Redesigning a Physiology Course Using Core Concepts and Active Learning Methods

The findings of discipline based education research support the transition away from lecture, towards active learning, and away from details, towards core concepts. In response, a junior level physiology course at the U of Minnesota has been transformed in terms of where it is taught, how it is taught, and what is taught. In 2013 the course was moved from a large auditorium to an active learning classroom. This physical change, however, was not sufficient to induce transformation. Lecture remained the primary mode of instruction, reflecting the instructors' unfamiliarity with teaching methods required to facilitate active learning as well as the lack of active learning curriculum materials for physiology. In August 2017, the course was assigned to two professors who were familiar with Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL), a well‐established teaching and learning method that utilizes guided inquiry and small cooperative groups. The instructors developed relevant curriculum materials; some were modified forms of existing POGIL curriculum, but most were new. The course now features regular group activities, with minimal class time devoted to traditional lecture. The instructors modified the course content as well as the classroom practices, bypassing the traditional body systems approach in favor of the Core Concepts of Physiology developed by Michael et al. They used core concepts such as homeostasis, flux, and communication to introduce topics such as blood pressure regulation, blood flow dynamics, neuronal physiology, and endocrine regulation. While students took the Homeostasis Concept Inventory on a pre‐ and post‐ basis, the detected learning gains were quite modest because of their strong scores in the pretest. In anonymous open‐ended surveys, students voiced concern about the emphasis on group work over traditional lecture and the lack of reliable study materials. Several expressed their preference for PowerPoint slides over information derived via group activities. Students also remarked that the summative assessments (primarily multiple choice exams) were not reflective of the course practices and content, since they seemed to address information that was not covered in class. While the instructors in the course will continue to use the modified format, they note the importance of better alignment between the core concepts‐based curricular materials and the assessments. The lack of alignment noted by the students largely reflects the difficulty of constructing conceptually‐based assessments. Thus, question databases testing core concepts as well as validated concept inventories are clearly needed to facilitate increased incorporation of core concepts into physiology courses. Support or Funding Information None This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .