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The possible benefits of using music to enhance learning of STEM content are numerous, diverse, and largely unproven. We sought to determine which (if any) of these possible benefits are commonly experienced by undergraduate students and are thus especially worthy of further investigation. Four hundred ninety-three students in nine physiology courses at two midsized American universities rated the usefulness of short instructor-penned mathematical physiology songs and explained in their own words why each song would or would not be a useful study aid. The students collectively perceived the usefulness of each song to depend on both academic factors (e.g., the lyrics' clarity or relevance to the course) and aesthetic values (e.g., the appeal of the rhythm or the quality of the singing). Most strikingly, although students' free responses were brief (median length: 18 words in study phase 1 , 16 words in study phase 2 ), nearly one-half of them (1,039 of 2,191) concerned memory, suggesting that many students see educational songs primarily as mnemonic devices. A second major theme of students' comments concerned the conciseness and information density of the songs. Though all 10 songs were brief, lasting 17-54 s, students seemed to prefer shorter songs (perhaps better called "jingles"). This first-of-its-kind data set on student perceptions of educational songs should inform the creation and usage of such songs, as well as further research on their possible value.

Many efforts to improve science teaching in higher education focus on a few faculty members at an institution at a time, with limited published evidence on attempts to engage faculty across entire departments. We created a long-term, department-wide collaborative professional development program, Biology Faculty Explorations in Scientific Teaching (Biology FEST). Across 3 years of Biology FEST, 89% of the department's faculty completed a weeklong scientific teaching institute, and 83% of eligible instructors participated in additional semester-long follow-up programs. A semester after institute completion, the majority of Biology FEST alumni reported adding active learning to their courses. These instructor self-reports were corroborated by audio analysis of classroom noise and surveys of students in biology courses on the frequency of active-learning techniques used in classes taught by Biology FEST alumni and nonalumni. Three years after Biology FEST launched, faculty participants overwhelmingly reported that their teaching was positively affected. Unexpectedly, most respondents also believed that they had improved relationships with departmental colleagues and felt a greater sense of belonging to the department. Overall, our results indicate that biology department-wide collaborative efforts to develop scientific teaching skills can indeed attract large numbers of faculty, spark widespread change in teaching practices, and improve departmental relations., (© 2018 M. T. Owens et al. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2018 The American Society for Cell Biology. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0).)

Biology students enrolled in a typical undergraduate physiology course encounter Poiseuille's law, a physics equation that describes the properties governing the flow of blood through the circulation. According to the equation, a small change in vessel radius has an exponential effect on resistance, resulting in a larger than expected change in blood flow. To help engage students in this important concept, we performed a physics experiment as a lecture demonstration to mimic the original research by the 19th-century French scientist. We tested its impact as a research project and found that students who viewed the demonstration reacted very positively and showed an immediate increase in test performance, while the control group was able to independently "catch up" at the fourth week posttest. We further examined whether students' math skills mapped to learning gains. The students with lower math scores who viewed the demonstration had slightly more improvement in test performance than those students who did not view the demonstration. Our data suggest that watching a lecture demonstration may be of even greater benefit to biology students with lower math achievement.

This article describes a new hands-on, or "kinesthetic," activity for use in a physiology lecture hall to help students comprehend an important concept in cardiopulmonary physiology known as oxygen carrying capacity. One impetus for designing this activity was to address the needs of students who have a preference for kinesthetic learning and to help increase their understanding and engagement during lecture. This activity uses simple inexpensive materials, provides an effective model for demonstrating related pathophysiology, and helps promote active learning. The activity protocol and its implementation are described here in detail. We also report data obtained from student surveys and assessment tools to determine the effectiveness of the activity on student conceptual learning and perceptions. A brief multiple-choice pretest showed that although students had already been introduced to the relevant concepts in lecture, they had not yet mastered these concepts before performing the activity. Two postactivity assessments showed that student performance was significantly improved on the posttest compared with the pretest and that information was largely retained at the end of the course. Survey data showed that one-half of the students stated kinesthetic learning as among their learning preferences, yet nearly all students enjoyed and were engaged in this hands-on kinesthetic activity regardless of their preferences. Most students would recommend it to their peers and expressed a desire for more kinesthetic learning opportunities in the lecture curriculum.

Myosins are cytoskeletal motors critical for generating the forces necessary for establishing cell structure and mediating actin-dependent cell motility. In each cell type a multitude of myosins are expressed, each myosin contributing to aspects of morphogenesis, transport, or motility occurring in that cell type. To examine the roles of myosins in individual retinal cell types, we first used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) screening to identify myosins expressed in retina and retinal pigmented epithelium (RPE), followed by immunohistochemistry to examine the cellular and subcellular localizations of seven of these expressed myosins. In the myosin PCR screen of cDNA from striped bass retina and striped bass RPE, we amplified 17 distinct myosins from eight myosin classes from retinal cDNA and 11 distinct myosins from seven myosin classes from RPE cDNA. By using antibodies specific for myosins IIA, IIB, IIIA, IIIB, VI, VIIA, and IXB, we examined the localization patterns of these myosins in retinas and RPE of fish, and in isolated inner/outer segment fragments of green sunfish photoreceptors. Each of the myosins exhibited unique expression patterns in fish retina. Individual cell types expressed multiple myosin family members, some of which colocalized within a particular cell type. Because much is known about the functions and properties of these myosins from studies in other systems, their cellular and subcellular localization patterns in the retina help us understand which roles they might play in the vertebrate retina and RPE.

Student learning may be classified according to the sensory modalities by which one prefers to take in information. One such classification scheme uses the VARK instrument, which categorizes learning preferences as visual (V), auditory (A), reading-writing (R), or kinesthetic (K). Many students have a single, strong preferences ("unimodal"), whereas others have multiple ("multimodal") learning preferences. Although limited in scope and reliability, knowledge of student learning preferences is important for reasons of pedagogy. Teaching and student learning styles may also affect student academic success in science coursework and fulfillment of student career goals. In our study, we determined the learning preferences of upper-division students in a human physiology course during a 2-yr period at a public undergraduate institution in California. We also sought to determine the association between individual learning styles and stated career intentions. We found that the majority of students interested in the health professions have multimodal learning preferences. Furthermore, a greater percentage of premedical students had multimodal preferences compared with predental and prescientist students. When data were compared by gender, we found that more female than male students had multimodal learning preferences. We also observed some gender differences when separating student groups by career choice. For example, more premedical men had multimodal preferences compared with nonpremedical men. In contrast to men, women showed little differences in their learning style profiles whether premedical or not and also self-predicted their learning preferences more accurately. Thus, career choice may be an important consideration in determining whether or not there are gender differences among students.

Physician supply in the U.S. is again on the national health policy agenda. A central issue in this debate is the availability of physicians willing to work in underserved and disadvantaged communities-an issue closely linked to the number of minority and international medical graduate (IMG) physicians working in the U.S. In California, South Asian IMGs, but not South Asian U.S. medical graduates, are more likely to work in underserved communities. Incorporation of strong policy levers aimed at an equitable geographic distribution of physicians will be critical as the U.S. moves toward greater self-sufficiency of physician supply. More specifically, the authors note the continuing central importance to addressing the needs of medically underserved populations of training physicians from under-represented minority groups (African Americans, American Indians, and Hispanic Americans) in U.S. medical schools.