loops, on the other hand, are inherently unstable. In these loops, the response elicited by a stimulus drives the variable further from its set point, reinforcing the stimulus rather than reducing it, and continuing until some outside influence intervenes¹. The classic physiological example of positive feedback is childbirth – pressure from the baby on the mother’s uterus and cervix triggers the release of the hormone oxytocin, which triggers uterine muscle contractions that further push the baby toward the cervix. This loop of pressure, oxytocin release, and contractions continues until an intervening event occurs – the delivery of the baby.

While physiological positive feedback loops are fascinating, they are greatly outnumbered by negative feedback loops; thus, they don’t usually get much attention in our physiology classrooms. We usually tell students that the instability of positive feedback loops is what makes them so uncommon. However, I’d like to use my platform here to argue for a larger place for positive feedback loops in not just our physiology courses, but all of our courses.

Positive Feedback Loop Learning

I mentioned above that positive feedback loops are inherently unstable because they drive variables further from their set points, so you may be thinking, “why would I ever want my classroom to be unstable?” Imagine it this way: in this feedback loop, the stimulus is an idea, concept, or problem posed by the instructor. The response is the student’s own investigation of the stimulus, which hopefully sparks further curiosity in the student about the topic at hand, and drives him or her toward more investigation and questioning. Granted, this system of learning could certainly introduce some instability and uncertainty to the classroom. Once sparked, the instructor does not have control over the student’s curiosity, which may take the student outside of the instructor’s area of expertise. However, I maintain that this instability actually enriches our classroom by giving students the space to think critically.

Why Encourage Positive Feedback Loops?

Though often misattributed (or even misquoted), Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (poet, essayist, physician, and father of US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.) once wrote “Every now and then a man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.”² Neuroscience research supports this assertion. In rodents, exposure to novel stimuli in enriched environments enhances neuronal long-term potentiation, the cellular correlate of learning and memory in the brain³. Human brains both functionally and structurally reorganize upon learning new information. A magnetic resonance imaging study examined gray matter volume in the brains of German medical students who were studying for their “Physikum,” an extensive exam covering biology, chemistry, biochemistry, physics, human anatomy, and physiology⁴. Brain scans taken 1-2 days after the Physikum demonstrated significantly increased gray matter volume in the parietal cortex and hippocampus compared to baseline scans taken 3 months prior to the exam (and prior to extensive exposure to new information during the study period)⁴. Thus, while the brain may not literally be “stretched” by new ideas, as Holmes proposed, the process of learning (acquisition, encoding, and retrieval of new information) certainly reshapes the brain.

In the model I’ve presented above, new ideas, concepts, and questions are the stimuli in our positive feedback loop. These stimuli promote changes in our student’s brains. And, if these stimuli spark curiosity, these brain changes (and thus learning) will be amplified as students respond – meaning, as they construct new ideas, concepts, and questions based on their own interests. Thus, the loop feeds into itself.

Designing Stimuli That Elicit Positive Feedback

How can we structure our teaching so that the stimulus we present to our students is strong enough to elicit a response? First, it is crucial that our stimuli elicit curiosity in our students. In his essay surveying recent research on the role of curiosity in academic success, David Barry Kaufman wrote, “Stimulating classroom activities are those that offer novelty, surprise, and complexity, allowing greater autonomy and student choice; they also encourage students to ask questions, question assumptions, and achieve mastery through revision rather than judgment-day-style testing.”⁵ Project-based learning, a teaching technique focused on extended engagement with a problem or task as a means of constructing knowledge, checks many of Kaufman’s boxes⁶. As an example, in the past two iterations of my Physiology course, my students have participated in the “Superhero Physiology Project” in which they develop interactive lesson plans for middle school students. Based on the work of E. Paul Zehr, Ph.D. (author of Becoming Batman: The Possibility of Superhero⁷ and multiple APS Advances in Physiology Education articles), my students choose a superhero to base their lesson upon, and work over the course of several weeks to create interactive, hands-on activities to teach kids about a physiological system. While I give my students feedback on the plausibility of their ideas (within our time and budgetary constraints), I leave much of the structure of their lessons open so that they have the opportunity to work through the complexities that come with keeping 20 or more middle schoolers engaged. Often, my students tell me that figuring out the best way to communicate physiological concepts for a young audience encouraged them to go beyond our textbook to search for new analogies and real-life examples of physiology to which middle schoolers could relate.

Another way to design stimuli that elicit curiosity and positive feedback learning is by capitalizing on a student’s naiveté. In this approach, described by education expert Kimberly Van Orman of the University of Albany in The Chronicle of Higher Education⁸, “students don’t need to know everything before they can do anything” – meaning, curiosity is most easily sparked when possibilities aren’t limited by your existing knowledge, because you don’t have any! For me, this approach is somewhat difficult. Like all instructors, I regularly feel the pressure to ensure we “get through the material” and often plow through concepts too quickly. However, my physiology students last fall showed me the power of the “naïve task” firsthand when I observed the Superhero Physiology lesson⁹ they gave at the middle school. They decided that before teaching the middle schoolers any physiological terms or concepts didactically, they would present them with a hands-on experiment to introduce the concepts of stroke volume and vasoconstriction. Their rationale and approach (below) illustrate their mastery of using naiveté to spark curiosity.

Rationale:

The students should be provided with very little, if any, background information on the heart models and the reasoning behind the varying sizes of the materials. By providing little information up front, we hope to intrigue their curiosity regarding the lesson and its significance. Students will be told what to do with the instruments; however, they will not receive any advice on which instruments to use.

The Experiment:

Divide the class into two groups (within each group there should be 4-5 “holders” for the tubes and 4-5 “pumpers” managing water and pipets). Group 1 will be given large diameter tubing, a large funnel as well as 3 large volume pipettes. Group 2 will receive smaller tubing, a smaller funnel and only one smaller volume pipet.
Instruct the students that they will be transporting the water from a large bucket into another bucket 8-10 feet across the room without moving the bucket.
The groups will have 10 minutes to construct their apparatus, and 5 minutes for the actual head-to-head “race” in which the winner is determined by who moves the most amount of water in the allotted time.
After the students have completed the first experiment they will return to their seats for the lecture portion of the lesson which will connect the different parts of the build to different portions of the cardiovascular system.

Not only did the middle school students have a fantastic time building their apparatus (and accidentally on purpose getting each other wet!), but as the experiment progressed, they began to get curious about why the other team was so behind or ahead. Soon after, discussions between groups about tubing diameter and pipet size emerged organically among the middle schoolers, and they were able to easily apply these concepts to later discussions of blood flow and cardiac output.

Embracing Instability

While I think most educators aspire to elicit positive feedback learning in their students, there can be barriers to putting it into practice. As I mentioned above, pressure to cover content results in some of us shying away from open-ended activities and projects. Not all students in a given class will come in with the same motivations for learning (as discussed in Dr. Ryan Downey’s December 2018 PECOP Blog post¹⁰), nor will they all respond to the same stimuli with curiosity. However, it just takes one stimulus to put a positive feedback loop into action – and once it gets going, it’s hard to stop. Once a student’s curiosity is piqued, the classroom may feel a bit unstable as their interests move out of the realm of your expertise as an instructor. But ultimately, we all as educators live for that moment when a connection crystallizes in a student’s mind and they discover a new question they can’t wait to answer.

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Wabash students James Eaton, Sam Hayes, Cheng Ge, and Hunter Jones for sharing an excerpt of their middle school lesson.

References

¹ Silverthorn DU. (2013). Human physiology, an integrated approach (6^th Ed.). Pearson.

²Holmes OW. (1858). The autocrat of the breakfast-table. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company.

³ Hullinger R, O’Riordan K, Burger C. (2015). Environmental enrichment improves learning and memory and long-term potentiation in young adult rats through a mechanism requiring mGluR5 signaling and sustained activation of p70s6k. Neurobiol Learn Mem 125:126-34.

⁴Draganski B, Gaser C, Kempermann G, Kuhn HG, Winkler J, Büchel C, May A. (2006). Temporal and spatial dynamics of brain structure changes during extensive learning. J Neurosci 26(23):6314-17.

⁵Kaufman,SB. (2017, July 24). Schools are missing what matters about learning. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/07/the-underrated-gift-of-curiosity/534573/

⁶What is PBL? (n.d.) Retrieved from https://www.pblworks.org/what-is-pbl

⁷Zehr, EP. (2008). Becoming Batman: the possibility of a superhero. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

⁸ Supiano, B. (2018, June 7). How one teaching expert activates students’ curiosity. Retrieved from https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-One-Teaching-Expert/243609

⁹ Eaton J, Hayes S, Ge C, Jones H. (2018). Superhero cardio: the effects of blood vessel diameter, stroke volume, and heart rate on cardiac output. Unpublished work, Wabash College, Crawfordsville, IN.

¹⁰Downey, R. (2018, December 13). Affective teaching and motivational instruction: becoming more effective educators of science. [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://blog.lifescitrc.org/pecop/2018/12/13/affective-teaching-and-motivational-instruction-becoming-more-effective-educators-of-science/

Heidi Walsh has been an Assistant Professor of Biology at Wabash College since 2014. She received a B.S. in Neuroscience from Allegheny College, a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Virginia, and completed post-doctoral work in the Department of Metabolism & Aging at The Scripps Research Institute’s Florida campus. Heidi’s research lab studies the impact of obesity-related stressors, including endoplasmic reticulum stress, on gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) neurons. She teaches courses in Cell Biology, Physiology, and Molecular Endocrinology, and enjoys collaborating with students on science outreach projects.

Questioning How I Question

For some, “assessment” is sometimes a dirty word, with visions of rubrics, accreditation reports, and piles of data. Readers of this blog hopefully do not have this vantage point, thanks in part to some great previous posts on this topic and an overall understanding of how assessment is a critical component of best practices in teaching and learning. Yet, even as a new(ish) faculty member who values assessment, I still struggle with trying to best determine whether my students are learning and to employ effective and efficient (who has time to spare?!) assessment strategies. Thus, when a professional development opportunity on campus was offered to do a book read of “Fast and Effective Assessment: How to Reduce Your Workload and Improve Student Learning” by Glen Pearsall I quickly said “Yes! Send me my copy!”

Prior to the first meeting of my reading group, I dutifully did my homework of reading the first chapter (much like our students often do, the night before…). Somewhat to my surprise, the book doesn’t start by discussing creating formal assessments or how to effectively grade and provide feedback. Rather, as Pearsall points out “a lot of the work associated with correction is actually generated long before students put pen to paper. The way you set up and run a learning activity can have a profound effect on how much correction you have to do at the end of it.” The foundation of assessment, according to Pearsall is then questioning technique.

Using questions to promote learning is not a new concept and most, even non-educators, are somewhat familiar with the Socratic Method. While the simplified version of the Socratic Method is thought of as using pointed questions to elicit greater understanding, more formally, this technique encourages the student to acknowledge their own fallacies and then realize true knowledge through logical deduction^[1],[2]. Compared to the conversations of Socrates and Plato 2+ millennia ago, modern classrooms not only include this dialectic discourse but also other instructional methods such as didactic, inquiry, and discovery-based learning (or some version of these strategies that bears a synonymous name). My classroom is no different — I ask questions all class long, to begin a session (which students answer in writing to prime them into thinking about the material they experienced in preparation for class), to work through material I am presenting (in order to encourage engagement), and in self-directed class activities (both on worksheets and as I roam the room). However, it was not until reading Pearsall’s first chapter that I stopped to question my questions and reflect on how they contribute to my overall assessment strategy.

Considering my questioning technique in the context of assessment was a bit of a reversal in thinking. Rather than asking my questions to facilitate learning (wouldn’t Socrates be proud!), I could consider my questions providing important feedback on whether students were learning (AKA…Assessment!). Accordingly, the most effective and efficient questions would be ones that gather more feedback in less time. Despite more focus on the K-12 classroom, I think many of Pearsall’s suggestions^[3]apply to my undergraduate physiology classes too. A brief summary of some strategies for improving questioning technique, separated by different fundamental questions:

How do I get more students to participate?

We can “warm up” cold calling to encourage participation through activities like think-pair-share, question relays, scaffolding answers, and framing speculation.
It is important to give students sufficient thinking time through fostering longer wait and pause times. Pre-cueing and using placeholder or reflective statements can help with this.

How do I elicit evidentiary reasoning from students?

“What makes you say that?” and “Why is _____ correct?” encourages students to articulate their reasoning.
Checking with others and providing “second drafts” to responses emphasizes the importance of justifying a response.

How do I sequence questions?

The right question doesn’t necessarily lead to better learning if it’s asked at the wrong time.
Questions should be scaffolded so depth and complexity develops (i.e. detail, category, elaboration, evidence).

How do I best respond to student responses?

Pivoting, re-voicing, and cueing students can help unpack incorrect and incomplete answers as well as build and explore correct ones.

How do I deal with addressing interruptions?

Celebrating good practices, establishing rules for discussion, making it safe to answer and addressing domineering students can facilitate productive questioning sessions.

After reviewing these strategies, I’ve realized a few things. First, I was already utilizing some of these techniques, perhaps unconsciously, or as a testament to the many effective educators I’ve learned from over the years. Second, I fall victim to some questioning pitfalls such as not providing enough cueing information and leaving students to try their hand at mind-reading what I’m trying to ask more than I would like. Third, the benefits of better questioning are real. Although only anecdotal and over a small sampling period, I have observed that by reframing certain questions, I am better able to determine if students have learned and identify what they may be missing. As I work to clean up my assessment strategies, I will continue to question my questions, and encourage it in my colleagues as well.

¹Stoddard, H.A. and O’Dell, D.A. Would Socrates Have Actually Used the Socratic Method for Clinical Teaching? J Gen Intern Med 31(9):1092–6. 2016.

²Oyler, D.R. and Romanelli, F. The Fact of Ignorance Revisiting the Socratic Method as a Tool for Teaching Critical Thinking. Am J of Pharm Ed; 78 (7) Article 144. 2014.

³A free preview of the first chapter of Pearsall’s book is available here.

Anne Crecelius (@DaytonDrC) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health and Sport Science at the University of Dayton where she won the Faculty Award in Teaching in 2018. She teaches Human Physiology, Introduction to Health Professions, and Research in Sport and Health Science. She returned to her undergraduate alma mater to join the faculty after completing her M.S. and Ph.D. studying Cardiovascular Physiology at Colorado State University. Her research interest is in the integrative control of muscle blood flow. She is a member of the American Physiological Society (APS), serving on the Teaching Section Steering Committee and will chair the Communications Committee beginning in 2019. In 2018, she was awarded the ADInstruments Macknight Early Career Innovative Educator Award.

Fastballs, houses, and ECG’s

As adults of ever increasing age, I am sure almost every one of you has had a conversation lamenting your loss of physical abilities over the years. “I used to be able to do that.” “I used to be good at that.” As a parent to two young, energetic, fearless boys I hear (and think) these sentiments almost daily. While watching children play on a playground, sprinting for hours, hanging upside down, contorting their bodies into nearly impossible positions, jumping (and falling), twisting and turning, and literally bouncing off walls, parent conversations almost always include incredulous statements about children’s’ physical capacity followed immediately by a statement of the parents’ lack thereof. More than once I’ve heard a parent say, “If I did that, I’d be in the hospital.”

But have you ever actually thought, “Why can’t I do that anymore?” The answer isn’t just “I’m too old”. Obviously the physiologic changes of age are undeniable, but it’s a more complicated reason. At some point in your life, you stopped playing like children play. You stopped running and jumping and twisting and turning. You move in straight lines. You sit for hours. You don’t try that new move. It looks too hard. You might hurt yourself. As physiologists, we all know about homeostasis and adaptations, and it’s no surprise that our lifestyles have contributed to our physical inability in adulthood. Of course you would hurt yourself if you tried ‘that’, but only because you haven’t tried anything like that in years. Start trying ‘that’ though, and over time you’ll find yourself much more physically capable despite the aging process.

This childhood to adulthood performance decrement is not exclusive to physical capacity though. We are doing much the same to our mental capacity with age. A child will take physical risks on the playground, much as they also take mental “risks” in the classroom. Ask a group of 3^rd graders a question, any question, almost all of them raise their hand hoping to answer…even if they don’t know the answer. And the student who got it wrong, will raise his hand again after the next question. Give them a challenge or a mystery to solve and they will dive right in. Let them touch and feel and manipulate. They don’t hesitate. They are on their mental playground. This is how they learn. As adults though, we aren’t going to the mental playground, because that’s not what adults do. We sit in chairs. We watch lectures. We make notecards. We read papers. We study the learning objectives and the PowerPoints.

Just as adults could physically benefit from some time on the playground every day, adults (and I’m including college students in this category) can also benefit from time on a mental playground. Even as educators of other adults, we need to remember this. We often forget the multitude of ways that we can put our students on the mental playground. We don’t do an activity, because the students might think it’s ridiculous. It might waste too much time, and there is too much material to cover today. I have found in my classrooms though, that activities that would work with kindergarteners can work equally well for college students.

To give examples of ways to put college students on the mental playground, I would like to share two activities that I have done in a physiologic assessment of health course that have been very effective. The course consists of juniors and seniors who have already taken several biology, chemistry, and physiology courses beyond anatomy and physiology. The first assignment that I give them is to work with a partner to draw a picture of a person with as many health risk factors as they can think of. I have found that most students who take this class (instructor included) are horrible artists, but this adds to the fun of the assignment. The students love it and come up with thousands of creative ways to represent health risk factors. We have a discussion over which drawings have incorporated the most “official” risk factors (as designated by national organizations like ACSM, AHA, etc.) and why some of the others are certainly not healthy (setting off fireworks indoors), but not listed as official risk factors. Something about taking the time to draw silly pictures on a specific topic really aids in student understanding (anecdotally in my class, but evidence exists that this is effective (Ainsworth S, Prain V, Tytler R. Drawing to Learn in Science. Science. 333 (6046),1096-1097, 2011.).

Another assignment I’ve had good results with to get students onto the mental playground is half mystery for the students to solve and half drawing pictures. I tell the class that we are going to learn about how the heart works and talk about the electrocardiogram. The first thing I ask them to do is to get out of a sheet of paper and to draw a picture of the house they grew up in as if they were looking at it from the road. Normally confusion ensues and the students want to know if it’s for a grade (yes), and why they’re doing it (trust me, it’ll make sense later). After giving the students time to sketch their house, I ask permission to show each to the class, and then ask the question to the class. “Whose house is bigger?” Ultimately the students come to the conclusion that it is nearly impossible to tell without knowing the perspective and distance from the artist and the other views of the house (the front view is only one of multiple views that would be needed to construct the 3-dimensional size of the house). Then, still without talking about the heart, I ask them to draw a picture of a baseball (just the baseball) being thrown. Once again I show the drawings to the class. All usually agree that everyone probably knows the approximate size of a baseball, but then I highlight how different people drew different sizes on the paper. Once again I discuss perspective and how large a baseball looks when it’s about to hit you in the face, because it takes up your entire field of vision, but if it were thrown at you, it would look smaller relative to your field of vision at the start. If you’re watching people playing catch equidistant from both, the ball might move back and forth without appearing to change size relative to the visual field. But all the baseballs are still the same size!

Finally, after the house and baseball drawings I ask, “what did all of that have to do with the heart and electrocardiograms?” After a few minutes, most students understand the theory behind the electrocardiogram without ever having analyzed one. I’ve even had a strong student who was finishing her clinical exercise testing degree that semester say that even though she had taken several courses on ECG analysis and knew how to read them to get good grades on ECG tests, this was the first time she truly “got it.”

Thousands of other ways to engage students on the mental playground are out there as well. Discussing muscle physiology? Hand out rubber bands before class starts and ask them to think about how muscles and rubber bands are remarkably similar yet not the same at all. Teaching about bones? Pass out a few models to let them hold and manipulate. Then ask the students to pretend they’re cavemen and they need to build all of their tools out of bones, which bones would make a good hammer? A good bowl? Spoon? Fork? Weapon? Teaching about brain physiology? Have the students invoke thoughts, memories, feelings or movements and then tell them which part of the brain is responsible. Be creative and remember that just like our bodies, our minds work best when they’re stretched and twisted and used in different ways on a regular basis.

I do not know enough about educational psychology to understand the underlying mechanisms by which these types of activities work (my PhD is in Kinesiology after all – a content expert told to teach well!). And admittedly most of my evidence that they work is anecdotal or comes by way of gradually improved student scores on final exam and practical questions related to my course objectives over several semesters in which I certainly adjusted more than one variable. However, I do know that in learning, students attend to touch and feel, emotion, and mystery. The same thing you’ll witness at an elementary school playground. Incorporating these into your lessons, even in the simplest of ways can be beneficial for all different types of learners. I’m asking you to turn your classrooms into intellectual playgrounds. Encourage risk taking. Validate atypical approaches. Make it fun. Make it engaging. All the memorized note cards might be forgotten by next semester if it’s not.

Ed Merritt is an assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. Ed received his doctorate in Kinesiology from the University of Texas at Austin and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Cellular and Integrative Biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Ed was a faculty member at Appalachian State University until family ties brought him back to central Texas and Southwestern University. Ed’s research focuses on the molecular underpinnings of skeletal muscle atrophy after trauma and with aging, but he is also equally involved in the scholarship of teaching and learning and melding educational outreach activities with service learning.

May I Cut In? – A Short Dance With Social Media

1 hour, 43 minutes. Per day. In the United States, ~10% of a person’s waking hours are spent on social media. And, you’d be hard pressed to find a college student who doesn’t use social media as 90% of adults between 18-29 years old use some form of it. It’s a tremendous online environment in which people spend considerable amounts of time – a promising place for educators to expand their repertoire for teaching.

Now, some may consider it “crazy” that social media influences the way people think (about politics, for example), but it certainly has the power to affect the way we feel (for good or ill). It also seems to increase student interest in a subject near and dear to my heart – physiology.

So, earlier this year, I experimented with social media during my block of a large (~330 undergraduate students), upper-division course on integrative cellular physiology. This class was principally lecture-based with the online portal for the course only used for distributing slides/notes, administering quizzes, and tracking grades.

Browsing through the science education literature, I found a number of articles evaluating the benefits and burdens of using social media in the classroom. After some reading, I decided I needed to test the waters myself and get a better sense of how to use social media as a tool to improve learning.

But, why even bother with social media?

Location, location, location. I wanted to go where the students were (digitally).
Beyond the lecture hall. By extending the learning environment past the walls of the classroom, I hoped to get students thinking more about physiology outside the isolated microcosm of the lecture (whether they’re standing in line at Starbucks, checking status updates during lunch, or sneaking a peek to clear the notification bubble on their app).
Build rapport. If I engaged students in an online locale they were familiar with, I could help erode some of the barriers (fear of speaking in class, an “intimidating” professor, etc.) that tend to inhibit communication between teacher and student.
Cultivate a sense of community. I wanted to take advantage of a hub that would help foster the formation of friendships and study groups. I also hoped to provide a curated online environment for students to help each other with the course material – a community of learners.
“Go online,” they said. “It’ll be fun,” they said. I saw an opportunity for myself to grow as an educator, and I wanted to challenge myself by wrestling with a tool I had yet to add to my teaching kit.

Which social media venue, though?

A Facebook group. Facebook has the largest active user base of social media platforms (192 million active users in the US), it’s in the top 3 most visited sites in the US, and it’s the social media site with which I have the most experience.

Soon, I began to have feelings of self-doubt and trepidation as an onslaught of questions started rolling in.

Would students be willing to participate? What about students who had chosen to avoid Facebook? How many points would I need to assign to get them to buy in? Would students have concerns about their instructor potentially seeing their Facebook profiles? Would other privacy issues arise such as online student-to-student harassment? How frequently would I need to post to keep students interested? What kind of material would I post? How would I compose posts to make them “effective”? How would I evaluate participation and engagement?

Well, some of these questions can only be answered in execution, so I looked at this endeavor as an exploratory, two month “pilot study” and pressed on.

I announced the Facebook group during the first lecture in my block of the course, explained that it was completely optional (no associated points), listed some of the benefits (that I perceived) of joining it, and told them that all supplementary materials posted to the group would also be posted on the course website (if they didn’t have/want Facebook). The first prompt I gave them on the Facebook group was a question I had found on an 8^th grade test from 1912:

“Why should we study physiology?”

Immediately after lecture ended, I whipped out my smartphone and checked on the group. About 30 students had joined. This was encouraging, but really… I was hoping for more. With less than 10% of the class on board, I began to regret not offering more carrot.

Over the next week, the students trickled in. It climbed to 40. 60. 80. By the end of my block two months later, 108 students had joined the group. Close to a third of the class, which (considering I made it optional) was a success.

Ah, but were students actually participating?

In order to get an overview of this, I turned to marketing analytics for social media. Likes, shares, and comments are the marketing currency for businesses in this realm. I think it’s much the same for educational purposes, though the value you assign to each currency for their contribution to “engagement” rating may differ.

Regardless, I used the website sociograph.io to give me metrics for my Facebook group. Sociograph.io is free and quite a nice tool (despite some bugs). The image below shows the kind of data it provides, which includes:

Summary for number of unique contributors (post authors, commenters, and likers)
Timeline showing activity for the group in graphical format (posts, likes, and comments).
Breakdown of the types of posts that have been made (photos, videos, links, statuses, and events).

Sociograph.io also allows you to analyze posts to see which had the highest engagement ratings (which is done by summing data for likes/shares/comments for each post).

Of my posts, those that included videos were the highest rated followed by ones containing photos. The second highest rated post for the group was from a student who posted a photo that related to a topic we were covering in class. Perhaps unsurprising, visual content is the best bet for engagement. Pure text-based posts and links were not very popular.

Additionally, summary stats ranking each visitor can be viewed. This is useful for finding students in the group who are the most active or who are generating the most engaging posts. This “visitor rating” takes into account received likes, shares, comments, and comment likes and submitted likes, posts, and comments. The comparison between the two (received versus submitted) is what sociograph.io measures as “karma”.

On top of all this, each set of data can also be exported as CSV or XLS files for analysis.

That said… did this actually have a positive impact for learning physiology?

Yes, I believe so. Based on comments from students (directly asking them or through course evaluations), using the Facebook group got them more engaged with the material. Students seemed to like the online dynamic. They felt that it showed that I cared about interacting with them and facilitating a different avenue for them to ask questions.

It also gave me a chance to share interesting tidbits about physiology with students without having to shoehorn them into lecture. Social media is definitely well-designed for “hey, look at this cool thing” kind of communication. Often, it’s those tidbits that tend to stick and motivate students to dig deeper on their own.

But, did using social media make an appreciable difference for their exam grades?

Given the way I carried out my “pilot study”, determining that with confidence is trickier. However, students who simply joined the Facebook group scored a few percentage points higher on the block exam. Since the group was optional, though, those who took part may represent students who usually take more initiative in their learning.

While my approach to trying out social media was a little messy, I thought it was an extremely valuable experience. I’ve found that fumbling around is often the best way to learn. I may still have two left feet, but I’m not going to find the rhythm without stepping onto the dance floor.

Sources for social media usage statistics:

Kemp, Simon. “Special Reports: Digital in 2016.” We Are Social, 27 Jan. 2016, http://wearesocial.com/uk/special-reports/digital-in-2016
Perrin, Andrew. “Social Media Usage: 2005-2015.” Pew Research Center – Internet, Science & Tech, 8 Oct. 2015, http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/08/social-networking-usage-2005-2015/

Scientist, teacher, and all-round geek, John Kanady earned his PhD in Physiological Sciences from the University of Arizona. He is currently a postdoctoral trainee in Dr. Janis Burt’s laboratory at the University of Arizona. His research involves looking at how cells communicate with each other via proteins called connexins and what that communication means for cell function. He serves as Postdoctoral Councillor for the Arizona Chapter of the American Physiological Society where he strives to advance the three pillars of the organization: teaching, research, and outreach. You can follow him on Twitter @JDKPhD

Acknowledging race in the science classroom

“I don’t teach about race. Leave it to the social scientists. They are trained to talk and teach about this stuff. I wouldn’t even know where to start.” I am embarrassed to admit it, but there were times in my life I thought this, and I know I am not alone.

As a science educator, it is easy to stick close to our training as scientists. Scientists teaching science is normalized, largely unquestioned, and safe. Early in my career as an educator, with every institutional equity initiative announcement, I easily convinced myself that I supported my students in other ways. “Leave diversity to the experts.”

What about my expertise? Diabetes is a topic I know well after more than 15 years of training, research, and teaching. It was easy to incorporate this topic into all of my courses. In fact, I teach my entire introductory biology course using humans as a model and diabetes as a way to connect many of the systems. Most students know someone with diabetes. Their personal experience with the disease, complemented by a continuous barrage of hands-on, inquiry-based laboratory activities in this intro course, completely hooks the students! They succeed, with very low drop or fail rates (<5%). At the conclusion of the course, students are enthusiastic about taking more biology courses (Johnson & Lownik, 2013). Things seem to be going well. Why worry?

During the introductory biology course, we spend days going over CDC data about the trends and risk factors for diabetes (CDC, 2015). Are the relationships correlations or causations? How can we use population data to think about the biological mechanism of diabetes? These are great questions for introductory students, and they totally buy in.

However, something funny happens when we start looking at these data. Diabetes is a disease that affects black and Latinx populations at a vastly higher rate than white populations (CDC, 2015). Why would I talk about that? Let’s talk about the science. I know the science. I have spent years studying how hormones regulate glucose (i.e. “the science”).

Frankly, I was scared to stray from my training. The students of color really engage the topic of diabetes, intrigued by the data indicating racial differences. Many students of color speak of their beloved grandparents’ struggle with diabetes. What if students started asking me questions about race? As a white professor, how could I answer their questions? I know how hormones act to change glucose levels; I don’t know why certain racial and ethnic groups are more susceptible to diabetes. Students want answers about their own risk, and I didn’t know how to help them.

Looking back now, in response to my fear, I deliberately avoided discussions of race disparities. During the introductory biology course, we talked about socioeconomic factors, cultural factors, obesity, and food availability, but in vague and general terms. I might put up a graph to demonstrate disparities, but we never “had time” to engage the topic. We never really talked about why these disparities exist.

As a researcher, I would never intentionally ignore a major contributing factor to a disease. Would we ever ignore smoking as a risk factor for lung cancer? Why completely avoid race as a risk factor for diabetes, even though some individuals are almost twice as likely to develop the disease (CDC, 2015)?

By ignoring race and ethnicity as risk factors for diabetes in my course, I taught my students:

Only traditional aspects of disease are worthy of investigation and emerging or relatively newly identified risk factors do not deserve attention.

Potential long-term impact: Reinforcing old practices comes at the expense of new findings and approaches. Focusing exclusively on the role of hormones in diabetes ignores other potential mechanisms, specifically those related to race, limiting the scope and creativity of questions investigated in my classroom and the scientific community.

Scientists don’t “do” diversity.

Potential long-term impact: While national science education initiatives have a strong emphasis on encouraging diversity and equity, these movements have struggled to develop at the grassroots level. In my experience, most white science undergraduate students cannot articulate the importance of diversity of thought and experience in science. Students typically miss the mark when they emphasize that science is “objective,” and therefore, unbiased. In fact, every scientist has different experiences, training, and assumptions, resulting in different approaches to asking questions and drawing conclusions. Diversifying these approaches is essential for innovation. If the importance of diversity in science continues to be misunderstood, current and future scientists will surround themselves with individuals that think and act like them, limiting new ideas, interpretations, and innovations.

To ignore the concerns and questions of students of color.

Potential long-term impact: By glossing over the details of racial health disparities and not taking the time to understand them myself, I silenced the legitimate health concerns of my students of color. It should not be a surprise that many of my black and Latinx students switched their majors to public health and sociology. I was ignoring their queries and interests. They went to disciplines that addressed their questions. Mass exodus of individuals of color represents a deletion of perspectives from the scientific community. The result is a limited set of experiences that determine the scope of future research agendas; therefore, severely limiting the ability to solve large and complex scientific problems (Page, 2007).

To address these problematic gaps in my pedagogy, I continually challenge the way I think about diversity and equity in my classroom and make impactful changes. Avoiding potential harm to my students was a factor in making these changes; however, my greatest influence was students of color at my institution stating that they did not feel safe or welcome in the sciences (Johnson & Mantina, 2016).

Here are a few first steps I have taken to change the atmosphere in my classroom:

We now talk about racial health disparities and investigate mechanisms related to these disparities in my courses, using CDC data or peer-reviewed scientific articles (ex. Herman, et al., 2016).
I continue to educate myself about the interdisciplinary research investigating these disparities.
I acknowledge publicly to students that when we discuss race and diversity, I might not get it right, might not have all the facts, and might have different personal experiences than theirs.
Prior to larger class conversations about race, I collect input from students of color about how they might approach these conversations.
I never ask a student to speak on behalf of their race or identity, only to speak to their own experiences. I never force a student to speak on the topic of race, period. However, reflective writing or small group discussions are helpful to bring ideas to the forefront.
I avoid telling students that their experiences with racism are wrong or overblown.
I use an assets-based approach to teaching science. Students develop strategies to become successful by identifying the skills and information they bring to the classroom based on their unique experiences and background.
I challenge myself to continue to evolve my approaches to active learning and engaging students. For example, in my early years of teaching, to establish an interactive environment on the first day of class, students introduced themselves and talked about a summer experience to a small group. However, students that worked as day labors found this exercise intimidating when sharing with students that went on wonderful European vacations. I now prefer to ask students to describe their favorite food or dessert.

I acknowledge that issues of race, equity, and diversity are multi-faceted and nuanced, and purposefully, this description is a broad overview of the topic. I still have a lot to learn and do, but I am now a scientist that “does” diversity.

References

CDC (2015). Diabetes Public Health Resource. Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/statistics/incidence/fig6.htm, accessed August 2, 2016.

Herman, et al. (2007). Differences in A1c by race and ethnicity among patients with impaired glucose tolerance in the diabetes prevention program. Diabetes Care, 30 (10): pp. 2453-7.

Johnson, K.M.S. and Lownik, J.C. (2013). Workshop Format Increases Scientific Knowledge, Skills, and Interest when Implemented in an Introductory Biology Course that Attracts and Retains Underrepresented Minorities. Poster. Experimental Biology, Boston, MA, April 20-24, 2013. Published Abstract: FASEB J. 27:739.7

Page, S.E. (2007). The difference: how the power of diversity creates better groups, firms, schools, and societies. Princeton University Press (Princeton, New Jersey).

Katie Johnson, Associate Professor of Biology at Beloit College, evaluates the effects of active teaching practices on learning attitudes and outcomes in different student populations. She has been recognized by the American Physiological Society for her work. Her laboratory research assesses the connection between obesity and hormones that regulate glucose levels in animals. She mentors a diverse group of trainees and has numerous physiology and pedagogy publications and presentations co-authored by undergraduate researchers.

Joann May Chang, PhDProfessor of Biology & Director for the Center for Instructional Excellence at Arizona Western CollegeYuma, Arizona

Joann May Chang, PhD
Professor of Biology & Director for the Center for Instructional Excellence at Arizona Western College
Yuma, Arizona