Many A&P instructors (myself included) struggle with the large volume of content covered in A&P textbooks. Years ago, at one of my first HAPS meetings, I posed two questions to a textbook author: “What information in your book is the most important? What do students really need to know?” I will never forget the response. “If it’s in my book, your students should know it.” Wow. Ok. That conversation was memorable because I knew the author was wrong; there must be foundational principles in A&P that can be used to help students think like scientists. But what are they? What are the core concepts of A&P?
Those questions were important to me because at the time I was overseeing a group of high school anatomy and physiology instructors while simultaneously designing a new course for high school students who had goals of pursuing careers in health care fields. Our team had a firm idea of how to teach (guided inquiry and group learning), but we were struggling with “what to teach,” and we knew “everything in the book” was a non-starter.
At the next HAPS meeting, I met Harold Modell and Joel Michael at a poster session. What followed was a lengthy conversation about foundational topics in physiology and how those topics could be used to develop day-to-day curriculum. What a difference. This was useful. I knew quickly that our conversation could frame a whole new A&P course on the core concepts of physiology for my team back in Minnesota. Harold, Joel, and the rest of their research team (Jenny McFarland, William Cliff, Mary Pat Wenderoth, and Ann Wright) went on to write several papers on the core concepts of human physiology.
Below is one of my favorite pictures of all time. Harold and Joel are in the middle, I’m to the right, and we’re surrounded by high school students from the Minnesota dual enrollment program. The picture embodies the flow of information from research to practice. Harold and Joel worked with their team to identify the core concepts and published many papers on that topic. I worked with Joel and Harold to write a curriculum based on those topics, which was then implemented by high school teachers with their students. Today there are 25 high schools in the program, and in the past 10 to 15 years there have been over 10,000 students learning entry-level human A&P using Harold and Joel’s core concepts, guided inquiry, and cooperative group tasks.
Thank you, Harold! You will be missed.
Dr. Murray Jensen is a Professor of Biology Teaching and Learning at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
The gross anatomy lab is a place where students can fall in love with the human body and where anatomical relationships materialize for the first time. The HAPS Anatomical Donor Stewardship Committee (ADS), previously known as the Cadaver Use Committee, is committed to helping HAPS members learn best practices for dissection, gross anatomy lab design, gross anatomy education, and human body donor stewardship. In order to better facilitate the advancement of gross anatomy instructors and labs, our committee has developed the ADS Support Team, which is a network of HAPS members who are experts in different gross anatomy specialties (e.g., dissection, lab design). These experts are then connected with HAPS members who want to learn more about the specific areas. First introduced at the HAPS Portland Annual Conference as the HAPS Dissection Mentorship Initiative, the ADS Support Team is actively recruiting individuals from within the HAPS membership interested in developing these types of coaching and mentorship relationships.
Recently, the ADS hosted several Support Team coaching and mentorship sessions which provided an overview of the goals of the Support Team, the types of coaching and mentorship available, how the coaching and mentorship process works, and the various resources available to those engaged in the program. A recording of one of these sessions is embedded here.
So, what is next? While members of the ADS support team have started to collaborate virtually and through regional dissection workshops, we hope to provide the HAPS general membership with an in-person ADS coaching experience at the upcoming Annual Conference in Albuquerque. During the ADS coaching workshop, titled Dissecting the “Heart” of the ADS Coaching Program, Support Team members will guide participants through a dissection that will explore the anatomy of the heart. Coaches will share dissection and teaching techniques so that prospective Support Team members can discover how the program may benefit them and how they may contribute as well! The workshop will have limited space so please sign up if you would like to join us in the lab at the annual conference!
Are you interested? Use the link below to sign up for the workshop or to be a coach or support team member.
The Community College Anatomy and Physiology Education Research (CAPER) project is midway through its second year. Currently, two groups of community college A&P educators are engaged in the program that aims to both increase the use of active learning strategies in community college A&P classrooms and increase the quantity of education research conducted in two-year schools.
Instructors in the first group (Cohort 1) are currently in their second year of the project and are working with their mentors as writing/research consultants to prepare posters documenting their research. The posters will be presented at the 37th Annual HAPS Conference this May in New Mexico. A list of Cohort 1 members and their research questions can be found on the CAPER website.
Instructors in the second group (Cohort 2) are currently taking the HAPS I course Introduction to Education Research and developing ideas for their own classroom research projects which they will be conducting next year. This group met in person for a day in October 2022 to practice active learning techniques such as cooperative quizzes and guided inquiry learning. This daylong meeting took place in conjunction with the HAPS Regional meeting that was held at Northwestern University for Health and Science in Minneapolis. (Thanks again to conference host Joe Maldoon for both hosting a successful meeting and helping the CAPER team find meeting space.)
CAPER participants and mentors at Northwestern University for Health and Science, Fall 2022
Along with poster presentations at the 2023 annual HAPS conference in New Mexico, the CAPER team will be hosting a couple of workshops where we will be providing more information about the NSF-sponsored CAPER project (IUSE 2111119). We may also be able to share some preliminary research findings on how to best educate students in entry-level A&P courses.
This summer, the CAPER team will be looking for the third set of participants for the program. Participants will need to be available on Tuesday evenings in order to complete a course on Educational Pedagogy in the fall and Education Research in the spring (2024). We also hope to arrange a one-day meeting in late September at the HAPS Regional at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin.
If you are looking for more information on the project, please contact us directly or find us at the HAPS meeting in May. You can also submit your name for participation by completing this survey
A note from the Blog Master: the work that led to this blog post initially occurred in the 2019-2020 academic year, but its publication got delayed by that whole pesky pandemic/emergency online instruction situation. Last week, HAPS member Karen Groh shared how she utilized the HAPS listserv to quickly plan an activity for a group of visiting high school students. If you missed it, check out her High school histology (on short notice) post.
Sometimes HAPSters are asked to provide a science experience for visiting high school classes. The goal of the visit varies. The visit could be used as a recruiting tool, a chance for the college to give potential students a positive experience of the college, or an enrichment field trip for a class that wants to get more experience in a particular topic. Whatever the reason, it’s always good to have a bag of tricks available to use for these visits. When Karen Groh asked the HAPS ListServ for some ideas for a high school visit, the ideas below were generated. Ultimately, Karen elected to create a histology activity that was highlighted in a previous blog post. HAPS member Leslie Stone-Roy then took the remaining ideas and hunted down links to protocols, pictures, and instructional videos to share.
Maybe one of the ideas on this list will be your answer the next time you need to provide a science experience for a high school class!
Leslie Stone-Roy is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Sciences at Colorado State University. She spends most of her time developing, improving, and teaching neuroscience courses at CSU, including lecture, lab, and research-based courses. In addition, she runs a large outreach program each year during which she recruits and trains about 100 CSU students who help her teach local middle and high school students about neuroscience and the brain. She also has a small research project centered on sensory substitution and is interested in expanding her scholarly activities in teaching and learning. Outside of work, she enjoys spending time with her family and dogs, hiking, and doing yoga.
Karen Groh is a Biology Instructor at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College in Cincinnati, Ohio where she teaches Anatomy and Physiology. She is a POGIL (Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning) facilitator. In 2021 she was awarded the Gail Jenkins Teaching and Mentoring Award from HAPS. She works to keep students active and engaged in the classroom and is always seeking new ideas for guiding her students to fully understand complex topics.
On a Friday afternoon, while I was preparing for a relaxing weekend at my brother’s lake house, I received an email from the director of admissions at my institution asking if I could provide a science presentation for a group of 80 high school students the following Tuesday morning. Due to a miscommunication, the admissions staff had not realized the group was coming, leaving them scrambling to find a way to keep the students busy for four hours.
My fallback high school visit activity is a dissection of a sheep heart or cow eye, both of which provide a high “Wow Factor” to effort ratio. However, with the lab unavailable on Tuesday morning, I needed to come up with something else quickly, so I posted a desperate plea for inspiration on the HAPS Discussion Group (also known as the HAPS Listserv). As always, the amazing HAPS community came through for me; within a couple of hours, I had several viable ideas to choose from. I quickly settled on creating a histology activity, an area that fit well with my content knowledge and the limitations of space and preparation time available to me.
I started with a short PowerPoint presentation in which I defined histology and introduced the high school students to the 4 major classes of tissues. I showed them examples of tissue types in each of the classes, but I did not identify specific tissue types. I ended this portion of the presentation with an image of the knee joint showing the different tissue types found in the knee to give them a sense of how different tissue types work together.
Next, I divided the students into groups of 3 or 4; each group received a set of 11 images of specific types of tissues printed on 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper. Each group also received 11 slips of paper with a line drawing and a written description of a tissue type. Working together in their groups, the students matched the slips of paper with the tissue images. Some groups had questions or needed a nudge to help them match up the descriptions and images, but most were able to do this task without too much difficulty. They were engaged and enthusiastic as they did so, discussing the pros and cons of matches until they settled on each choice.
After this, I used a PowerPoint to define histopathology and describe the main changes found in pathological tissues – loss of cells, inflammation, and changes due to increased proliferation and decreased differentiation in cancer. I chose 4 conditions where the changes between normal tissue and pathological tissue are fairly easy to differentiate – basal cell carcinoma, leukemia, celiac disease, and muscular dystrophy. For each condition, I briefly outlined the symptoms, then showed the students side-by-side images of normal and pathological tissue. I had the students do a think-pair-share on the differences between normal and diseased tissue. They impressed themselves by being able to see and describe the differences.
I presented to 3 groups of about 28 students for 40 minutes each. They were well engaged with the histology activity and learned something doing it. In the end, they were pleased with their ability to demonstrate a basic knowledge of histology.
I was grateful for the help I received to put this presentation together with so little notice and successfully give high school students a taste of anatomy and physiology. Saved by HAPS again!
Karen Groh is a Biology Instructor at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College in Cincinnati, Ohio where she teaches Anatomy and Physiology. She is a POGIL (Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning) facilitator. In 2021 she was awarded the Gail Jenkins Teaching and Mentoring Award from HAPS. She works to keep students active and engaged in the classroom and is always seeking new ideas for guiding her students to fully understand complex topics.
We’ve all seen this image, or something quite similar, in chapter 1 of any anatomy & physiology textbook identifying the various barriers, tubes, and cavities of the human body. Although the image is part of the usual collection of introductory topics covered within the first week, courses typically pay it only cursory attention. Over the past few years, I’ve taken this often underappreciated image and used guided inquiry to deepen students’ understanding of what is inside or outside the body.
Model 1. Cavities and Tubes in Humans
What is guided inquiry? Guided inquiry lessons involve two essential components: curricular materials and teaching methods. Curricular materials extend beyond the textbook and must support students in “figuring out” a concept, such as how to determine what is inside or outside the body. Guided inquiry teaching methods are complex and include organizing students into small, cooperative working groups and using questioning to facilitate instruction. Asking students questions guides conversations, promotes deeper thinking, and fosters more accurate understanding (Jensen, 2016.) From an outsider’s perspective, guided inquiry lessons in classrooms may appear chaotic and confusing. It may seem that the students are going down cognitive rabbit holes that are potentially fruitful, but not initially correct. In response, instructors who are new to guided inquiry may want to jump in and correct students as they discuss questions and ideas. However, with experience in these teaching practices, they learn when to step back, let students struggle a bit, and figure things out for themselves, rather than simply telling them the correct answer. Within these moments of struggle exist the true power of guided inquiry as students construct their learning rather than memorizing information provided by an instructor and/or textbook.
Several years ago, while I was lecturing in a junior/senior-level physiology class, my instruction included statements such as “The air in the lungs is outside the body,” and “The contents of your intestines are outside of your body.” Simple stuff, right? Well, no. In fact, several students came up to me after class and said, “We don’t understand this inside and outside stuff. How can the contents of the intestines be outside the body?”
To address these important student misconceptions, the next day I had the class work through a guided inquiry using the “Inside and Outside the Body Activity.” (See the links below for the lesson plan.) In this activity, students examined the inside and outside body model closely to see that the “skin” is not continuous, but rather has breaks or openings for the urinary system, digestive system, etc. While they inspected the model and discussed their ideas with their group members, I guided their inquiry by encouraging them to look very closely at the model and answered student questions with still more questions. As a result, several “a-ha” moments occurred as the students proclaimed, “Now we get it!” and “We should have learned this when we were freshmen!”
These “ah-ha” moments still fascinate me today as an instructor. Recently, I used this guided inquiry lesson in an entry-level physiology class which included quite a few engineering majors. One of the engineering students was so perplexed by this activity that he had to get out of his chair and walk around the room a couple times, repeating, “No way! This cannot be right.” After a bit of thinking and walking, he approached me and asked, “OK, with this definition in place, you can never be inside your house, correct?” What a creative thought! (And no, I won’t tell you how I answered. I’ll let you engage in that bit of inquiry yourself!)
Ready to try out this inquiry in your classroom? Over the past 10 years, there have been several versions of the “Inside and Outside the Body” guided inquiry activity made available. The first was published in a special edition of the HAPS Educator while a second one was published in CourseSource, both great sources for classroom activities including guided inquiry curricular materials. Considerable background information for this activity can be found in both of those publications. While the current version is newer, it is not necessarily better. Instructors who have worked with guided inquiry for several years frequently have their favorite versions.
I typically use this guided inquiry lesson during the first day of class to facilitate learning inside and outside body concepts. But of course, it could easily be adapted to units on the integumentary, digestive, respiratory systems, and even immunology. Feel free to use, adapt, and share this activity as you wish. As always, if you have suggestions for improvements or would like more guided inquiry activities, please send me an email at msjensen@umn.edu
Have you ever wanted to revamp your teaching activities? Needed new ideas to engage students with important curricular concepts or how to pair with formative assessments?! We have an answer for you! The Curriculum & Instruction Teaching Tips subcommittee would like to re-highlight and share our new Teaching Tips improved website and submission process!
Teaching Tips (formally EduSnippets) are available to all HAPS members and are descriptions of learning activities including instructor’s guides and formative assessments. As of January 2022, a new website has been launched that houses all past and current Teaching Tip submissions. This website also uses a new “searchable tool” located at the top of the webpage, which allows easy access to all submitted Teaching Tips by author name, concept, learning objectives, etc. (shown below).
If you search “muscle action” in the keyword search, a new teaching tip created by our very own subcommittee member, Amy Gyorkos, Ph.D., appears which highlights how to teach students to use reason and not recall for learning skeletal muscles! (shown below)
This March, we also published THREE other Teaching Tips with activities involving pelvic vasculature, the urinary system, and plasma membrane transport. Each submission is peer-reviewed by two members of the HAPS C&I Teaching Tips Subcommittee before publishing on the web page.
If you are looking to share one of your teaching activities/assessments, the Teaching Tips submission process has also been overhauled for a streamlined process. To find more information on this process, please visit the hapsweb.org teaching tips info page. There you will find “buttons” that allow you to download the Teaching Tip Instructions, and Template used for the submission process. Submission deadlines are January 15, March 15, May 15, July 15, September 15, and November 15. Please submit your Teaching Tip here.
Want to know more about the new submission process? Visit our workshop at the HAPS Annual Conference in Ft. Lauderdale on Sunday, May 29th at 11am EDT.
The Accommodations subcommittee hosted a series of events at the beginning of the spring semester. The subcommittee members are truly inspired by how earnestly our audience members want to provide a classroom for all. We have gathered tremendous information by hearing your experiences, and together we will create a guidebook including suggestions for HAPS members on how to approach specific accommodations. Keep in mind that all students typically perform better when accommodations are provided. It’s not an advantage for the student receiving accommodations. Accommodations enable an inclusive learning environment so everyone has a fair and equitable opportunity.
Pictured Left to right. Top Row: Jennifer Stokes, Abbey Breckling, Rachel Hopp Middle Row: Youlonda FitzGerald, Heather Armbruster, Barbara Heard Bottom Row: Sarah Greene, Jennifer Ellsworth, Jim Clark Not Pictured: Molli Crenshaw, Margaret Weck, Liz Dement
These sessions were purposely designed to be at the beginning of the semester due to the fact that this is typically the time instructors are receiving accommodation(s) requests from students. The purpose of this series was to spark discussion, learn about specific accommodations, and gather information on current accommodation requests being fulfilled in A&P labs. We want to remind our HAPS members to work closely with their respective institution’s office of support services (or equivalent) as early as possible, and most often these centers want to work with you.
In case you missed any of the 4 sessions, recordings of the live session or voiceover PowerPoints are posted to the HAPS website here. If you are interested in receiving ppt files, please email abreckling@hapsconnect.org.
January 19th –Incorporating ADA approved accommodations into A&P Labs by Jim Clark and Jennifer Ellsworth
In this session, we highlighted ADA Guidelines and discussed how to include Universal Educational Design into the curriculum to create an inclusive learning environment for all students. We also included common accommodations i.e. extended time on exams, reduced distraction environments, and how to approach students who may need frequent breaks/absences.
January 26th – Supporting Students with Visual Impairments in A&P Labs, presented by Heather Armbruster and Barbara Heard
In this session, we touched on many Universal Educational Design aspects when planning your lectures/labs i.e. fonts, accessible documents, alt text, etc. This session also described different levels of student visual capabilities and how to approach impactful learning for low vision, legal blindness, and total blindness.
February 2nd –Creating an Inclusive Learning Environment for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students in A&P labs led by Sarah Greene
In this session, we heard from two panelists: Dr. Alicia Wooten, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at Gallaudet University, and Holly Jackson, M.Ed., Sign Language Interpreter. They shared their experiences in the Deaf community as a student, professor, interpreter, and advocate.
February 9th – Providing ADA Accommodations for Physical Limitations and Service/Support Animals in A&P Labs, presented by Youlonda FitzGerald and Jennifer Stokes
In this session, we simulated an A&P lab set-up and used Universal Educational Design to ensure all activities and instruments were accessible to students who might need accommodations based on physical limitations or a service animal in the A&P lab.
Thank you again, for your time and willingness to share. We look forward to hearing from you at the Annual HAPS conference where we will be having an interactive poster presentation on Thursday, 5/26, and an interactive workshop on Sunday, 5/29 at 8:30am where we will also share the first glimpse at our Accommodations Guidebook!
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If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to the following:
The Advanced Placement (AP) program has been in operation for many years and offers high school students the ability to take courses for college credit. The College Board, the organization that administers AP programs as well as the SAT standardized test, announced recently that anatomy & physiology (A&P) will be offered through the AP program starting in the Fall of 2024.
Here are three details HAPS members should know about the AP program and the AP A&P course they will offer:
Advanced Placement courses are taught by high school teachers who are offered extensive professional development opportunities, such as summer workshops, to learn the curriculum and instructional requirements for the different AP courses. The driving force behind all AP courses is the final, 3-hour, exam; for the entire duration of the course, the teachers teach to this exam. Exams are scored on a scale of 1 to 5. A score of 3 is considered passing and scores of 4 or 5 indicate mastery and superior understanding.
Colleges and universities can accept or decline AP credits. Some schools accept credits only if students score a 4 or 5 on the exams. Other schools do not accept AP credits unless the student takes and passes the next level of course content at their institution. If the credits are accepted, then the student can opt out of that college class.
The new AP A&P course might fulfill one or both semesters of a two-semester college sequence. One of many possibilities is that if a student scores a 5 on the AP exam, they will get credit for both semesters, a score of 4 will earn credit for one of the two semesters, and a 3 means a student will have to take both semesters of A&P. In almost all cases, credit decisions are made by college administrators.
My hope is that HAPS members can play a role in the development of this new program. Reports from my network of high school teachers is that the now mature AP Biology program had difficult early years because the exam focused on memorization over conceptual learning. However, those same teachers now report that the AP Biology is indeed a rigorous course and provides students with a high-quality learning experience.
A few possible roles for HAPS in the new AP A&P course include:
helping instructors with day-to-day teaching and learning issues
identifying course learning goals and objectives
assisting with the development of the final exam
helping colleges navigate the politics of accepting or rejecting AP A&P credits
Many experienced A&P instructors and administrators will view this new AP A&P program with skepticism, “Can a college-level anatomy and physiology course be taught in a high school?” That is indeed a valid question. My 15 years of experience working in a college/high school partnership strongly suggests yes (Jensen, Mattheis, and Loyle, 2013). Let’s give the teachers and students the best possible opportunities for success. The HAPS organization can indeed be a significant participant in the launch of this new A&P program.
Jensen, M., Mattheis, A., & Loyle, A. (2013). Offering an Anatomy and Physiology Course Through a High School-University Partnership: The Minnesota Model. Advances in Physiology Education, 37: 157-164
Dr. Murray Jensen is a Professor of Biology Teaching and Learning at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
In our quieter moments, I’m sure we can all recall long-planned projects and events that should have happened in the spring of 2020. For HAPS, one such project was the third offering of the Lab Survey. Results from the first and second surveys came out in 2014 and 2017, and we were looking forward to documenting how our laboratory learning outcomes and activities have developed and changed over the years. In our monumental and collective efforts to adjust ourselves and our courses to remote instruction, learn new software, problem-solve, and keep our families and friends safe, the lab survey was pushed into the ‘Important but Not Urgent’ category.
The virtual HAPS Annual Conference in 2021 gave us, as a subcommittee of C&I, a chance to refocus and plan for launching the third offering of the lab survey. Our dedicated subcommittee members met twice monthly from June through October to revise and refine the survey. Subcommittee members volunteered for one of the three content areas (i.e., demographics, learning outcomes and activities, and teaching during the pandemic). Within each content area, members represented a diverse range of teaching experiences, institutions, geographic areas, teaching challenges, and individual perspectives. After several rounds of reviewing, revising, and test runs with naive reviewers, we were able to take the next step of obtaining IRB approval and planning the timeline for the survey launch.
Earlier this month, you should have received an email from HAPS inviting you to participate in the survey. We appreciate you and your willingness to add your anonymous data and perspectives on your successes and challenges in teaching human A&P before our classrooms, and most of our lives, were turned upside down by the coronavirus, as well as how you met new challenges while teaching during the pandemic. A longitudinal analysis of the survey data, with comparisons to the past surveys and publication in the HAPS Educator, will help all of us create the post-pandemic A&P laboratory.
ADInstruments has generously offered to sponsor gift cards in support of the survey, and participants are encouraged to enter into a drawing for the sponsored gift cards. One winner will receive a $100 gift card and four others will each win $50 gift cards.
If you have any questions about the survey, please contact Carol Britson (cbritson@hapsconnect.org) or Rachel Hopp (rhopp@hapsconnect.org ), and once again, our humblest thank you.
C&I Lab Survey Subcommittee
Rachel Hopp (C&I Chair), Carol Britson (subcommittee chair), Ginger York, Janay Dennis, James Clark, Virginia Baker, Heather Arbruster, Chris Kule, Chinenye Anako, Julia Schmitz, Jeff Huffman, Shannon Oldenburg, Marnie Chapman, Cynthia Schmaeman, Roberta Anelli
The HAPS Blog 