Comprehensive Assessment Tracking System

Building Connections Through Posters

Monday, August 23, 2021 to Friday, December 10, 2021
What is the Need/Assessment?: 

Students need to identify and understand relationships among various body systems. Developing posters allows developing a clear and well-connected bigger visual picture.

Describe the necessity for this change: 

Students had difficulty identifying collaboration among various body systems. Students had low scores for synthesis, analysis, and application questions.

Describe what will be (or was) implemented to affect change: 

Introduce the system collaboration from the beginning of the course. A&P is a visual science; implement this skill by developing posters showing cooperation between different body systems to maintain vital conditions that can change, e g. BP, blood glucose levels. The posters will serve as a clear visual foundation for future analysis and application. 

Interpret, compare and describe the results of the change: 

After implementing the change, I surveyed the students if they had developed a better understanding of the relationships among different body systems. The student responses were positive, and they also demonstrated improvement in recall, analysis and application questions.

After analyzing the information, what are the next steps?: 

I plan to add poster-creating activities in other body systems that regulate crucial survival factors. Review the learning objectives and content to improve the analysis and synthesis skills of the students.

Abstract: 

BIO 201, Human Anatomy & Physiology (A&P I), is a gateway course. Students learn about body structure (Anatomy) and function (Physiology) for the first time, covering enormous information. The human body is dynamic; when confronted with changes in its internal or external environments, the body systems collaborate (they don’t work in isolation) to keep its internal environment within stable working limits to maintain life.

It is an enormous amount of information that needs to be organized and interconnected. Keeping this in mind, to improve the academic rigor and introduce new learning methods, I have utilized posters creating activities for topics that require identifying connections among different body systems. Understanding these connections help the student develop a bigger picture that facilitates the analysis and application of their knowledge. 

Division/Department: 
Completed Full Cycle: 
Yes
Course Number: 
BIO201
AttachmentSize
File poster-activity-document.docx150.19 KB
Program Learning Outcomes/Course Level Outcomes: 

Comments

REBZS76641's picture
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This is great and hands on for students.  Thanks for sharing this. 

CAT2041552's picture
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Hi Dr Sandhu,

Thank you for submitting a CATS. I enjoyed reading your poster activity.  I appreciate the document you shared that gives the practice quiz scores  before and after the activity:  before (Average score  5.6) and after ( Average score 7.9).  Your data shows that students' scores did improve with the poster activity. 

You did a great job appealing to your students' different learning styles:  visual and kinesthetic.  

Great work!

Catherine