Showing posts with label chunking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chunking. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 31, 2021

Stress Deserves Its Own Chapter

One of the advantages of organizing anatomy and physiology concepts into short, modular chapters is that it gives us more flexibility in teaching. It also permits us to focus on important topics that are often buried within a large chapter that covers many subtopics.  Taking this advantage, Anatomy & Physiology puts the clinically important concepts of stress into a single, independent chapter.


The concepts of stress interconnect with concepts of neuroscience, endocrinology, immunology, and many others—covered in diverse chapters of a textbook and diverse modules of an A&P course. Putting the core concepts of stress into its own independent chapter means that the instructor has more flexibility in where they place in their own course structure—into their own unique telling of the story of the human body.

Our book was the first A&P textbook to have an independent stress chapter. Since its introduction, we've been keeping the content up to date and relevant to student learning—and to the clinical applications of stress they'll be making in their professional courses and careers. 

More recently, we enlisted the advice of the late Dr. Bruce McEwen, an icon of the modern concepts of human stress and it's real-life implications. Contributing author Dr. Peggie Williamson and I used Bruce's advice and his generous stack of resources to give our stress chapter a major refresh and update. You will find that the engaging story-of-stress approach remains, but with the more recent parts of that story reflected with greater clarity and relevance.

We need not let the concepts of stress be stressors themselves in our teaching and learning. Using the stress chapter in Anatomy & Physiologya reader favorite—can help us all better understand the pivotal role stress can have in wellness and disease.

Monday, March 22, 2021

Your Modular Anatomy & Physiology Textbook

Ever dreamed of rearranging the order of topics in your course. That is, have you ever wanted to shift the order of topics as they are presented in your textbook to fit the way you tell your story of the human body? Without the obstacles of assigning a half-chapter here and the other half-chapter there—and possibly causing some students to get a bit lost?

Yeah, me too. That's why I've worked hard to move away from the gigantic-chapter model we see in most A&P textbooks to the modular model in our Anatomy & Physiology textbook. Instead of the usual 20-something large chapters commonly seen, our textbook has 48 chapters—but about the same number of pages as all the others. That is, those gigantic chapters have been broken down into smaller bits.

Besides the advantage of making our reading assignments less intimidating for students, the arrangement of concepts in smaller chapters also means that it is far easier for any instructor to move things around a bit to better suit their particular telling of the A&P story. 


For example, because the introduction to homeostasis is its own short chapter, faculty have the choice to move it's place in the course to the very beginning—before all those directional terms and cavities, and so forth Or one could move it a bit later in the course, after the foundational chemistry, cell, and tissue coverage to just prior to beginning covering the first body system. 

The short stress chapter could be moved earlier or later in the course, without having to separate it out of another larger chapter that covers other topics as well. 

One could even decide to have students learn the appendicular skeleton first, before getting to that intimidating skull and vertebral column. 

If you've not looked at the Patton Anatomy & Physiology text in a while, this might be a good time to check it out and think about it's modular structure may be a better fit for your A&P course.

You may want to learn more about the story of our smaller chapters by reading these brief posts:


Monday, June 22, 2020

Pandemic Scramble: Keeping It Simple

In my opinion, the big mistake that professors commonly make when moving an on-campus course to remote teaching is to make things more complicated than they need to be. That unnecessary complexity stems from the idea that one must take their entire course, including every element and detail, and move it more or less "as is" to an online environment. I think we get much better outcomes if we strive to keep it simple.

First, "remote" need not always be "online." There are a lot of learning opportunities to be had with reading and retrieval practice assignments from the Patton Anatomy & Physiology textbook. Students have invested a lot in acquiring this resource and a large team has worked together to make it an effective learning tool. Now's a great time to do better by our students by helping them engage fully in both reading and raiding their textbook. 

Second, now is a great time to revisit our learning outcomes and compare those to our course design. Most of us keep adding more expected outcomes, and therefore more content, to our courses over the years. As we consider various learning activities, we often add them rather than replace existing activities. Our course becomes bloated, complex, and heavier than it needs to be. So my advice is to prune, prune, prune to the main outcomes—the truly essential concepts—of our A&P course. Then, and only then, are we ready to move to remote teaching.

Third, rather than simply digitize our course components—recording lectures, converting tests and quizzes to online formats, etc.—we should rethink our course design. I suggest trimming back on what we are telling and showing showing students and rely more on their own discovery. And resisting the urge to use every last one of the cool toys that our instructional designers are helping us to discover.

What I mean by that is focusing our recorded lectures on the hard-to-understand "pain points" of A&P. And even then, we should consider trimming our narrative down to half or less of that 50-minute time block that we are used to. Then taking those shorter lectures and chunking them into even smaller, bite-sized pieces.

We can also substitute those occasional, mind-bending summative tests with frequent, low-stakes formative tests by using the our learning management system's online quizzing engine. This leverages the learning benefits of retrieval practice by shifting the work of learning to the student—where it belongs. This approach also makes light work of learning, thus avoiding a burdensome load during this time of stress and uncertainty.

To learn more about these suggestions and more, watch my video presentation Simple Ideas for Moving to Remote Learning or listen to an audio version from my podcast.





Monday, September 28, 2015

Chunking Content Provides Flexibility

In some of my previous posts, I explained some of the advantages of chunking a large volume of complex content into smaller bits:

Chunking breaks content into smaller bits
Those previous discussions described chunking material into smaller chapters, smaller sections, smaller subsections, smaller paragraphs, and smaller sentences. I also described chunking material in Anatomy & Physiology in the form of summary tables that also help students discover conceptual patterns.

This post builds on these ideas by introducing the value of breaking textbook content into smaller chunks when adapting the textbook content to the specific needs of your A&P course.

In an article I wrote last year at The A&P Professor titled Your Textbook is a Mitten, Not a Glove, I called attention to the fact that each of us tailors the depth and range of topics, the style of presentation, and sometimes the sequence of concepts, to fit the specific objectives of a course—or even a particular section of the A&P course. I believe that a thoughtfully chunked textbook assists both instructors and students in making the textbook "fit" the course.

Flexibility in selecting and organizing content for your course is enhanced by having the Anatomy & Physiology textbook broken down into smaller units. For example, by having the entire course broken down into 48 chapters—instead of the usual 20-something chapters—the instructor can "move around" content into a different sequence from the Anatomy & Physiology textbook's sequence with very little disruption to the students. Reducing disruption by being able to move whole chapters—rather than a half or third of a chapter here and there--can greatly enhance the student experience. It also makes it easier for the instructor, who is thus relieved from unraveling the confusion in syllabi, course schedules, and student inquiries.

Smaller, more discrete chapter topics also makes it easier to skip a topic. For example, in some programs, most topics in immunity are not covered in the A&P course, but are instead covered in microbiology or another course. Most A&P books combine lymphatic and immunity topics into a single chapter, so an A&P professor may find themselves wrestling with the student confusion caused by assigning only a partial chapter.

And "good luck" if your students are using a published workbook or online adaptive learning tool that is organized by chapter.

In Anatomy & Physiology, however, separate chapters on lymphatics, innate immunity, and adaptive immunity make it very easy to reorganize—or even skip—topics to suit the needs of a particular A&P course.

Students benefit from clear organization
Likewise, carefully subdivided sections and subsections assist instructors in skipping or rearranging the sequence of topics within a particular chapter. Even if the instructor does not call attention to a rearrangement of certain elements of the A&P story in class (vs. the sequence in the textbook), the clear labeling of discrete sections and subsections helps the student figure out where the concepts are covered in the textbook.

Chunking has many benefits—and we can now see that enhancing the instructor's flexibility in organizing course content is one of them. And that can result in less student confusion—and greater student success.


Images: Robert Michie (top)
KPatton (middle)


Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Tables Help Students Recognize Patterns

One of the things our Anatomy & Physiology books are known and loved for is their extensive set summary tables. Although students quickly discover how useful they are, I'm not sure many A&P professors give them much thought.  But as an A&P author, I have to give them a lot of thought—and I want to share a few of my thoughts about these tables that may surprise you!

Tables help students construct a conceptual framework.
Sometimes, beginning students are so overwhelmed with details that they have a hard time seeing how it all fits together into a whole idea. Summary tables bring details together in a way that assists learners in starting their own cognitive scaffold for new facts and ideas. Those of us who already appreciate "the big picture," often forget how critical it is for newbies to properly build their understanding in steps.

Tables serve as a handy reference tool.
Students often use their textbooks for "raiding" specific facts, rather than reading whole sections.  For example, when learning the bones and markings of the skeleton, summary tables can quickly and effectively give a pithy description of illustrated structures in the textbook. As professors, we often forget how much the beginner relies on such tools to get started in learning.

Tables help students recognize patterns.
Many of the tables in an A&P textbook are not meant to be memorized.  Instead, they are used to compare and contrast ideas in a visual way that is difficult to do in the text narrative.  This moves students beyond "just the facts" to how those facts can be applied in understanding human structure and function.  In a table, patterns become obvious and critical thinking starts to "click" in the minds of readers. We instructors, who have already had our "aha" moments with these topics, sometimes don't appreciate how helpful a carefully arranged table can be in producing such moments.


Tables must be easily readable.
This may seem too obvious a fact to mention here. However, I've found that well-prepared teachers can easily read and understand even a horribly formatted, vaguely written table. Students who are just learning the concepts often get lost as they go across a row and don't know enough to figure out where they are supposed to look next.  Which brings me to my final, and perhaps most important, point . . .

Effective tables are carefully designed.
This is what makes a table easily readable—thoughtful design. In the latest revision of Anatomy & Physiology, effective table design is a major focus.  Having experimented in previous editions, I collaborated with our designer, editors, and previous students, to find a format that is both "readable" and "raidable."  I'll list a few things we did to make that happen in a moment.  But first, I also want to mention that I also put a lot of work into making sure that content that lends itself to a summary table is put into a table in way that complements and supports the text narrative.  That is, the table content is not simply a re-hash of the text—it is a thoughtful rearrangement of concepts to add more depth to student learning.

Table design features that promote effective learning in Anatomy & Physiology:

  • Background screens
    • Different shades of color behind different rows of each table helps the brain quickly see logical groupings of concepts.  
    • The color of the screens is apparent, but not too bright or too saturated to distract the brain from the content
  • Rules (borders)
    • White horizontal rules are just visible enough that they (along with the color screens) subtly guide the reader's eye across rows
    • Vertical rules help the reader clearly distinguish columns and cells so that it is clear how the concepts are organized in the table
  • Fonts
    • Font sizing allows tables of a compact size—which allows ease of seeing patterns in the whole—but is still big enough for easy reading
    • Intentional use of boldface and italic headings within the more complex table help clarify the organization of ideas—thus reducing the cognitive load of understanding table content
    • The occasional use of color fonts helps highlight conceptual patterns
      • For example, the book's color code can be applied in tables related to blood vessels (oxygenated red and deoxy blue) or nerves (afferent blue and efferent red)
  • Illustrations
    • Judicious use of small, embedded or nearby sketches help students more clearly "see" the concepts listed in a table
    • This is a careful balancing act, because tables with overly large illustrations, too many illustrations, or very complex illustrations can reduce the effectiveness of a table
There is lot more to what goes into designing each table in Anatomy & Physiology to make it an effective learning tool.  But this post is already almost too much to read in one sitting, eh? In later posts, I'll be calling attention to particular tables—especially those new to the latest edition—to give examples of how effective they are for deep student learning.




Monday, November 24, 2014

Chunking Chapters - By The Numbers

I recently outlined my rationale for chunking textbook chapters into smaller bits. In the article Reducing Text Anxiety, I explain that breaking large chapters into smaller chapters improves reading comprehension.  Learning experts call this "reducing cognitive load" and both expert and poor readers benefit by shorter chapters. Now let's look at the numbers behind this chunking.

Comparison to the Previous Edition

As the first table shows, the average chapter length of the new edition of Anatomy & Physiology has dropped by a whopping 23% without changing the length of the textbook.  Likewise, the longest chapter in the book is now 19% shorter than the longest chapter in the previous edition.

A&P/8e
A&P/9e
Difference
Total (chapters)
37
48
+11
Total (pages)
1140
1140
same
Average (pages/chapter)
30.8
23.8
- 23%
Shortest chapter (pages)
16
12
-25%
Longest chapter (pages
52
43
-19%

Comparison to Other A&P Textbooks

The second table compares a few other 2-semester A&P textbooks to the new edition of our Anatomy & Physiology.  At an average chapter length of only 24 pages, our chapters are about 12 pages (33%) shorter than the nearest compared textbook.  And our chapters are 19 pages (44%) shorter than the compared textbook with the longest chapter average.

Again, our Anatomy & Physiology has 33-44% shorter chapters compared to other A&P textbooks of comparable length and coverage.

Textbook
Chapter
Count
Page
Count
Average
Pages / Chapter
Seeley 10e
29
1248
43.0
McKinley 1e
29
1169
40.3
Saladin 6e
29
1136
39.2
Tortora 14e
29
1127
38.9
Hole 13e
24
925
38.5
Martini 9e
29
1114
38.4
Marieb (big) 9e
29
1107
38.2
Marieb (little) 5e
26
923
35.5
Patton 9e
48
1140
23.8
As an expert reader myself, I would much rather be tackling a technical textbook that is chunked into smaller, more digestible chapters. I can only imagine how much more helpful such chunking will be for readers who:
  • struggle with reading
  • have too many distractions in their lives
  • are challenged with learning in English
  • are underprepared
  • have learning disabilities

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Update Guide


How do you know where the changes are when your A&P textbook is revised?

How many times have you flipped through a chapter in a new edition and thought, "this looks pretty much the same as in the last edition"—only to have a student later point out that a term has changed, an image revised, or a section added?

Yeah, me too!

So that's why I've started keeping a log of all the changes I make globally and as I revise each chapter for a new edition.  This log—called a Conversion/Update Guide—is available to instructors.  Starting with the upcoming 9th edition of Anatomy & Physiology, teachers can log into the Instructor Resources at Evolve to access this handy guide.

For example, in a recent post I outlined a few improvements to a newly minted chapter devoted to homeostasis. When you start using the new edition of Anatomy & Physiology, you may wonder how this was split out (chunked) from the larger chapter in the previous edition and exactly what changes were made. That is, you want to know what specifically will impact your teaching.

With the new update guide, you'll be able to see what changes were made and you can then easily determine which, if any, have a practical impact on your course.  Perhaps you need to change a chapter number, or maybe provide an alternate term, or possibly add a new image to your PowerPoint presentation.

I always wanted to have something like this when I was teaching other courses and a new edition of the textbook came out.  Even when I found the changes on my own (or more likely, when a student pointed out a conflict between what I told them was in the book and what was actually in the book), I didn't always understand why those changes were made.

So I created the update guide so you can not only see what revisions were made, but also a brief note about the rationale for the changes.

My plan is to also share some additional background and rationales for specific updates and textbook features here in this blog, where I have a bit more space to fully explain them.  Please consider subscribing by email so you don't miss any new posts!  Just fill out the brief SUBSCRIPTION FORM.



Cartoon:adapted from Raúl Ruano Ruiz
Photo: K Patton



Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Homeostasis Deserves Its Own Chapter

Homeostasis is a major theme of every anatomy and physiology course, so why not explore this important principle in a single, focused chapter?

In a recent post, I explained my rationale for chunking Anatomy & Physiology into smaller chapters than are typical among A&P textbooks.  This provides the opportunity to devote a single, compact chapter to the concept of homeostasis.

Starting in the upcoming 9th edition, the second chapter of Anatomy & Physiology is devoted solely to describing the concept of homeostasis and explaining its central role in maintaining normal function of the human body.  This comes after a brief introductory chapter outlining the nature of the human life sciences and the organization of the body.

This reorganization also provides the opportunity to chunk the sections and provide headings and subheadings that help readers understand how various aspects of homeostasis "hang together."


  • Homeostasis
    • The Internal Environment
    • Relative Stability
    • Set Point
    • Models of Homeostasis
  • Homeostatic Control Mechanisms
    • Feedback Loops
    • Basic Components of Control Systems
      • Sensor
      • Integrator
      • Effector
      • Feedback
    • Negative Feedback in Control Systems
    • Positive Feedback in Control Systems
    • Changing the Set Point
    • Feed-Forward in Control Systems
  • Levels of Homeostatic Control
  • Summary of Homeostasis
  • Cycle of Life: Life Span Considerations
  • The Big Picture: Homeostasis
  • Mechanisms of Disease
    • Basic Mechanisms of Disease
    • Risk Factors
  • Case Study


By focusing on homeostasis and the underlying role it plays in nearly all body functions in this manner, students "get it" in a way that helps them move into the remainder of their A&P course with clearer understanding of the big picture.

A few other improvements to coverage of homeostasis in this newly formed chapter include:

Concepts

  • A brief discussion of circadian rhythms helps students better understand that set points can change in a daily pattern, thus preparing them for such patterns encountered in later chapters
  • Clarification that feedback loops can be understood as stimulus-response mechanisms, which helps students apply homeostatic principles to nervous system applications

Learning Objects

  • A new table listing homeostatic functions of each major body system helps students better visualize the global aspects of homeostasis
  • New set of graphs showing circadian cycles in various physiological variables helps students visualize an important concept, while also introducing them to interpretation of physiological graphs
  • A new diagram representing disease as a loss of homeostatic balance helps student understand the role of homeostasis in health and disease
  • A new case study helps students practice applying concepts of homeostasis to clinical examples

Examples
  • More examples of negative-feedback mechanisms, positive-feedback control, feed-forward regulation help students better understand and apply these concepts
  • The model of a tightrope walker (Wallenda model) was added to illustrate concepts of homeostasis missed by the engineered control system model and the fishbowl model of homeostasis
  • A cross-reference to the new A&P Connect article The Human Microbiome helps students integrate the concept of microbial function with the functions of human organs and systems.
  • New boxed content on negative feedback during exercise helps students apply concepts of homeostatic regulation to real-world situations

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Reducing "Text Anxiety"


As any A&P instructor can tell you, our students are NOT eager to open their textbooks and dive in. And yet, when and if they do dive in, they'll find all kinds of help in understanding the basic principles of the course.  What causes such "text anxiety" in our students?  What can be done to reduce it?

I'm convinced that one trigger (of many) for text anxiety is that many textbooks present information in large, solid masses that are simply too daunting for most readers. More students with poor reading skills seem to be in our courses, but even excellent and eager readers can be put off by a large, dense chapter rife with five-dollar words and technical language.

So that's why I've fully committed to the "chunking" approach to teaching and textbook writing. It's well known among educators and those who study the science of reading and learning that breaking large amounts of information into smaller chunks increases the ease and efficiency of reading—thus improving overall comprehension of the material.  And it seems to reduce text anxiety by presenting material in easily digestible, bite-sized chunks.

Anatomy & Physiology has already seen the splitting of chapters and sections over previous editions, giving it the largest number of chapters of any 2-semester A&P textbook.  The 8th edition has 37 chapters versus the usual 20-something chapters—with about the same number of pages among all the books.  Student feedback and expert recommendations have nudged us to take chunking a step further in the 9th edition (available in January 2015). 

As the chart below shows by colored pairs in the right column, I've split the eleven largest chapters.  This increases the total number of chapters from 37 to 48 chapters.  Although the number of chapters is much higher than in the previous edition, the total page count is almost exactly the same—because the material was chunked, not expanded.

Besides the chunking of whole chapters, I also chunked many of the denser sections within chapters—adding helpful subheadings to aid reading comprehension in expert and challenged readers alike. Even longer paragraphs and sentences were split to improve reading efficiency.

I also took the opportunity to simplify chapter titles (marked with an asterisk in the chart), headings, and the titles of tables and illustrations.  

All of these simple changes maintain the same finely-tuned depth of coverage and quality of the content, but greatly reduce text anxiety among our A&P students!


Units
9th ed
8th ed
9th ed Chapter titles
The Body as a Whole
1
1
Organization of the Body
2
1
Homeostasis
3
2
Chemical Basis  of Life
4
2
Biomolecules
5
3
Cell Structure*
6
4
Cell Function*
7
5
Cell Growth & Development*
8
6
Introduction to Tissues
9
6
Tissue Types
Support and Movement
10
7
Skin*
11
8
Skeletal Tissues
12
9
Axial Skeleton
13
9
Appendicular Skeleton
14
10
Articulations
15
11
Axial Muscles
16
11
Appendicular Muscles
17
12
Muscle Contraction*
Communication, Control, and Integration
18
13
Nervous System Cells
19
13
Nerve Signaling
20
14
Central Nervous System
21
15
Peripheral Nervous System
22
16
Autonomic Nervous System
23
17
General Senses
24
17
Special Senses
25
18
Endocrine Regulation
26
19
Endocrine Glands
Transportation and Defense
27
20
Blood
28
21
Heart
29
21
Blood Vessels
30
22
Circulation of Blood*
31
23
Lymphatic System
32
24
Innate Immunity
33
24
Adaptive Immunity
34
25
Stress
Respiration, Nutrition, and Excretion
35
26
Respiratory Tract*
36
27
Ventilation
37
27
Gas Exchange & Transport
38
28
Upper Digestive Tract
39
28
Lower Digestive Tract
40
29
Digestion and Absorption*
41
30
Nutrition and Metabolism
42
31
Urinary System
43
32
Fluid & Electrolyte Balance
44
33
Acid-Base Balance
Reproduction and Development
45
34
Male Reproductive System
46
35
Female Reproductive System
47
36
Growth and Development
48
37
Genetics and Heredity
* Simplified-clarified chapter titles
Split chapters are highlighted in same color