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This narrative study tells the teaching and learning story of the recently retired Dr. Peggy LePage, a longtime member of the Human Anatomy and Physiology Society with a career as a community college anatomy and biology professor spanning nearly three decades. Drawn from a lengthy narrative interview, this paper describes Dr. LePage's background as a nontraditional student and explores her resilience as a woman in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). When Dr. LePage neared a breaking point early in her career, an encounter with a well-known advocate for active learning in science classrooms transformed her pedagogy. She also became involved with HAPS and never looked back. Narrative passages from her interview emphasize Dr. LePage's persistence in STEM, her shift toward a teacher as learner mentality, and the benefits of learning communities for anatomy and physiology instructors.

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.

Pre-clinical community college students represent a unique population with varied academic backgrounds and levels of preparedness. Addressing the needs of this population is important for issues of access, equity, and diversity in higher education. As part of a larger National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Community College Anatomy and Physiology Education Research (CAPER), this study aimed to investigate the impact of an active learning technique on student anxiety, student collaboration, and final course grades. We introduced a bookend think-pair-share (TPS) active learning technique into a traditional community college human physiology lecture. The study found an increased likelihood of collaboration, a slight increase in final grades, a slight decrease in social anxiety, and a significant decrease in anxiety regarding five of eight specific teaching practices following the bookend TPS intervention.

One strategy to transform the high attrition rates among community college (CC) students is for CC instructors to utilize the teaching practices shown to most likely lead to student success. CC students and faculty are underrepresented in biology education research (BER), with only 3% of BER articles addressing CC-specific issues (Schinske et al. 2017). This study examines whether the addition of an electronic student response system (SRS), and its proposed ability to facilitate group discussion, would enhance the effects of peer instruction on student performance in a community college anatomy and physiology course. Unit exam scores of students utilizing clickers vs. written responses were compared to determine if the addition of clicker technology to peer instruction increased performance. A MANOVA test revealed no significant differentiation in exam scores between groups. This implies that CC students may respond dissimilarly to previously studied students and that more educational research must be done at community colleges.

This article examines the backgrounds and pedagogical evolution of twelve community college (CC) human anatomy and physiology faculty participating in a larger study known as the Community College Anatomy and Physiology Education Research (CAPER) project. Using qualitative analysis of interviews based on Luft & Roehrig's (2007) Teacher Belief Interview (TBI), this article explores how prior experiences influenced CC faculty's teaching beliefs and practices. Results indicated that despite limited access to professional development opportunities, CC faculty drew on their own experiences as learners, teaching experience, and classroom experimentation to reorient their beliefs toward effective science teaching. To better align their new beliefs with their classroom practice, they joined the CAPER project professional development opportunity. Findings reflect patterns identified in Clarke and Hollingsworth's (2002) Interconnected Model of Professional Growth (ICMPG) highlighting the importance of instructors' prior knowledge and intrinsic motivation. Given that community colleges serve a substantial share of higher education students today, this study has important implications for professional development and classroom research opportunities for CC and other higher education faculty.

Despite widespread calls for reform in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education, effecting lasting change in instructor practice is challenging to achieve. This article describes the results of a 2-yr research study that involved efforts to develop the pedagogical expertise of a group of anatomy and physiology instructors at the college level. Data were collected through a series of individual interviews that included the use of the Teacher Beliefs Inventory questionnaire (23) along with observations onsite in participants' college classrooms and at process-oriented guided inquiry learning (POGIL) curriculum writing workshops. Findings indicated attitudinal shifts on the part of participants from teacher-centered to more student-centered pedagogy and supported the benefits of long-term professional development for instructors. Here, we documented the successful progress of these professors as they participated in a curriculum development process that emphasized student-centered teaching with the goal of promoting broader change efforts in introductory anatomy and physiology.

This article describes a one-semester anatomy and physiology course that is currently offered through the concurrent enrollment program at the University of Minnesota. The article explains how high school teachers are prepared to teach the course and describes efforts to promote program quality, student inquiry, and experiential learning. Recommendations are made for anatomy and physiology instructors who are involved in similar endeavors. (Contains 6 figures and 3 tables.)

Many college courses have historically been associated with large amounts of reading. For example, many biology courses required students to read trade books such as Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" (Carson, 1962), or James Watson's "The Double Helix" (Watson, 1980), but now most instructors elect to focus students' reading on course textbooks and study guides. As instructors know, these different kinds of books tell very different stories and elicit different responses from readers. For example, whereas "Silent Spring" was a bestseller that helped launch the "environmental movement," textbooks are often little more than massive, and very expensive, compendiums of facts that students seldom read, much less study. This has been documented by Burchfield and Sappington (2000) who found an overall decline in reading compliance in assigned textbook reading over a 16-year span. Despite the fact that reading levels are in decline, but the merits of reading remain in high regard, the authors designed and implemented a reading assignment for college freshman science students. In this article, the authors discuss a research project whose objective was to evaluate the assignment in terms of student opinions and its influence on overall course performance (i.e., course grades). (Contains 2 tables.)

Instructors used an electronic response system to enhance student-centered learning in large and small college biology classes. The system worked well to engage students in learning the subject matter and to assess their prior knowledge and misconceptions. It provided useful feedback to students as well as instructors. Problems encountered resulted mainly from not having permanent installation of the hardware components in the large class.

Standing in front of a classroom distributing factual information is what many do while teaching. Argues that more time and effort should be spent on activities that are more fruitful at promoting student learning. (SAH)