Using real-world situations to engage students in learning specific content is advocated by educational research as an effective strategy. However, motivating students to establish personal and emotional connections with the curricular content is challenging. We presented a didactic strategy named "the presidential election of the human…

The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting "lockdown" have forced many medical schools to shift from traditional "face-to-face" teaching methodologies and embrace full online delivery. Although lectures and tutorials are readily communicated by this approach, the execution of laboratory exercises is much more difficult. To…

Flipped classroom teaching has been used by many educators to promote active learning in higher education. This andragogy is thought to increase student engagement by making them more accountable for their learning and increase time on task in the classroom. While there are several systematic reviews that point to improved student results, it…

Evidence shows that factors contributing to success in physiology education for allied health students at universities include not only their high school achievement and background but also factors such as confidence with their teachers and quality of their learning experience, justifying intensive and continued survey of students' perceptions of…

"Sickle cell anemia: tracking down a mutation" is a full-day, inquiry-based, biology experience for high school students enrolled in genetics or advanced biology courses. In the experience, students use restriction endonuclease digestion, cellulose acetate gel electrophoresis, and microscopy to discover which of three putative patients…

Although active learning works, promoting it in large undergraduate science classes is difficult. Here, three students (F. Naji, L. Salci, and G. Hoit) join their teacher (P. K. Rangachari) in describing one such attempt. Two cohorts in a first-year undergraduate biology course explored the molecular underpinnings of human misbehavior. Students…

Here we incorporate recent advances in "Drosophila" neurogenetics and "optogenetics" into neuroscience laboratory exercises. We used the light-activated ion channel channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) and tissue-specific genetic expression techniques to study the neural basis of behavior in "Drosophila" larvae. We designed and implemented exercises using…

The General Medical Council states that United Kingdom graduates must function effectively as educators. There is a growing body of evidence showing that medical students can be included as teachers within a medical curriculum. Our aim was to design and implement a near-peer-led teaching program in an undergraduate medical curriculum and assess…

Teaching pharmacology to medical students has long been seen as a challenge, and one to which a number of innovative approaches have been taken. In this article, we describe and evaluate the use of primary research articles in teaching second-year medical students both in terms of the information learned and the use of the papers themselves. We…

In the present article, I report on my experience in teaching and learning physiology in the first year of a new modular curriculum at the Faculty of Medicine of the National University of Rwanda. With self-reported questionnaires, I collected learning experience perceptions from 112 students who attended the module of physiology in 2008. The…

In the present article, the reorientation of a fourth-semester physiology course for pharmacy students is described. The motivation for the introduction of changes was to prepare the students to not only assimilate facts but to learn and understand how to integrate and apply them. The article considers how this reorganization was received by the…

This teaching paper utilizes the materials presented by Dr. Fabiato in his review article entitled "Calcium-induced release of calcium from the cardiac sarcoplasmic reticulum." In the review, supporting evidence of calcium-induced calcium release (CICR) is presented. Data concerning potential objections to the CICR theory are discussed as well. In…

Even though comprehension of human physiology is crucial in the clinical setting, students frequently learn part of this subject using rote memory and then are unable to transfer knowledge to other contexts or to solve clinical problems. This study evaluated the impact of articulating the concept map strategy with the mediated learning experience…

One of the problems that we have found when teaching human physiology in a Spanish medical school is that the degree of understanding by the students of the integration between organs and systems is rather poor. We attempted to remedy this problem by using a case discussion method together with the Quantitative Circulatory Physiology (QCP)…

Effective assessment of laboratory practicals is a challenge for large-size classes. To reduce the administrative burden of staff members without compromising the student learning experience, we utilized dedicated computer software for short-answer question assessment for nearly 300 students and compared it with the more traditional, paper-based…