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A unique approach to improving student success in Human Anatomy and Physiology can be centered around teaching the students about metacognitive learning strategies. This perspective discusses the implementation of a metacognitive learning strategies session and highlights some of the outcomes that resulted from the session through exam wrapper responses. A one-hour session discussing metacognitive learning strategies was presented for the students through a pre-recorded video with embedded participation questions. Topics included methods for changing student studying habits to be more efficient and to retain a deeper level of understanding of the material. The session was also accompanied by exam wrappers to help the students to apply the concepts from the session.

Community college students come from a variety of backgrounds and have different levels of educational preparedness compared to undergraduates in 4-year undergraduate schools. Historically, retention rates of these students in human physiology courses have been low, often due to non-passing grades. Incorporation of additional active learning techniques has the potential to benefit learning in this group, which might ultimately benefit retention. However, active learning activities need to be incorporated in a thoughtful manner, because some activities can increase anxiety in students, resulting in unintended consequences such as student withdrawal from such activities. This study introduced cooperative quizzes into community college human physiology classes to determine if they improved student exam performance and reduced student anxiety. The cooperative quizzes were intended to be given in face-to-face classes but were adapted for synchronous broadcast classes using Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the sample of students studied, cooperative quizzes did not have a significant impact on exam grades. However, several students reported a preference for the cooperative quizzes over traditional quizzes. In addition, the intervention did not increase the reported anxiety scores among students, which adds support for the use of cooperative quizzes as an active learning strategy in STEM classes.

Guided inquiry is an active learning technique featuring collaborative group learning with a structured set of models and highly structured questions for students to discuss and answer. Moving this technique to an online delivery format presents challenges, leading to questions about the effectiveness of this technique during online instruction. This study looked at the synchronous online delivery of a sliding filament theory guided inquiry activity (Brown 2015) and scores on related exam questions in anatomy classes at Salt Lake Community College. Students who participated in the guided inquiry activity had a median score of 79% on questions related to the sliding filament theory of muscle contraction while those that did not participate in guided inquiry had a median score of 61%, revealing a medium effect on student test scores. This suggests that the guided inquiry activity was successful at improving student understanding and retention when delivered in the online teaching environment.

Evidence Based Instructional Practices (EBIPs) have been shown to increase student engagement in college classrooms. Education research conducted to date on the effectiveness of these EBIPs and their impact on students' has largely focused on four-year and research-intensive institutions, and community colleges represent a significant gap in the literature. The NSF-funded Community College Anatomy and Physiology Education Research (CAPER) project has attempted to narrow that knowledge gap through instruction, mentoring, and research support teams. To date, two cohorts of community college instructors (six participants each year) have participated in an online course on education research, which culminates in the completion of a research proposal. Participants receive coaching and mentorship through the development and implementation of their research projects at their respective institutions. Data collected to date measures the impact that each EBIP has on student anxiety and academic self-efficacy. The purpose of CAPER is not only to gather data on the EBIP implementation and effectiveness in community college classrooms, but also to gather data on long-lasting change in instructional methods used by community college instructors engaging in this research. Through this research, we are contributing to the body of literature that is currently lacking representation of community college populations. In addition, we are identifying tools and resources that may increase the likelihood that community college faculty will engage in student-centered learning techniques in their classrooms.

The increased prevalence and severity of academic-related distress is of significant concern on college campuses. Of particular relevance to instructors is the anxiety relating to classroom teaching and evaluation practices. Sources of evaluation anxiety include student uncertainty about the nature of the expected demands as well as their ability to meet these demands. This report presents work from a pilot study investigating correlations between evaluation anxiety and perceived evaluation accuracy for different evaluation techniques across four different disciplines. We also examined the potential mediating role of academic self-efficacy in the relationship between anxiety and expected grade. Our results provide insight into methods to reduce anxiety and increase performance. We try to answer the question: "Should instructors focus their efforts on modifying their evaluation tools or increasing academic self-efficacy?"

This paper presents community college (CC) instructors' responses to the Community College Anatomy and Physiology Educational Research (CAPER) project, a professional development program focused on active learning and educational research. We engage with conceptual change theory to better understand why and how CC instructors shifted their perspectives toward active learning. Qualitative data indicate that the participating CC instructors experienced pedagogical discontentment, leading to increased positive beliefs about active learning and educational research. In addition, we find that CC instructors have continued their pursuit of pedagogical change and educational research through communities of practice, which provide positive learning environments.

Circadian rhythms play an influential role in nearly all aspects of physiology and behavior in the vast majority of species on Earth. The biological clockwork that regulates these rhythms is dynamic over the lifespan: rhythmic activities such as sleep/ wake patterns change markedly as we age, and in many cases they become increasingly fragmented. Given that prolonged disruptions of normal rhythms are highly detrimental to health, deeper knowledge of how our biological clocks change with age may create valuable opportunities to improve health and longevity for an aging global population. In this Review, we synthesize key findings from the study of circadian rhythms in later life, identify patterns of change documented to date, and review potential physiological mechanisms that may underlie these changes., Introduction Worldwide, the human population is graying rapidly: between 2010 and 2050, the proportion of adults over 65 years of age will double from 8% to 16% of the global [...]

Monitoring and reporting on the well-being of children has a central role to play in the development of policies to improve children's lives. This paper uses two reports on child well-being--the State of London's Children Reports--as exemplars to show how regular reporting on children can be linked to planning and policy-making in an urban environment. The paper describes how some of the themes and key findings from the State of London's Children Reports are being taken forward through policies to improve the lives of London children. The paper also draws on the process of researching and writing the reports in a discussion of some broader issues relating to child well-being measurement, focusing particularly on the integration of children's own conceptions of their well-being within the processes of indicator development and reporting. The author proposes that children's perspectives on what constitutes their well-being should be integrated alongside and together with more adult-oriented measures; and that work to involve children in child well-being development should make a clear contribution to policies which are aimed at improving the lives of children.

Three experiments examined 3- to 6-year-olds' interference control using a task in which children saw 2 corresponding sets of colored cards, a large set in front of them and a small set behind them. A colored candy (Smartie) was placed on a large card with mismatching color, and children could win the Smartie by selecting the small card that matched the color of the large card. Three-year-olds performed poorly whereas older children performed well. Having children label the correct color before responding improved 3-year-olds' performance (Experiment 2), as did pointing to the large card (Experiment 3); decreasing the affective salience of the stimuli (colored beads vs. Smarties) did not (Experiment 3). Results reveal the role of selective attention in action control.

A role for dopamine (DA) in the regulation of clock genes in the mammalian brain is suggested by evidence that manipulations of DA receptors can alter the expression of some clock genes outside the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), the master circadian clock. The role of endogenous DA in the regulation of clock gene expression is unknown. Here, we demonstrate a direct relationship between extracellular DA levels and the rhythm of expression of the clock protein PERIOD2 (PER2) in the dorsal striatum of the male Wistar rat. Specifically, we show that the peak of the daily rhythm of extracellular DA in the dorsal striatum precedes the peak of PER2 by -6 hand that depletion of striatal DA by 6-hydroxydopamine or a-methyl-para-tyrosine or blockade of D2 DA receptors by raclopride blunts the rhythm of striatal PER2. Furthermore, timed daily activation of D2 DA receptors, but not D1 DA receptors, restores and entrains the PER2 rhythm in the DA-depleted striatum. None of these manipulations had any effect on the PER2 rhythm in the SCN. Our findings are consistent with the idea that the rhythm of expression of PER2 in the dorsal striatum depends on daily dopaminergic activation of D2 DA receptors. These observations may have implications for circadian abnormalities seen in Parkinson's disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A role for dopamine (DA) in the regulation of clock genes in the mammalian brain is suggested by evidence that manipulations of DA receptors can alter the expression of some clock genes outside the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), the master circadian clock. The role of endogenous DA in the regulation of clock gene expression is unknown. Here, we demonstrate a direct relationship between extracellular DA levels and the rhythm of expression of the clock protein PERIOD2 (PER2) in the dorsal striatum of the male Wistar rat. Specifically, we show that the peak of the daily rhythm of extracellular DA in the dorsal striatum precedes the peak of PER2 by ∼6 h and that depletion of striatal DA by 6-hydroxydopamine or α-methyl-para-tyrosine or blockade of D(2) DA receptors by raclopride blunts the rhythm of striatal PER2. Furthermore, timed daily activation of D(2) DA receptors, but not D(1) DA receptors, restores and entrains the PER2 rhythm in the DA-depleted striatum. None of these manipulations had any effect on the PER2 rhythm in the SCN. Our findings are consistent with the idea that the rhythm of expression of PER2 in the dorsal striatum depends on daily dopaminergic activation of D(2) DA receptors. These observations may have implications for circadian abnormalities seen in Parkinson's disease.