Successfully Redesigning a Pathophysiology Course Using the Lt‐Understanding Your Physiology Platform

Abstract

The COVID-19 transition to remote learning provided the appropriate opportunity to redesign an existing Clinical Pathophysiology course that was taught in a face-to-face (F2F) setting. For the past several years students had been requesting that asynchronous upper-level science majors’ courses be offered at our college. Many students work part-time jobs and offering asynchronous courses increases their access to higher education and aids in their successful degree completion. The previous course delivery mode was a traditional lecture style with a required textbook, weekly quizzes, and exams. The redesigned course eliminated the lectures and replaced the textbook with Lt Understanding Your Physiology (ADInstruments) online platform. Weekly modules in Canvas (Learning Management System) provided students with an introduction to the current topic via a short (5-8 minute) video created by the instructor. Students were then required to complete lessons in a weekly module in Lt Understanding Your Physiology (Lt UYP) software. These lessons included different types of low stakes activities, meaning the students could replace an incorrect answer with the correct answer without penalty. At the end of each Lt UYP module, they viewed a patient video case study and answered a series of questions in a Word document that was then submitted to Canvas. Upon completion of all these assignments, the students took a quiz in Canvas. For this course offering, the student enrollment was (n=24) 13 juniors and 11seniors among which 22 completed the surveys. Students (82%) stated what they liked most about the Lt UYP activities was that they could get the answer wrong with no penalty then learn from their mistakes. The type of activity they enjoyed the most was labeling anatomy (41%) followed by matching the statement to a description/definition (22%), labeling a diagram (18%), determining which statements are correct and incorrect (14%) and few (5%) enjoyed the open-ended questions at the end of each lesson. The activity that students felt was most effective in helping them learn and understand the content was determining which statements were correct and incorrect (32%), followed by labeling diagrams or images (27%), and matching the statement to a description/definition (22%). The least effective activities were open-ended questions (9%), labeling anatomy (5%), and arranging statements in chronological order (5%). Students felt the Lt UYP activities were relevant to the course content (41% strongly agree and 55% agree) and helped them prepare for the exams (41% strongly agree and 32% agree). Most of the students (68%) chose all of the above when asked why they liked the case studies where the choices were a) the case studies were related to course content, b) interesting, c) real patients telling their personal story, and d) they learned a lot about the different diseases/disorders. The transition from F2F traditional lecture class to asynchronous format using Lt UYP was highly successful in engaging students in content and teaching them pathophysiology.