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 resea ..read more

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 r ..read more

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 ..read more

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 ..read more

This post is provided by the HAPS Curriculum and Instruction Teaching Tips Review Team 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 ..read more

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 inclu ..read more

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 professio ..read more

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 w ..read more

The beginning of each semester is an exciting time for both HAPS members and our students, but that excitement may dwindle as our inboxes and to-do lists begin filling with administrative tasks. One common beginning of the term task is fielding accommodation requests. These requests may be routine or repeated, but they may also be confusing, surprising, or even unfeasible if you cannot provide the accommodations in your space(s). The Accommodations Subcommittee of the HAPS Curriculum and Instruction Committee has created a 4-week town hall series to kick off the spring term. The goals of this ..read more

The Community College Anatomy and Physiology Educational Research Program (CAPER) is back in a new, longer format (IUSE 2111119). CAPER is a multi-layered program focused on evidence-based instructional practices (EBIPs) and educational research with Community College (CC) Anatomy and Physiology (A&P) instructors. At the foundational level, CC instructors will design classroom research projects to evaluate the impacts of EBIPs on student success and classroom engagement. The CC instructors will also administer questionnaires to their A&P students regarding their attitudes towards EBIPs ..read more