Abstract
As the Biomedical Engineering Programme in the Faculty of Engineering is to train the biomedical engineers for supporting the medical field to advancement of diagnostic tools and rehabilitation of postoperative progress, the School of Biomedical Sciences in Faculty of Medicine provides and contributes to the teaching in core basic knowledge of Human Anatomy and Physiology to the year one biomedical engineering students. Being the University freshmen, they need to take time for the transition from the secondary to university life. In addition, these students are from very diverse educational backgrounds and many of them are good in learning physics and mathematics rather than in biological sciences. The core courses of Anatomy and Physiology, which require memorization for achieving good grades, pose challenges to these students.
In each cohort of the biomedical engineering students, an approximately ¼ of the class are international students, and ½ of the class are students who lack biological knowledge. In this proposal, we would like
(1) to support students developing resilience to overcome the learning difficulty;
(2) to address the issue of why physiology and anatomy are hard for the biomedical sciences students to learn; and
(3) to investigate what is the best change to strategic pedagogy that meets their learning needs, and what are the ways that students attempt to learn physiology.
Brief write-up
Project objectives
The Biomedical Engineering Programme in the Faculty of Engineering is to train biomedical engineers to support the medical field to advance diagnostic tools and rehabilitation of postoperative progress. The School of Biomedical Sciences provides and contributes the teaching in core basic knowledge of human anatomy and physiology to the Biomedical Engineering Programme. Being university freshmen, Year one students of the Programme need to take time to adjust to the transition from secondary to university life and many of them are from very diverse educational backgrounds. In addition, students of the Programme are usually strong in learning physics and mathematics rather than biological sciences. The core course of Anatomy and Physiology makes it hard for them to learn and get a pass, since it requires memorisation to achieve good academic grading. In the project, our team explored and addressed the followings:
1. why physiology and anatomy are complicated for the students of biomedical engineering to learn;
2. how to support students in developing resilience overcoming the learning difficulty; and
3. what is the best strategic pedagogy that meets their learning needs in learning anatomy.
Activities, process and outcomes
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Remote
Activities
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Processes
and Outcomes
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Using
Polling mode after the lecture via the video conferencing system (VCS)
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· In order to consolidate their
understanding of new delivery content, the students were requested to answers
conceptual questions before leaving Zoom.
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Peers-to-Peers workshops in the non-teaching timetable
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In order to have full support for the needs of
weak students, the 2-hr workshops have been held every Saturday morning
starting from mid-January till the end of April 2021.
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The attendance rates are low, and most students
are weak in the learning process, including the international students.
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Live Demonstration Practical Session via the video
conferencing system (VCS)
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· View Plastinated specimen
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· Besides of 3D scanning model for students
to view the structures spatially, our team also arranged the live
demonstrations of plastinated specimens via Zoom practical sessions.
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· Peer-facilitators discussion in breakout
room session
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We also arranged the peer discussion activity,
which adopted the peers-assisted learning (PAL) format, in the Zoom practical
after a live demonstration of the specimen to facilitate their
understandings.
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· Group Presentation
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· Students applied their knowledge to
evaluate what they learned during the practical session; they could also
practise their writing and verbal skills.
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Key project deliverables
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Processes and Outcomes
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· The Mobile App – eProfessional Study: Your Mobile Guide in Anatomy
& Physiology (YoGap)
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· We provide students with an interactive
eLearning platform in the cognitive domain, ranging from understanding and
memorisation to more advanced stages of application, analysis, feedback and
integration with creation in their professional training.
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· eProfessional study (ePS) in the “Anatomy
& Physiology” Platform for the virtual elearning tools
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· We provide students with a self-paced
revision eLearning platform for their particular needs to control their
learning progress in understanding and memorising learnt knowledge. (https://www.sbs.cuhk.edu.hk/undergraduate/eps/index.html).
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Deliverables and evaluation
Our team has changed to use Zoom for the live demonstration practical sessions with peer discussion synchronously. Students’ feedback has been sought concerning the remote teaching &learning activities, including the students’ perception of the video conferencing system (VCS) and the peer-assisted learning approach (PAL) facilitating knowledge acquisition.
The progress of construction of the key project deliverables was entirely behind the timeline and have just been completed at the end of the project. The effectiveness will further be evaluated their effectiveness. All the feedback and comments on the pilot study of the usage of ePS are positive.
Dissemination, diffusion, impact and sharing of good practices
The spreading of COVID-19 disrupted the daily practice of university pedagogy, and education sectors have adopted a gigantic transition in teaching and learning. Our institution has a new normal challenge in anatomy education, from the traditional way of observing plastinated specimens with explanation to the newly adopted Video Conferencing System (VCS) combined with peer-assisted learning (PAL) approach. The data analysis reveals that such an approach for overcoming the adverse situation in anatomy education improves and accommodates health profession training quality with the era of advanced technology amidst the sudden attack of COVID-19 spreading. Our team made alternative strategic pedagogical methods to relieve students’ learning pressure in this core subject after understanding why this course is tough to study.
Impact on teaching and learning
The new online learning mode of anatomy demands face-to-face and traditional experiential learning, providing an excellent adjustment opportunity due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the implication of social distancing. The VCS-PAL approach would encourage active participation, raise questions and intellectual exchange between students and teaching staff, and receives good student perception feedback. It is the first step in modifying VCS learning. Further research on different topics, such as PAL efficiencies comparison between face-to-face and VCS, academic result comparison between conventional didactic lectures and PAL, etc., can also provide new insight. To conclude, the VCS-PAL of remote pedagogy surprisingly benefits teaching and could be a new normal of education in the future. We will explore more ways to serve the urgency with the educational perspective gap in continuing the training, enhancing practical skills and improving professional competency.
