Science, Education, and Science Education

Learning about the nervous system in an anatomy class is daunting due to the number of terms that describe the nervous system.

Student Concept Map Draft – Human Nervous System by Collaboration

Memorization without understanding, connecting, or applying learning is a popular way for students to score enough points to get that grade of A (my district does not embrace standards-based grading.) Students have spent the past 12 years learning to play the game.

We have also been physically distanced from our students, and they from one another, far too much over the past 2 years. My reaction to this situation has been to foster a safe and supportive classroom environment for students to re-learn and stretch their collaborative skills. In this environment, when we give students strategies to process content in ways that leads them to deeper understanding, they share and discuss and problem-solve and learn from one another. Most importantly, they connect and transfer their learning using strategies that build the habits supporting life-long learning.

Here’s how that’s working in our Anatomy and Physiology class Nervous System unit, so far.  (Bonus chicken, because they could.)

This particular group of students gives me much positive feedback when I ask how their learning is progressing during small group collaborative work. Learning strategies for collaboration will be helpful as they form study groups next year at college, or later, in teams at work. We use various strategies to connect and summarize our learning, sometimes collaboratively. Here’s how we began to connect and summarize our learning on this introductory nervous system content:

1. 30 minute lecture/discussion in class with guided notes to deliver content on basic structures and their functions in the Central Nervous System and the Peripheral Nervous System.
2. Lab station activities in which students learned basic structure, investigated diseases, and observed some functions of the nervous system.
3. Students curated information on the human nervous system, mostly in the form of charts with structures and their functions.
4. Students collaborated with 1-2 partners on white-boarded concept maps, connecting
5. We did a “board walk” with students leaving comments or feedback on other boards, while making notes on anything they’d like to change or add to their own boards.
6. Groups made any edits they chose to their boards, based on suggestions and their own observations.
7. Students took a quiz made up of questions testing the connections they made.

While working on their lab station activities, students were surprised at the roles their nervous system played in everyday activities. Engagement was high. Students answered analysis questions on the lab stations. They were beginning to draw in some of the terms and processes from our initial lecture.

The collaboration step, though, was where the real magic happened. Students have concept-mapped before, so a reminder of the process was all they needed.  White boards and markers provide an environment for much trial and error, and much editing.

Discussion during the white-boarding process were fabulous. Students found many, many possible connections and ways to lay out those connections. Each group, again, had much discussion and consideration about how to display the connections. Once each group had completed a pretty thorough map, we did the “board walk,” learning and giving constructive feedback.  Groups then used their learning and feedback to edit their boards.

Did learning what other groups included in their boards result in any actual copying? Nope. Editing discussions in groups included concepts or structures of processes that had been neglected earlier, and how to incorporate those things into their own boards. Edits left students more confident in the completeness and accuracy of their work.

Quiz scores were excellent. Of 22 questions, the score breakdown was as follows:

• 2 scores of 22
• 6 scores of 21
• 3 scores of 20
• 2 scores of 19
• 1 score of 18

Not bad, and certainly better than the first few quizzes this year.

Other collaborative learning adventures in anatomy:

• Part 1 of Learning Anatomy through Collaboration – Regions of the Body and Anatomical Terms
• Part 2 of Learning Anatomy through Collaboration – Muscles
• Part 4 of Learning Anatomy through Collaboration – Nerves, Muscles, and The Brain