Early program seminar to promote learning physiology via a core concepts approach

Spurred by the foundational work of Michaels, McFarland, Modell and others 1,2 in establishing and promoting a consensus collection of core concepts in physiology that facilitate learning, an increasingly broad collection of physiology educators have begun to embrace the employment of a core concepts approach to teaching and learning physiology. That said, challenges remain in the classroom in convincing students to forego the siloed and highly specific approach to learning physiology that has carried them through their earliest years of science education, and instead adopt a more general and conceptual approach that ultimately advances their level of learning. To help promote this effort in our Bachelors-level Physiology degree program, we have developed a Core Concepts in Physiology Seminar – a required, one-credit course delivered as part of our program's second year curriculum. The seminar immerses students in the core concepts approach, unfettered by the content-heavy demands of the typical anatomy & physiology survey courses. Delivered while the students are co-enrolled in the second half of a year-long anatomy & physiology lecture and laboratory sequence, the seminar can draw on the foundational content of those course while placing its emphasis on student creation of general models2, and allow students to share and discuss the application of critical core concepts such as flow down gradients, energy, cell-cell communication, and homeostasis. While the core concepts are also being introduced in the anatomy & physiology courses, the seminar provides a low-risk environment for challenging students' approach to learning, with the desired outcome of increasing student adoption of the more integrative and general core concepts approach. 1 Modell, H., Adv. Physiol. Educ. 23: 101-107, 2000. 2 Michaels, J et al. The core concepts of physiology: A new paradigm for teaching physiology. DOI 10.1007/978-1-4939-6909-8, Springer, 2017. Supported by The University of Scranton This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2023 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.