This article showcases the redesign of an introductory undergraduate vertebrate physiology unit at Murdoch University (BMS107) to promote student mastery of six Core Concepts of Physiology (Michael J, Cliff W, McFarland J, Modell H, Wright A, SpringerLink. "The Core Concepts of Physiology: a New Paradigm for Teaching Physiology," 2017).…

As one element of an extensive revision to program curriculum, the Integrative Physiology and Health Science Department at a small, private, liberal arts institution developed a novel introductory course for the major, focusing specifically on the "core concepts" of physiology. Intended to provide the initial step in explicit scaffolding…

Educators face the challenge of continually adapting and evolving their pedagogy to meet the needs of diverse learners. Learner experience design (LX) is a human-centered approach to curriculum and assessment development that is easily learned, adaptable, and repeatable. It focuses on empathy for students and creative problem-solving. In this…

Entry-level occupational therapy doctorate (OTD) programs across the United States navigate the challenge of designing doctoral capstone (DC) processes to provide students with adequate scaffolding to plan, implement, evaluate, and disseminate their capstone projects. The DC process starts with the daunting tasks of student generation of capstone…

Application of concept-based curriculum (CBC) in nursing programs has increased across the US in recent years. Previous studies have investigated the effect this transition has had on faculty and students alike. Exploration of the effects on graduation rates, NCLEX-RN pass rates, student retention rates, and commercial standardized examination…

Big ideas, sometimes referred to as key, core, fundamental or threshold concepts, are widely applicable concepts at the heart of disciplines that are or have been central and influential for their fields. Attention here is particularly directed to meta-concepts common to sister disciplines in the sciences. "Learning thresholds",…

An Australia-wide consensus was reached on seven core concepts of physiology, one of which was cell-cell communication. Three physiology educators from a "core concepts" Delphi task force "unpacked" this core concept into seven different themes and 60 subthemes. Cell-cell communication, previously unpacked and validated, was…

A task force of physiology educators from 25 Australian universities generated an Australia-wide consensus on seven core concepts for physiology curricula. One adopted core concept was "cell membrane," defined as "Cell membranes determine what substances enter or leave the cell and its organelles. They are essential for cell…

This article will (1) initially outline first-year nursing and undergraduate exercise sciences student perspectives on examinations of the 2011 Michael-McFarland (M-M2011) core principles in physiology through an anonymous online survey, and (2) model an updated approach based on these qualitative findings. Briefly, for the first perspective (i of…

This study aims to equip students with conceptual modeling skills to address compelling 21st-century challenges in chemistry and chemical engineering education. System-based concept mapping is a critical competence for analyzing global, often complex, problems. We examined how conceptual modeling could scaffold practical experimental design,…

Ecologists are increasingly using macrosystems approaches to understand population, community, and ecosystem dynamics across interconnected spatial and temporal scales. Consequently, integrating macrosystems skills, including simulation modeling and sensor data analysis, into undergraduate and graduate curricula is needed to train future…

In this practitioner inquiry, instructors in a teacher preparation program at a research-intensive university address their instructional effectiveness and improvement of student learning outcomes in a Single Course in Multicultural Education (SCME). As part of the inquiry, they conducted a comprehensive literature review of SCMEs. They used the…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Curriculum Development: Theory into Design.] A level of curricular design, called "design tactics," is identified to fill a gap in the research literature between the broad principles that guide curriculum development and the detailed writing of specific activities and lessons. The use of…

With the patient population changing and new heath care systems becoming more complex, academic nursing programs are challenged to produce a more highly-skilled, independent critical thinker who can communicate professionally, problem-solve, and provide safe patient care to patients, families and communities across the lifespan. A growing trend…

In this study, we explored undergraduate chemistry education at Kotebe University of Education (KUE) in terms of the ontological orientations, patterns and source domains of educators' and undergraduate students' sense of the atom. Due to the ambiguity and controversy regarding atomic ontology as a case of interest and the requirement for a…