My Track Record

In 2019, I gave you the following:

• My Shadow A&P Exam
• A&P Rant, Part 2: Solutions!
• A&P Rant, Part 3: are these Learning Outcomes prescriptive?
• A&P Rant, Part 4: our exams express our values

This week the HAPS listserv set me off again. Below is my latest message to that group.

* * * * *

Hello Shobnom — 

Your question seems to be about managing students’ perception that there’s too much material to cover, and many of the responses you have gotten so far are about how to help students get on board. To round out the range of viewpoints expressed, here’s mine. Please note that (A) I am speaking only for myself and (B) I am addressing what I see as general trends in the teaching of A&P, without meaning to throw shade on any particular person or group. 

I claim that when A&P students say that we’re asking them to learn too many things, they often are RIGHT! 

In biology and K-16 science education as a whole, there has been a strong movement toward emphasizing greater depth of understanding and worrying much less about breadth of content coverage. For example:  

* Vision & Change

* Next-Generation Science Standards (NGSS)

* the core concepts of physiology

* classifying biology questions with Bloom’s taxonomy

* etc.

Nonetheless, many A&P folks continue to cling to their mile-long lists of terms and learning objectives, stating or implying that the length of the lists indicates the rigor of the course, and/or that this is simply how it has to be because their textbook/course chair/department/HAPS says so.

My own advice would be, if your students consistently tell you that there’s way too much to learn — that, by the time they get to the digestive system, they’ve forgotten the musculoskeletal stuff because there’s no time to review — that, faced with thousands of names to memorize, they have no time or energy for critical thinking or integration — you should consider listening to them!

Think really hard about what you really want your students to be able to do, say 1-2 years after completing the course. What would that long-term retention and success really look like? Is your primary goal that, in 1-2 years, they’ll still be able to name all those bones and muscles and nerves, or do you have other aspirations for them? 

Consider what others have identified as overarching course themes; compile your own list of what you really really really want your students to be able to (still) do in 1-2 years; run it by your local experts/authority figures; and then plan your teaching accordingly. 

Good luck,

Greg

It could be argued that I am making too big a deal of the comprehensive A&P exam offered by the Human Anatomy & Physiology Society (HAPS). After all, it is only one of many tests that our students could take, and no instructor is forced to use it.

These are totally valid points.  But, on the other hand, a test is a relatively pure and true readout of its creators’ values. What you leave out of the test, and what you put in, indicate a lot about your educational priorities.

My all-time favorite illustration of this is the Public Exam system devised by Ben Wiggins of the University of Washington. Ben wanted his exams to be better learning experiences for students — ones that clearly signaled his priorities, encouraged group discussion, minimized unnecessary stress, and offered challenging yet fair problems — so, over the course of several years, he devised a testing ritual that achieves all of these goals and more.

My own exams aren’t as cool as Ben’s. Mine don’t rise as consistently to the upper levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy, for example. But I do my best to make them better than multiple-choice trivia-fests.  For example, I always include short-answer questions, despite the unpleasantness of grading such questions, because I want my students to be able to articulate their reasoning.  Interpretation of qualitative and quantitative figures is another theme. And all of my test questions are based on questions that we worked on in class or that were assigned as homework.  In the end, most of my students perceive my tests as fair reflections of the course themes, and as fair assessments of actual understanding rather than pure memorization.

So, back to the HAPS exam.  It is certainly a fair and valid assessment of what it purports to measure, thanks to the hard work of many contributors, and some instructors have found it very useful.  But based on my inspection of the 15 practice questions, I’d say that the way to do well on the exam is basically to memorize the facts outlined in the 73 pages of linked Learning Outcomes.

A test devoted almost entirely to factual details is relatively easy to create and relatively convenient to administer and score. Instructors can agree on what the questions should be, what the right answers are, etc.  But what are we sacrificing in exchange for this convenience and clarity?  Do we really mean to suggest — as this exam clearly does — that encyclopedic recall is the greatest virtue, and that everything else is secondary?

One reaction to my previous post might be, “OK, Dr. Crowther, you’ve explained what you’re against, but what are you FOR? Do you just want anatomy & physiology courses to be easier?”

Not exactly. I have three broad recommendations.

(1) Make the workload of each course consistent with its number of credits. This is, fundamentally, an issue of equitable access and fairness. If you teach a 5-credit course in such a way that students’ weekly workload is 40-plus hours, that effectively excludes people with complicated lives — for example, those who have to do a lot of childcare, who have to work lots of hours of paid employment, or who have a disability that slows them down. If you really want your students to do 10 credits’ worth of work, consider options like breaking your course into two 5-credit courses.

(2) Approach the material as elaborations of and variations on a small number of unifying core concepts. Students’ only real hope of retaining anything “permanently” is to revisit that thing repeatedly.  So … let’s help them repeatedly revisit the most important things — the “big ideas” or “core concepts.”  For physiology, at least, there is plenty of support for this — a recent book by Joel Michael et al. has defined the core concepts of physiology, and a small organization (the Physiology Majors Interest Group, or P-MIG) is exploring how our teaching can be re-centered around the core concepts.

(3) Focus on competencies (skills) as well as content (facts). It is telling that both Vision & Change (for teaching college biology) and the Next Generation Science Standards (for teaching K-12 science) not only outline what information should be covered, but also define what students should be able to do with that information. Thus, alongside five core concepts, Vision & Change lists six competencies: the ability to apply the process of science, the ability to use quantitative reasoning, the ability to use modeling and simulation, the ability to tap into the interdisciplinary nature of science, the ability to communicate and collaborate with other disciplines, and the ability to understand relationships between science and society. Similarly, the NGSS include eight science and engineering practices alongside their disciplinary core ideas. We must give students the opportunity to practice these skills, even if less content gets covered as a result.

[Update, Nov. 26: why yes, this series now has a third part!]

Above: four of the core concepts of anatomy & physiology, as illustrated in Human Anatomy & Physiology by Erin Amerman (2016).

OK, in this part the students will add a drop of sheep blood to different solutions to see whether/how those solutions affect the shape of the red blood cells.

…SO HOW COME I CAN’T SEE ANY RED BLOOD CELLS?  WHERE ARE THE CELLS?

Is this microscope bad?

No, I can’t see any cells under this other microscope, either.

Has my microscope technique deteriorated so badly that I can no longer find blood cells in blood?

Let’s try a pre-prepared slide.

OK, I can see THESE cells just fine.  So what the hell is the problem with my newly made slides?  Is the saline diluting the cells too much, or something?  Let me try a drop of pure blood.

Good grief. I CANNOT FIND ANY FRIGGIN’ BLOOD CELLS IN A DROP OF PURE BLOOD.  I’m sorry, Everett — your new physiology instructor cannot, at a microscopic level, tell the difference between blood and water. That’s just too much to ask, apparently.

Nothing else to do but put the blood back in the fridge and ask for help on Monday….

Wait a minute. Here’s another bottle of sheep blood.  Why does it look so different from the one I was using — so much brighter?  And it hasn’t been opened yet….

Maybe I should try this bottle.

Hey, THIS blood has actual cells in it!  Lots of them!

And they shrink when put in hypertonic saline!

Maybe I am sort of qualified to teach this lab after all.

And now, for my next act, I will weigh this dialysis sac all by myself.