Sun, Dec 17, 2023, 1:49 PM
Dear Winter 2024 Bio 40A Students,
I hope this note finds you well in the midst of the winter holiday season! I'm excited to meet you on January 9th to begin an exciting journey through the realm of anatomy and physiology (A&P)! I'll be in touch in the new year with more information about class, but wanted to share a few thoughts with you now.
Over many years of teaching A&P, I've worked hard to build a class experience that emphasizes learning and retention, and reduces memorization (which we often just forget!) and stress. The result is a class without any traditional, high-stakes tests or exams. Instead, I closely monitor progress during every class meeting and through each activity to ensure we all meet the lofty goals for the course.
I hope this sounds exciting! I think it makes for a rich and productive learning experience without unnecessary stress and anxiety that could otherwise prevent us from learning well. However, it means that this class relies heavily on everyone regularly participating in class and on Canvas - perhaps more so than other classes where performance on a few, big exams is the emphasis. We meet on campus just one day per week for lecture and lab, which means we have a total of only 11 meeting days during the quarter (12 if including finals week). If you know in advance that you will need to miss multiple class meetings, that could present a major challenge to success in the course.
With all of this in mind, I would encourage you to check your calendar for Tuesdays between January 9th and March 26th to ensure you expect you will be able to attend those days. If it looks like you will miss multiple Tuesday sessions in that time range, we should talk about that in advance and decide whether the course will work for you. Feel free to reply to this email to discuss this further. I understand unexpected events like illnesses or emergencies might arise during the quarter and we can discuss those when they come up. For now, I just hoped you might take a look for any planned absences that you anticipate will keep you from class.
Thanks for signing up for Bio 40A! I look forward to learning alongside you in 2024!
Jeff
e have four main goals for our first week of Bio 40A:
ReplyDeleteFeel a sense of community and belonging in Bio 40A.
Feel confident that you have a path to understanding A&P and succeeding in Bio 40A.
Evaluate diseases’ impacts on the body as resulting in negative vs. positive feedback and identify communication pathways responsible for those changes.
Explore some historical contributions to the fields of A&P and common methods of studying anatomy.
We already made some progress toward these goals in our first meeting and we are particularly going to focus on the third goal in this module.
Our Strategies for Learning/Brain Changing
human brainIn our first meeting we briefly discussed the physiological basis of learning in terms of physical and chemical changes to neurons. We will extend those ideas and draw on strategies based on research regarding how the brain works in order to help our brains process and retain information. For example, evidence indicates that learning requires us to*...
BE ENGAGED: our brains must be awake, attending, and interested
EXPLORE: our brains need to reflect on related knowledge/memories so that we connect those to new understandings
EXPLAIN: after the first two steps our brains are likely ready to receive new information and form new synapses
ELABORATE: our brains need opportunities to practice using the new ideas in new contexts
EVALUATE: our brains need opportunities to assess understanding and identify confusions
Our modules (and meetings) will try to take advantage of this brain research and follow the order above in introducing new ideas! For that reason, the module pages and activities have been set up to require you to work in a certain order - generally in order to follow the steps above!
Physiological Feedback Loops
We ended our class meeting by thinking about a coronavirus scenario and mentioned that we will analyze that scenario through the lens of a physiological feedback loop. This week's online module picks up right there - with feedback loops - but through the lens of a different disease. Once you learn about these concepts on Canvas, we will use our next class meeting to apply the concepts back to coronavirus!
Click "Next" below to move on and get started!
*List adapted from BSCS and Science Education Partnership and Assessment Laboratory, SFSU
Below once again is our description of congestive heart failure (CHF). Think about what you've learned about feedback loops so far. Do you think this example represents a negative feedback loop or positive feedback loop? What information supports your opinion? Feel free to go back to previous pages or open another browser to show other module pages while you think. Write down some of your thoughts or uncertainties regarding the above questions on some scratch paper or a computer document, since I'm going to ask you about this again later in the module!
ReplyDeleteIn CHF, the heart fails to efficiently pump blood around the body. The kidneys sense the decreased blood flow. The liver and glands release hormones to try to enhance blood flow by retaining more water in the body. The increased water volume in the blood vessels puts more stress on the heart, which further reduces blood flow to the kidneys and other organs.
Click "Next" once you've had a chance to informally record (not on Canvas) some of your ideas regarding the questions above.
Naming the Key Players in Feedback Loops
ReplyDeleteOur final task in being able to talk like a physiologist is to define the roles that different molecules, cells, or organs might play in feedback loops. We're going look again at congestive heart failure (CHF) and try to identify the things in the paragraph that might be performing the following roles:
Stimulus
Deviation/Change
Receptor (sometimes called the Sensor)
Afferent Pathway
Control Center
Set Point
Efferent Pathway
Effector
Response
Click hereLinks to an external site. to review the section from our textbook that explains the meaning of these terms. You might also wish to refer to the lecture slides on this topic and the diagram below. As you read, keep our CHF description in mind (below). Which of the terms in the list above are you able to apply to our description of CHF? Which of the terms in the list can you not identify in the CHF description? Not all of the terms from the list are represented in the description!
In CHF, the heart fails to efficiently pump blood around the body. The kidneys sense the decreased blood flow. The liver and glands release hormones to try to enhance blood flow by retaining more water in the body. The increased water volume in the blood vessels puts more stress on the heart, which further reduces blood flow to the kidneys and other organs.