Life Sciences

The entire Life Sciences FT faculty and the LS Administrative Specialist Sr, Lynn Abrams Comtois contributed to this CATS.   (Not all names were available to be selected and added in the section below). 

Providing a hands-on, active learning experience for online classes is difficult. BIO 201, Human Anatomy & Physiology, students prepare a Histology Atlas using tissue images supplied by the instructor. It was a passive learning process.

I searched and introduced Virtual Microscope, an Open Access technology. It allowed an active learning experience similar to using a microscope during in-person lab settings. The students could:

I created a series of discussion assignments for my BIO201 courses titled Anatomy of a Superhero for the purpose of prompting students to think about human anatomy and physiology from a different perspective and to help reinforce the principles of normal human anatomy and physiology.

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.

In AY19/20 Jeff Miller created a Life Sciences Assessment tool that uses 24 questions to measure understanding of general biology concepts along with critical thinking, reading comprehension and data analysis skills in a biological context.  The tool was used in multiple BIO course sections primarily taught by FT faculty and a CATS by Shannon Manuelito (Aug.

This syllabus research project is an example of assessing learning practices to enhance learning environments at the classroom, program, and college level. I learned from student success literature that often, underrepresented students will not ask for exceptions to syllabus policies while their counterparts will, thus creating unintentional equity gaps with class syllabus policies. I studied various course syllabi from EMCC classes to see how my policies compare. I then surveyed EMCC faculty and students about the course syllabus.

Hypothesis: Learning modality change is related to a decline in student success as measured by scores for BIO205 prerequisite gene expression knowledge.

Anatomy & Physiology is the foundational subject ; students learn about human body systems' structure and function. Structure and function complement each other if the structure changes it will affect the function and vise versa. The deeper understanding of the subject will help students understand the change and make connections among body systems; this is central to understand and treat the diseases. Case studies assignments help students link content knowledge to clinical application.

Please see the attached file for complete data and summary of interpretations.

The Life Sciences Division created a divsion level assessment. Though some biology courses were not able to complete the assessment due to the COVID19 response, results show an increase in score from lower level biology courses to higher level courses. 

The LS division instituted the use of embedded tutors in our nursing track courses, BIO 156, 181, and 201. We compared grades between our courses with the embedded tutors to our previous courses without an embedded tutor. The results are mixed. There seems to be little change in successful course completion however there were larger differences in average scores. The timing of this intervention must also be mentioned as it coincides with the great online migration.

A hybrid BIO 181 was developed and first implemented in fall 2019. Grades and completion rates of this course are compared to the second hybrid offering with an embedded tutor as well as a past face to face offering. The first hybrid showed the lowest average grade for the class with the highest % successful completion rate while the second hybrid with and embedded tutor showed the highest average grade for the class. The face to face class had an average grade in the middle of the two hybrids but showed the lowest % successful completion.

Peer Lead Focus and Learning Review

Monitoring student engagement and learning during class & providing feedback is tough due to lack of time. One way to do this is Peer lead learning review; it monitors engagement and provides feedback.

The class was divided into six groups of four students; one student acted as a peer leader. The peer leaders were rotated after 3 weeks, allowing each group member to act as a peer leader.

Through conversations with the tutors, a desire was discovered to be better.  The tutors know their material very well but wanted to see if there was a way to improve on their delivery style and customer service.  I introduced the concept of continuous quality improvement (CQI) which is a culture of never-ending improvement.  The assumption is that unless we learn something about what we are doing, we are unlikely to know how to improve it.