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Increasing Success of Underserved Students in Human Anatomy
Author(s) -
Akacem Lameese Dana,
Ciancanelli Rebecca
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.2020.34.s1.04924
Subject(s) - human anatomy , medical education , gateway (web page) , psychology , section (typography) , mathematics education , medicine , anatomy , computer science , world wide web , operating system
The Student Academic Success Center is a multicultural learning community that supports students who are low income, first generation, and underrepresented at the University of Colorado Boulder. In order to improve undergraduate science outcomes for students who are traditionally underserved in higher education, our department offers small sections of high risk gateway courses. Prompted by low performance in the large main campus section of Human Anatomy, we developed a small section this course for our department. Our small section of Human Anatomy used the same lecture material and exams as the main campus sections. We added a recitation that met for 75 minutes per week. During the recitation, students completed a variety of activities including concept maps, worksheets, and clay‐building facilitated by undergraduate Instructional Assistants. Students also completed weekly quizzes during the recitation. Students in our community who took the main campus section of Human Anatomy had an average success rate (defined as a final grade of A or B) of 40% and a D/F rate of 31%. In the small section of Human Anatomy, we observed an average success rate of 45% and D/F rate of 7%. These results indicate that the small class model embedded in a community with extra support may increase the success of underrepresented students in Human Anatomy and has implications for increasing persistence of a diverse student body in health career trajectories.