curriculum management Archives

Curriculum Roadmap: Guiding Students with HAPS Learning Goals

When planning any journey, choosing the right route can mean the difference between reaching one’s destination or becoming lost in the wilderness. It helps to know the purpose of the trip; is it merely to get from point A to point B, or is the journey itself as important as reaching the destination? What stops need to be made along the way?

These questions can also resonate for instructors as they guide students along their academic journeys, as the goal of instruction is not limited to just reaching a specific destination. It is often about what occurs along the way: experiences, obstacles, and challenges encountered that shape the student and their understanding of the subject matter.

To help students and instructors on the path to better life science education, BIOPAC created a roadmap with its curriculum for the Biopac Student Lab systems (BSL) for life science instruction. The BSL curriculum comprises more than 65 lessons that serve as carefully plotted points on a path to an in-depth and invigorating understanding of general life science disciplines.

This curriculum follows a route established by the Human Anatomy and Physiology Society (HAPS). HAPS has created a set of learning goals, guidelines, and outcomes that bring together a range of topics covered in Anatomy and Physiology I & II courses at the university level for both clinical and academic degree programs.

The advantages of following such a path are fourfold. First, students are provided with an outline of course expectations. Just as every journey should begin with a clear understanding of where one is going, knowing learning goals allows students to focus their efforts on what matters most. Furthermore, instructors are encouraged to relate learning goals to real-life applications to provide meaning in a relatable context.

Secondly, with straightforward goals in mind, the instructor will find it easier to manage course design by focusing on key elements of their curriculum. These can include the following:

Order of topics to cover
Pedagogical strategies
Lab experiments
Periodic assessments that help students stay on track

Taking this a step further, by following HAPS’s goals, guidelines, and outcomes, instructors will be better equipped to plan a comprehensive program of study. Well-defined goals allow the instructor to build a solid foundation for future courses and guide learning specific to the program’s discipline. Additionally, it can reveal redundancies, overlaps, and gaps in the degree track.

Lastly, just as a good cartographer’s map provides evidence of where the traveler has journeyed, carefully plotted goals, guidelines, and outcomes trace the students’ track within the academic program. This provides valuable information for accreditation while ensuring students graduate with the necessary skills for their chosen field in the sciences.

To learn more about how the BSL system and curriculum can help students and instructors get the most out of anatomy and physiology courses, contact BIOPAC today.

How to Promote Cooperative Thinking

By Howard Iver Thorsheim, Ph.D., St. Olaf College. How to promote cooperative thinking of team members doing psychophysiology, draw from their richly diverse interests and ideas, and in the process teach a “soft” skill that could transfer to later life.

(Photo © 2016 Knowledge Growers, Inc.)

By Howard Iver Thorsheim, Ph.D., St. Olaf College

Howard Iver Thorsheim is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota, USA. In these blogs he offers his first-person insights into effective teaching techniques gleaned from a combination of scholarly research and over 40 years in the classroom.

The Challenge:

The challenge was how to promote cooperative thinking of team members doing psychophysiology, drawing from their richly diverse interests and ideas, and in the process to learn a “soft” skill that could transfer to later life.

The Solution:

I adapted a tried-and-true group process to help team members doing psychophysiology research identify diverse ideas and think about their group project in a cooperative way. (The technique can be scaled up to engage many teams simultaneously). The technique is called the Nominal Group Technique, first developed by DelBecq and Van de Ven (1975).* The reason for the word nominal is evident in Step 1.

Step 1. Each student in a team was given a stack of 25 or so Post-it® notes. Because each student is working alone at this point, they are a group in name only (i.e., nominally a group). Their homework assignment was to think independently about ideas and interests that came to mind for them, and jot down a few words identifying their idea or interest on each of the Post-it notes. Interaction comes in step 2.

Step 2. The next class, the team members gathered together near a whiteboard. In a round-robin interactive fashion, one at a time, the students placed their Post-it notes on the board: One person started by placing the top Post-it from their stack on the board; the second person placing their first Post-it note close or further away from the first person’s Post-it note, depending upon their sense of closeness of the ideas. So it goes with the other students, with the round robin continuing until all Post-it notes are placed on the wall. Step 3 is the convergence!

Step 3. Again in a round-robin fashion, students take turns with a non-permanent marker drawing dashed lines around clusters they observe, and jotting down their idea for a name for each cluster. The result from the large group of individual ideas or interests becomes a smaller cluster of related ideas. The result is more coherence of ideas, engagement, social cohesion, and team focus. It works every time in any team or group!

See how the Center for Disease Control adapts the technique in this Nominal Group Technique (NGT) Evaluation Brief.

*Delbecq, A. L., Van de Ven, A. H., & Gustafson, D. H. (1975). Group techniques for program planners: a guide to nominal group and Delphi processes. Glenville, Illinois: Scott Foresman.

Learn more about BIOPAC’s education solutions, including complete teaching systems for psychophysiology and the life sciences. BIOPAC also provides a wide range of research systems for recording, displaying, classifying, and analyzing psychophysiological measurements.

Professor Thorsheim is a licensed Psychologist, educator, and author. He has published or presented over 125 papers, journal articles, books, book chapters or monographs, and received a patent in 1985 as a co-inventor for an educational book design with interactive elements. His work has been funded by marquee foundations across the globe. His most recent work is Doing Psychophysiology: Getting Started, available from Knowledge Growers, Inc., available as an iBook download in 51 countries.

Five Steps to a Better Physiology Lab – Preparation

Integrating new hardware and software into the Physiology lab curriculum…key points from instructors who have created successful labs that will greatly increase the chances of a rewarding lab experience for both students and instructor.

by William McMullen, BIOPAC Systems, Inc.

Integrating new hardware and software into the Physiology lab curriculum can be intimidating. Despite the best of early-summer intentions, in fall Instructors often find themselves apprehensively staring at a box full of unfamiliar equipment a few short days before the first lab. Luckily, the Biopac Student Lab excels in this situation, as it is easy to use and includes all materials necessary for students to prepare, record and analyze their data. This means that, in a crunch, if all one did was install the software and verify the hardware connections, most students should obtain meaningful data. Beyond the default setup, there are multiple customization options as described in the user support documentation. There are, however, some key points we have learned from instructors who have created successful labs that will greatly increase the chances of a rewarding lab experience for both students and instructor.

1. Organize the lab such that each student participates equally and each obtains recorded data from their bodies.
Students are more motivated when working with their own data. The Biopac Student Lab requires a minimum of three students for most lessons; a Recorder, a Director and a Subject. At the end of each lesson recordings, the students should rotate through these rolls and rerun the lesson until each student has recorded their own data. In order to provide enough recording time in a standard 2 hour lab period, the number of students per lab station should be four to five.

2. Setup basic Lesson Preferences before the first lab to minimize confusion.
Run each lesson* that will be used and setup the following:

If using lessons L02, L07-L09 or L12-L17, different models of transducers may be used. Check that the image and transducer descriptions in the lesson guide match the hardware used. If changes are needed, choose File > Lesson Preferences and select the desired transducer.
Disable undesired recording tasks by choosing File > Lesson Preferences > Lessons Recordings. If none of the recording tasks are desired (if using a custom procedure), disable all and only generic information will be displayed in the lesson guide.

*Note: If using the optional Curriculum Management System (available in BSL 4.1), only changes to the Host computer are required and all other computer/lab stations will be automatically updated. If not using this option, the changes must be made to each computer.

3. For Lessons L12 and L13 (Pulmonary Function), greatly reduce calibration time by matching the hardware with the software.
Label the lab station computer, the MP device and the Airflow Transducer (SS11LA/L) and make sure they are always matched. Run lesson 12 and check File > Preferences > Calibration Syringe Size to make sure it matches the syringe that will be used. Choose File > Preferences > Calibration Syringe Values and then select “Set once and use stored values”. Carefully run through the calibration using the syringe. From then on, when the students run the lesson, they will only need to calibrate for zero baseline (no syringe) which is easy and only takes a few seconds.

4. Students should have a basic understanding of the software before the first lab.
All Biopac Student Lab lessons use the same basic software tools and if students have a basic understanding of these tools in advance, they will experience greater success obtaining good data and having a positive lab experience. Students should be instructed to download the free Biopac Analysis software onto their personal computers.

This software not only provides the ability to analyze the data recorded in the lab but also allows students to prepare for a lab by studying the included tutorial videos and sample data. Some instructors give a test prior to the first lab to make sure students reviewed the BSL Tutorial Video.

5. Demonstrate proper electrode preparation and explain ways to minimize motion artifact.
For lessons that use electrodes, good electrode contact and minimal EMG/motion artifact are keys to obtaining good data. Although this is explained in the procedures, it cannot be emphasized enough. Demonstrate the cleaning of the skin (with soap or alcohol) to remove dirt and oil and the abrading around the electrode site to remove the dead epidermal layers that impede electrical flow. Always place a drop of electrode gel on the electrode and wait at least 5 minutes after electrode placement before beginning a recording. To minimize EMG artifact, the student should be as relaxed and motionless as possible (unless procedure calls for movement). Talking, blinking (during EEG or EOG recording), laughing or deep breathing will add unwanted EMG artifact to the data.

These easily implemented steps will greatly assist students in obtaining good data from the very first lesson, leading to a positive lab experience and ultimately gaining a better understanding of Physiology.

BIOPAC Systems, Inc. provides life science researchers and educators with data acquisition and analysis systems that inspire people and enable greater discovery about life. BIOPAC lets you measure physiology anywhere, with innovative, compatible wireless, wearable solutions that can be used by anyone for meaningful discovery. We make high-quality scientific tools for physiology measurement and interpretation with superior compatibility and world-class customer service and support. Visit us at www.biopac.com.