Using student feedback to construct an assessment rubric for a concept map in physiology

Constructing quality assessment rubrics can be challenging, especially when they are used for integrated, group-centered, applied learning. We describe a collaborative assessment task in which groups of second-year dentistry students developed a complex concept map. In groups of four, the students were given a written, simulated, medical history of a patient and required to construct a concept map illustrating relevant pathophysiological concepts and pharmacological interventions. This report describes a research project aimed at making educational goals of the task more explicit through investigating student and faculty member understandings of the criteria that might be used to assess the concept map. Information was gathered about the perceptions of students in relation to the learning goals associated with the task. These were compared with faculty member perceptions. The findings were used to develop an assessment rubric intended to be more accessible to learners. The new rubric used the language of both faculty members and students to more clearly represent expectations of each criterion and standard. This assessment rubric will be used in 2005 for the next phase of the project.     

Staff and student perceptions of computer-assisted assessment for physiology practical classes

Effective assessment of laboratory practicals is a challenge for large-size classes. To reduce the administrative burden of staff members without compromising the student learning experience, we utilized dedicated computer software for short-answer question assessment for nearly 300 students and compared it with the more traditional, paper-based method of assessment of the same student cohort. Students were generally favorably disposed toward computer-assisted assessment (CAA): 75% of the students responded that for future assignments, they either had no preference for the method of assessment or would prefer CAA. Advantages were perceived to be remote access to the questions and ease of submission. The most common disadvantage cited was lack of internet access. Various advantages of CAA were mentioned by staff members: notably, the reduction in marking time and reduction of paperwork as well as the potential for the software to detect plagiarism and to administer anonymous marking. Disadvantages to CAA were the need to tailor questions to the technology, having to adapt to reading answers and marking onscreen, and the quality of feedback to students. All of the disadvantages could be overcome by training and improved versions of CAA software, currently under development. The use of CAA has proved to be a welcome addition to the tools available to staff members for the assessment of practical classes, and future improved versions of the software will increase the utility of this assessment method.     

Student perspectives of assessment by TEMM model in physiology

Assessment is the process by which the teacher and the student gain knowledge about student progress. Assessment systems should aim at evaluating the desired learning outcomes. In Melaka Manipal Medical College, (Manipal Campus), Manipal, India, the TEMM model (consisting of 4 assessment methods: Triple Jump Test, essay incorporating critical thinking questions, Multistation Integrated Practical Examination, and multiple choice questions) was introduced to 30 refresher students in the fourth block of the academic year. At the end of the block, a questionnaire was distributed to ask the students to rank the different assessments in the order of their preference with respect to seven items. Analysis of the results showed that not a single type of assessment was ranked highest for all the seven items, proving the earlier observation that a single assessment does not fulfill all aspects of assessment and that there is a need for an evaluating system with multiple ways of assessment.     

Use of concept mapping in an undergraduate introductory exercise physiology course

Physiology is often considered a challenging course for students. It is up to teachers to structure courses and create learning opportunities that will increase the chance of student success. In an undergraduate exercise physiology course, concept maps are assigned to help students actively process and organize information into manageable and meaningful chunks and to teach them to recognize the patterns and regularities of physiology. Students are first introduced to concept mapping with a commonly relatable nonphysiology concept and are then assigned a series of maps that become more and more complex. Students map the acute response to a drop in blood pressure, the causes of the acute increase in stroke volume during cardiorespiratory exercise, and the factors contributing to an increase in maximal O(2) consumption with cardiorespiratory endurance training. In the process, students draw the integrative nature of physiology, identify causal relationships, and learn about general models and core principles of physiology.     

The concept of the organism in physiology

Summary The growth of physiology in the 19^th and 20^th centuries was accompanied by the development of disciplinary boundaries between physiology and other biological sciences. Physiology became the study of the mechanisms that underlie the functions of organisms and their component parts. Concern with the internal workings of organisms has led physiologists to focus on the maintenance of homeostasis in the internal environment rather than on the interactions of organisms with their external environments. Moreover, interest in the cellular or biochemical mechanisms that underlie organismal function has resulted in the use of inbred populations of laboratory animals in which these mechanisms can be most rigorously studied. Finally, emphasis on the function of fully developed or adult organisms has been accompanied by a relative neglect of developmental processes. Disregard for the environment, for variation, and for development has made possible major advances in our knowledge of physiological mechanisms but has led to an impoverished concept of organisms. Incorporation of evolutionary, ecological, and developmental perspectives into the study of organisms might help to unite physiology more closely with the other biological sciences and lead to a richer and fuller understanding of organisms.     

Evolutionary stasis and lability in thermal physiology in a group of tropical lizards

Understanding how quickly physiological traits evolve is a topic of great interest, particularly in the context of how organisms can adapt in response to climate warming. Adjustment to novel thermal habitats may occur either through behavioural adjustments, physiological adaptation or both. Here, we test whether rates of evolution differ among physiological traits in the cybotoids, a clade of tropical Anolis lizards distributed in markedly different thermal environments on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. We find that cold tolerance evolves considerably faster than heat tolerance, a difference that results because behavioural thermoregulation more effectively shields these organisms from selection on upper than lower temperature tolerances. Specifically, because lizards in very different environments behaviourally thermoregulate during the day to similar body temperatures, divergent selection on body temperature and heat tolerance is precluded, whereas night-time temperatures can only be partially buffered by behaviour, thereby exposing organisms to selection on cold tolerance. We discuss how exposure to selection on physiology influences divergence among tropical organisms and its implications for adaptive evolutionary response to climate warming.     

Life Cycle Impact assessment of land use based on the hemeroby concept

The impact category ‘land use’ describes in the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology the environmental impacts of occupying, reshaping and managing land for human purposes. Land use can either be the long-term use of land (e.g. for arable farming) or changing the type of land use (e.g. from natural to urban area). The impact category ‘land use’ comprises those environmental consequences, which impact the environment due to the land use itself, for instance through the reduction of landscape elements, the planting of monocultures or artificial vegetation, or the sealing of surfaces. Important environmental consequences of land use are the decreasing availability of habitats and the decreasing diversity of wildlife species. The assessment of the environmental impacts of land use within LCA studies is the objective of this paper. Land use leads to a degradation of the naturalness of the area utilised. In this respect the naturalness of any area can be defined as the sum of land actually not influenced by humans and the remaining naturalness of land under use. To determine the remaining naturalness of land under use, this study suggests applying the Hemeroby concept. “Hemeroby is a measure for the human influence on ecosystems” (Kowarik 1999). The Hemeroby level of an area describes the intensity of land use and can therefore be used to characterise different types of land use. Characterization factors are proposed, which allow calculating the degradation of the naturalness of an area due to a specific type of land use. Since the resource ‘nature/naturalness’ is on a larger geographical scale by far not homogeneous, the assessment of land use needs to be regionalised. Therefore, the impact category ‘land use’ has been subdivided into the impact sub-categories ‘land use in European biogeographic regions’. Following the general LCA framework, normalization values for the impact sub-categories are calculated in order to facilitate the evaluation of the characterization results with regard to their share in a reference value. Weighting factors, which enable an aggregation of the results of the different land use sub-categories and make them comparable to other impact categories (e.g. climate change or acidification) are suggested based on the assumption that the current land use pattern in the European biogeographic regions is acceptable.     

概念图在遗传学教学中的探索与应用

概念图是表征和揭示知识结构中意义联系的图表。在遗传学教学中, 选择性地使用概念图有助于教师进行课程内容的组织与复习, 检测学生的学习成果; 概念图的应用可以提升学生的认知水平, 帮助学生建立系统完整的知识体系。文章对概念图在遗传学教学中的探索与应用进行了概述。     

Physical water compartments: a revised concept of perinatal body water physiology

This review presents experimental data on the perinatal significance of the recently developed concept of physical water compartments. This concept implies that in addition to the compartmentalization of body water into the intra- and extracellular spaces, motionally distinct water fractions - designated as physical water compartments - are also of importance in the neonatal body fluid redistribution. H(1)-NMR spectroscopy provides a quantitative estimate of tissue water fractions with different mobility as multicomponent analysis of the T(2) relaxation decay curves allows us to determine the fast and slow relaxing components of the curves corresponding to the bound and free fractions of tissue water. Using this method, free and bound water fractions were measured in fetal and neonatal rabbit tissues (skin, skeletal muscle, liver, brain, lung) at different stages of maturity and under conditions of various fluid intake. It has been demonstrated that water mobility in individual fetal/neonatal tissues varies greatly and there is a general tendency of increasing free water at the expense of bound water fraction with progressing maturation. This tendency appears to be accelerated in the immediate postnatal period when the tissue water content is markedly reduced. The importance of hyaluronan in this process has also been addressed as the hyaluronan content is markedly elevated in the fetal/neonatal tissues and due to its polyanionic, hydrophilic nature it has been claimed to play a prominent but not clearly defined role in the control of tissue hydration.     

Pros and cons of a group webpage design project in a freshman anatomy and physiology course

To generate motivation and promote the development of written communication skills, students in a freshman-level anatomy and physiology course for nonmajors created group webpages describing historically important diseases. After the groups had been formed, each individual was assigned specific components of the disease (e.g., causes or treatments), which were subsequently combined into a final product. Interviews and questionnaires were used to document students' previous educational experiences regarding, and attitudes toward, the project. Students learned more about website design than about anatomy and physiology, but students preferred the assignment over traditional term papers. Although most students could find relevant information for this project on the internet, they were uncritical in judging the accuracy of the information they found.     

概念图在植物学复习教学中的运用

应用“概念图”组织复习绿色开花植物的根、茎、叶、花、种子、果实六大器官的结构功能及其生长发育过程,复习绿色开花植物光合作用、呼吸作用、吸收作用、蒸腾作用、运输作用5种生活方式,构建概念图促使学生整合新旧知识,浓缩知识结构,建构知识网络,提高学生从整体上把握知识的能力。     

Butterflies as an indicator group of riparian ecosystem assessment

Riparian ecosystems play an important role in modulating a range of ecosystem processes that affect aquatic and terrestrial organisms. Butterflies are a major herbivore in terrestrial ecosystems and are also common in riparian ecosystems. Since butterflies use plants for larval food and adult nectar sources in riparian ecosystems, butterfly diversity can be utilized to evaluate riparian ecosystems. We compiled butterfly data from 33 sites in three riparian ecosystem types across the country and compared butterfly diversity in terms of number of species and quality index in relation to riparian environmental variables. Number of butterfly and plant species was not different among three riparian habitat types. Additionally, there was no significant ecological variable to distinguish the butterfly communities on three riparian habitats. Non-metric multi-dimensional scaling ordination showed that butterfly communities in three riparian ecosystem types differed from each other, and butterfly riparian quality index was the main variable for butterfly assemblages. Five indicator species for moor and another five species for riverine riparian ecosystems were identified. Three and one indicator species for moor and riparian ecosystems, respectively, were plant specialists, while 44 butterflies were general feeders, feeding on a wide range of hostplants in several habitats. These results suggest that butterfly species use actively riparian habitats for nectar and larval food, and the butterfly riparian quality index can be employed to track faunal change in riparian habitats, which are frequently threatened by disturbances such as water level and climate changes, and invasive species.     

Formative assessment in physiology teaching using a wireless classroom communication system

Systems physiology, studied by biomedical engineers, is an analytical way to approach the homeostatic foundations of basic physiology. In many systems physiology courses, students attend lectures and are given homework and reading assignments to complete outside of class. The effectiveness of this traditional approach was compared with an approach in which a wireless classroom communication system was used to provide instant feedback on in-class learning activities and reading assignment quizzes. Homework was eliminated in this approach. The feedback system used stimulated 100% participation in class and facilitated rapid formative assessment. The results of this study indicate that learning of systems physiology concepts including physiology is at least, as if not more, effective when in-class quizzes and activities with instant feedback are used in place of traditional learning activities including homework. When results of this study are interpreted in light of possible effects of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on student learning in the test group, it appears that the modified instruction may be more effective than the traditional instruction.     

The species concept in a long-extinct fossil group,the conodonts

Conodonts are an extinct group of organisms, known from the Upper Cambrian to the Triassic. They have no extant representatives, and tooth-like buccal elements are usually the only remains of the animal found in the sediments. Therefore, most of their taxonomy rests on these elements that are good stratigraphic tools for these ancient periods, due to their rapid morphological evolution. Conodont species are usually described species that are based on either clusters of elements corresponding to an entire apparatus (natural assemblages), or on the most frequently preserved element. These described species are acceptable stratigraphic tools, but hardly consider the dimension of the variation that a biological species can encompass through time and space. In order to tackle temporal, environmental and biogeographical changes, recent studies have shown that morphological variation should be taken into account by quantitative analyses, aiming at getting at the closest of what the former species might have been.     

The physiology of hibernation in common map turtles (Graptemys geographica).

Map turtles from Wisconsin were submerged at 3 degrees C in normoxic and anoxic water to simulate extremes of potential respiratory microenvironments while hibernating under ice. In predive turtles, and in turtles submerged for up to 150 days, plasma PO2, PCO2) pH, [Cl-], [Na+], [K+], total Mg, total Ca, lactate, glucose, and osmolality were measured; hematocrit and body mass were determined, and plasma [HCO3-] was calculated. Turtles in anoxic water developed a severe metabolic acidosis, accumulating lactate from a predive value of 1.7 to 116 mmol/l at 50 days, associated with a fall in pH from 8.010 to 7.128. To buffer lactate increase, total calcium and magnesium rose from 3.5 and 2.0 to 25.7 and 7.6 mmol/l, respectively. Plasma [HCO3-] was titrated from 44.7 to 4.3 mmol/l in turtles in anoxic water. Turtles in normoxic water had only minor disturbances of their acid-base status and ionic statuses; there was a marked increase in hematocrit from 31.1 to 51.9%. This study and field studies suggest that map turtles have an obligatory requirement for a hibernaculum that provides well-oxygenated water (e.g. rivers and large lakes rather than small ponds and swamps) and that this requirement is a major factor in determining their microdistribution.     

The physiology of lipid storage and use in reptiles

Lipid metabolism is central to understanding whole‐animal energetics. Reptiles store most excess energy in lipid form, mobilise those lipids when needed to meet energetic demands, and invest lipids in eggs to provide the primary source of energy to developing embryos. Here, I review the mechanisms by which non‐avian reptiles store, transport, and use lipids. Many aspects of lipid absorption, transport, and storage appear to be similar to birds, including the hepatic synthesis of lipids from glucose substrates, the transport of triglycerides in lipoproteins, and the storage of lipids in adipose tissue, although adipose tissue in non‐avian reptiles is usually concentrated in abdominal fat bodies or the tail. Seasonal changes in fat stores suggest that lipid storage is primarily for reproduction in most species, rather than for maintenance during aphagic periods. The effects of fasting on plasma lipid metabolites can differ from mammals and birds due to the ability of non‐avian reptiles to reduce their metabolism drastically during extended fasts. The effect of fasting on levels of plasma ketones is species specific: β‐hydroxybutyrate concentration may rise or fall during fasting. I also describe the process by which the bulk of lipids are deposited into oocytes during vitellogenesis. Although this process is sometimes ascribed to vitellogenin‐based transport in reptiles, the majority of lipid deposition occurs via triglycerides packaged in very‐low‐density lipoproteins (VLDLs), based on physiological, histological, biochemical, comparative, and genomic evidence. I also discuss the evidence for non‐avian reptiles using ‘yolk‐targeted’ VLDLs during vitellogenesis. The major physiological states – feeding, fasting, and vitellogenesis – have different effects on plasma lipid metabolites, and I discuss the possibilities and potential problems of using plasma metabolites to diagnose feeding condition in non‐avian reptiles.     

Construction of a chromosome map for the phage group II Staphylococcus aureus Ps55.

The genome size and a partial physical and genetic map have been defined for the phage group II Staphylococcus aureus Ps55. The genome size was estimated to be 2,771 kb by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) using the restriction enzymes SmaI, CspI, and SgrAI. The Ps55 chromosome map was constructed by transduction of auxotrophic and cryptic transposon insertions, with known genetic and physical locations in S. aureus NCTC 8325, into the Ps55 background. PFGE and DNA hybridization analysis were used to detect the location of the transposon in Ps55. Ps55 restriction fragments were then ordered on the basis of genetic conservation between the two strains. Cloned DNA probes containing the lactose operon (lac) and genes encoding staphylococcal protein A (spa), gamma hemolysin (hlg), and coagulase (coa) were also located on the map by PFGE and hybridization analysis. This methodology enabled a direct comparison of chromosomal organization between NCTC 8325 and Ps55 strains. The chromosome size, gene order, and some of the restriction sites are conserved between the two phage group strains.     

Understanding the physiology of glutamate receptors by use of a protocol for neuronal staining

Teaching students about the physiology of neurotransmitter receptors usually requires practical lessons with the use of sophisticated equipment and complex analysis of data. Here, we report our experience in teaching medical students with a simple, practical protocol that transforms the physiology of glutamate receptors into neuronal staining, observable under bright-field microscopy. Essentially, the students were challenged to selectively stain a subpopulation of cultured neurons expressing Ca(2+)-permeable alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methylisoxazole-4-propionate (AMPA) receptors (a subgroup of ionotropic glutamate receptors). Neurons expressing this type of receptors were loaded with Co(2+) (in substitution for Ca(2+)) after nondesensitizing activation of AMPA receptors. After precipitation, the Co(2+) was revealed after treatment with silver. At the end of the procedure, the neurons expressing Ca(2+)-permeable AMPA receptors were visually identified under bright-field microscopy. The procedure allowed the visualization of the complete dendritic network of the stained neurons and allowed the students to learn very efficiently about the physiology of glutamate receptors.     

Molecular interaction maps of bioregulatory networks: a general rubric for systems biology

A standard for bioregulatory network diagrams is urgently needed in the same way that circuit diagrams are needed in electronics. Several graphical notations have been proposed, but none has become standard. We have prepared many detailed bioregulatory network diagrams using the molecular interaction map (MIM) notation, and we now feel confident that it is suitable as a standard. Here, we describe the MIM notation formally and discuss its merits relative to alternative proposals. We show by simple examples how to denote all of the molecular interactions commonly found in bioregulatory networks. There are two forms of MIM diagrams. "Heuristic" MIMs present the repertoire of interactions possible for molecules that are colocalized in time and place. "Explicit" MIMs define particular models (derived from heuristic MIMs) for computer simulation. We show also how pathways or processes can be highlighted on a canonical heuristic MIM. Drawing a MIM diagram, adhering to the rules of notation, imposes a logical discipline that sharpens one's understanding of the structure and function of a network.