Engaging communication of complex scientific concepts with the general public requires more than simplification. Compelling, relevant, and timely points of linkage between scientific concepts and the experiences and interests of the general public are needed. Pop-culture icons such as superheroes can represent excellent opportunities for exploring…

Lecture-Based Teaching (LBT) remains the predominant form of teaching in healthcare profession education. It is excellent in providing an overview of a particular topic to a large number of students. However, the concern, which has been highlighted time and again, is the monotony and passive nature of this form of information transmission, which…

The measurement and representation of the electrical activity of muscles [electromyography (EMG)] have a long history from the Victorian Era until today. Currently, EMG has uses both as a research tool, in noninvasively recording muscle activation, and clinically in the diagnosis and assessment of nerve and muscle disease and injury as well as in…

The Experimental Biology 2012 meeting in San Diego, CA, included events to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the founding of the American Physiological Society (APS) and reflect on the recent accomplishments of the society. Most of the APS activities in the past quarter century were guided by a series of strategic plans. Membership in the APS…

To address the need for greater flexibility in access to higher education, an online graduate course in physiology using case studies was developed and offered in summer 2012. Topics in both animal and human physiology were organized as modules that contained a case study with questions, a prerecorded online lecture, and three research journal…

Most scientists agree that comprehension of primary scientific papers and communication of scientific concepts are two of the most important skills that we can teach, but few undergraduate biology courses make these explicit course goals. We designed an undergraduate neuroimmunology course that uses a writing-intensive format. Using a mixture of…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a peer-assisted study session (PASS) program for a large class of Bachelor of Health Science (Paramedic) students. This cohort was made up predominantly of mature aged students who have not undertaken any study for many years. Within a bioscience first-year core subject, student…

There can be no single best way of learning, and each teaching mode has its own merits and demerits. Didactic lectures in and of themselves are insufficient, whereas a problem-based tutorial alone can be as ineffective. This study was conducted to determine if a problem-based review after didactic lectures would lead to better student performance.…

The Undergraduate Medical Program (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery) at University College of Medical Sciences (Delhi, India) is a 4.5-yr, intense academic program where physiology is taught in the first year. To make the learning experience enriching, the Department of Physiology organizes four student seminars (two seminars/semester)…

Learning clinical skills presents a novel experience for undergraduate students, particularly when it comes to preparing for skill assessment. Compared with the thousands of hours of practice believed to be necessary for the development of motor skill expertise (1), these students have significantly limited exposure time. Furthermore, effective…

Since 2009, the Department of Physiology had planned an International Union of Physiological Sciences Physiology Teaching Workshop at Arabian Gulf University. The date was set for March 5-6, 2011; however, due to civil unrest, the workshop was postponed to March 31-April 1, 2012. The workshop was a success, bringing together 92 speakers and…

The Finapres finger cuff recording system provides continuous calculations of beat-to-beat variations in cardiac output (CO), total peripheral resistance, heart rate (HR), and blood pressure (BP). This system is unique in that it allows experimental subjects to immediately, continuously, and noninvasively visualize changes in CO at rest and during…

To systematically investigate whether the inclusion of a bioethical discussion improves the learning and retention of biological content, students in two sections of an introductory zoology class were taught the biology behind emergency contraception and RU-486. Students in one section of the course participated in a bioethical discussion, whereas…

The demonstration of patient-based cases using automated technology [virtual patients (VPs)] has been available to health science educators for a number of decades. Despite the promise of VPs as an easily accessible and moldable platform, their widespread acceptance and integration into medical curricula have been slow. Here, the authors review…

The relation between lecture attendance and learning is surprisingly weak, and the role of learning styles in this is poorly understood. We hypothesized that 1) academic performance is related to lecture attendance and 2) learning style influences lecture attendance and, consequently, affects performance. We also speculated that the availability…