Part I - Teaching Philosophy
"Teaching is more than imparting knowledge, it is inspiring change. Learning is more than absorbing facts, it is acquiring understanding."
- William Arthur Ward
1.1 Introduction:
I teach Anatomy to make a difference.
Maybe this is a very high aspiration but I want to make a difference to the students who choose a health & exercise oriented career path and show up before me to learn anatomy. I want them to take away from any lecture, lab or full course I teach a true knowledge and appreciation of the logical, elegant, simplicity of the human body. I envision that if I could achieve this, then in their careers, those learners would accurately diagnose a complex musculoskeletal dysfunction without an MRI; correct a worker’s ergonomics to prevent an injury; guide a client with osteoporosis in yoga so that they maintain their health without risk of fracture; or even identify the early onset of a chronic disease in their routine assessments.
Perhaps it is because I am ever mindful that many of these learners are destined for careers in exercise, health or medicine that I feel ultimately responsible for instilling the importance of learning the foundational science of Anatomy so thoroughly. Having taken Anatomy myself through three degrees also has allowed me to recall what the learning process was as an undergraduate in Physical Education, as a burgeoning clinician in Physical Therapy and as a graduate student taking detailed Anatomy alongside the Medical students. Each time I was immersed in the learning of anatomy, it became more clear to me the importance of having a thorough understanding of the human body with not only, for example, the location of a ligament but how it works to stabilize a joint, what other tissues might be close by to it and what happens if it is damaged both in the context of simple biomechanics and of a real, moving person.
1.2 Teaching Philosophy:
Although Anatomy is generally grouped under the conceptual arena of a "Basic Science", I believe it to be one of the most unique topics to teach as it is one of the only sciences which involve physical material that you must explore with multiple senses (hands, eyes, ears) to truly master. In order to teach this content area with efficacy, you must quickly move beyond merely ‘facts’ and find ways of engaging students to make the learning meaningful, and thus successful.
Over my years of tutoring, being a teaching assistant and ultimately a course coordinator and primary lecturer, my approach to achieve meaningful learning has been underscored with three main tenets:
1) make anatomy interesting,
2) make anatomy relevant, and
3) teach how to learn anatomy comprehensively.
Some might argue that this is not always possible when faced with the task of teaching the name, location and purpose of every muscle, nerve, vessel, organ and layer of tissue in the body in a semester or two. I disagree. In my opinion, it is the best way to teach this generation of learners. According to research, the learners of “Generation Me” have been characterized as highly intelligent, somewhat narcissistic and entitled, less likely to read texts at length, more likely to respond to short multimedia stimuli, attached to their computer world and having the desire to learn by doing…not just being told. (Generation Me article -Twenge, 2009)
I have personally observed the shift of learners needs over the past decade, and this emerging research has helped me to feel confident that the approaches I have included and continue to evolve are successful ones moving forward.
1. Making Anatomy Interesting:
There is nothing worse than having a teacher whose style is so one-dimensional that the learner gains little from interacting with them. For many years I have worked hard to incorporate aspects of my lecturing/teaching to address multiple learning styles. I provide succinct, written notes prior to class usually with associated reading from the text (should they want to skim prior to lecture). Within the notes, I include diagrams, photos and pictures from both their text and other sources so that they have a number of views of the same structure.
I utilize videos, animations and physical demonstrations throughout my lectures to illustrate complex concepts, or to bring perspective to structures in regions difficult to visualize. I often build 3D models to bring to lecture and lab which aid in appreciating content which often is presented in word or 2D picture format. Students have consistently commented on how helpful these models are in learning the material and colleagues have also borrowed my models for teaching across the years. Luckily for me, with the advent of sophisticated technology available, I have been able to connect with programs & resources to develop even more dynamic models for my teaching in the future. I provide multiple descriptions of structures and regions, having built up quite a repertoire of silly illustrations, analogies, amusing anecdotes and mnemonics over the years.
Having taught anatomy for nearly 20 years, I have a very good idea of which particular topics are likely to cause more struggle in grasping than others and to that end I have built up a number of online resources, usually from university or trusted academic sources which provide additional ways for students to learn, review and quiz themselves. In recent years, I have taken to reviewing electronic ‘apps’ and software for their usefulness and accuracy so that I can make intelligent recommendations to students, as they are more likely to utilize these on their tablets, laptops and phones than to refer to a text. I post all of these resources on the course Blackboard throughout the term.
As this generation likes to learn by doing, it is often easy to engage them in dissection tasks in the lab but for some the task is daunting for reasons of unfamiliarity/lack of preparation or simply fear of ‘wrecking’ the specimen. To help alleviate some of these issues, I also have gathered and posted various short dissection videos for students to use for preparation or guiding.
Lastly I incorporate peer teaching opportunities whenever possible to allow those who also like to ‘do’ through instructing. Sometimes these are very informal arrangements, like encouraging students to answer their peers questions before I provide my answer and other times it is a formal portion of the curriculum (ie., Peer Presentations in Dentistry) which is assigned a small mark value. Often these presentations result in students following my lead and creating their own models and schematics which in some cases are so good I’ve asked to keep them to help with future teaching!
2. Making Anatomy Relevant
For me, making anatomy relevant is what I find the most natural aspect of my teaching and the most rewarding. As I have had many years of part-time clinical practice in Physical Therapy as well as having been a competitive athlete and coach, these two realms provide more than ample fodder for bringing up examples from either sports & exercise or clinical scenarios related to anatomy. There is not one lecture that I have ever given which hasn’t included at least one story from my clinical practice, injuries related to sports or examples from workouts in the gym to ‘bring to life’ the anatomy, so to speak. I often specifically mention what I call “exercise & clinical myths” - usually with the musculoskeletal content to relate it to their own lives. For example, I might challenge them to consider whether reverse crunches are necessary to strengthen the ‘lower’ abdominals or whether or not rolling on a foam roller can really ‘stretch’ the iliotibial band.
I also explain those conditions that students have heard of within the context of the appropriate lecture like ‘sciatica’, ‘water on the knee’, ‘twisted ankle’, etc., and routinely ask students to share if they know of someone (themselves sometimes) that have these conditions and encourage their related questions. Often this sparks more inquiries from the students in (or after) the lecture regarding exercise routines, personal injuries or the ‘I was wondering about…’ type of questions. It makes the lecture material suddenly more interactive and memorable. I also include applied anatomy questions in the lab manual, so that while they are working through content they have opportunities to problem-solve clinical or exercise scenarios.
3. Teaching Students to Learn Comprehensively
Regardless of whether I stand before a group of undergraduates or a professional program cohort, I know that I am the one that is responsible for not only guiding them through the complicated new 'language' of this science but learning the art of negotiating, sometimes delicately, the human tissue.
I strive to teach anatomy with the expectation that students don't merely memorize the content but have the knowledge retained (at least some of it) and understand how it provides the foundational underpinnings for problem solving in the exercise and health care fields.
Over the years, I’ve realized that students who are more successful in learning the Anatomy content are those that bring material together comprehensively, rather than rote memorizing. As a result I have adapted my instructional methods from simply teaching the content to teaching students study skills and how to learn the content.
My premise of comprehensive learning & studying relies on using more than their ‘typical’ study approach in many cases and often I offer to meet with them in my office hours to tailor how that might look for them as an individual. For the class, several times throughout the term, I remind them that is essential to do a base amount of memorization (no getting around this with anatomy!) and then review with a comprehensive approach. This typically means layering on visual learning (taking the time to look at the structure in multiple views in a text, animation or lab) in conjunction with a verbal or written review of everything they know about that structure including anatomical relationships to nearby structures. Next they should review function and the related ‘dysfunction’ whenever applicable. I try to provide examples of this approach in each lecture but usually demonstrate this best in my review lectures when I teach, for example, “everything you learned over the past month in 20 minutes”. It is my consistent mantra to the students that “you need to know what it [the structure in question] is, what makes it work, where it lives, what it does and what happens when it is broken!”
To ensure that the comprehensive learning that I encourage is in line with exams, I ensure that evaluation components reinforces this teaching & learning approach. For example, in the bell ringer 50-60% of the questions will be the straight out ‘identify’ the structure pinned; 30-40% will be what I term “applied identify” (what is the function, innervation of the structure pinned or what is superior to it etc., ) and the final 10-20% will be of the nature of what happens if this structure is damaged.
One of my favorite quotes about teaching is: "I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework." (Lily Tomlin). Not too long ago a student came up to me after class in a sling and said that he hurt his arm skiing. Despite this clearly being not an ideal event, he had the biggest smile on his face and he said: "You know Dr Laprade, when I got to the emergency and the doctor started to check me out, I already knew what was broken and once we got the xray back, he agreed with me! It was so cool!" These are the moments I know that my teaching is giving students something more to take home than homework.
I teach Anatomy to make a difference.
Maybe this is a very high aspiration but I want to make a difference to the students who choose a health & exercise oriented career path and show up before me to learn anatomy. I want them to take away from any lecture, lab or full course I teach a true knowledge and appreciation of the logical, elegant, simplicity of the human body. I envision that if I could achieve this, then in their careers, those learners would accurately diagnose a complex musculoskeletal dysfunction without an MRI; correct a worker’s ergonomics to prevent an injury; guide a client with osteoporosis in yoga so that they maintain their health without risk of fracture; or even identify the early onset of a chronic disease in their routine assessments.
Perhaps it is because I am ever mindful that many of these learners are destined for careers in exercise, health or medicine that I feel ultimately responsible for instilling the importance of learning the foundational science of Anatomy so thoroughly. Having taken Anatomy myself through three degrees also has allowed me to recall what the learning process was as an undergraduate in Physical Education, as a burgeoning clinician in Physical Therapy and as a graduate student taking detailed Anatomy alongside the Medical students. Each time I was immersed in the learning of anatomy, it became more clear to me the importance of having a thorough understanding of the human body with not only, for example, the location of a ligament but how it works to stabilize a joint, what other tissues might be close by to it and what happens if it is damaged both in the context of simple biomechanics and of a real, moving person.
1.2 Teaching Philosophy:
Although Anatomy is generally grouped under the conceptual arena of a "Basic Science", I believe it to be one of the most unique topics to teach as it is one of the only sciences which involve physical material that you must explore with multiple senses (hands, eyes, ears) to truly master. In order to teach this content area with efficacy, you must quickly move beyond merely ‘facts’ and find ways of engaging students to make the learning meaningful, and thus successful.
Over my years of tutoring, being a teaching assistant and ultimately a course coordinator and primary lecturer, my approach to achieve meaningful learning has been underscored with three main tenets:
1) make anatomy interesting,
2) make anatomy relevant, and
3) teach how to learn anatomy comprehensively.
Some might argue that this is not always possible when faced with the task of teaching the name, location and purpose of every muscle, nerve, vessel, organ and layer of tissue in the body in a semester or two. I disagree. In my opinion, it is the best way to teach this generation of learners. According to research, the learners of “Generation Me” have been characterized as highly intelligent, somewhat narcissistic and entitled, less likely to read texts at length, more likely to respond to short multimedia stimuli, attached to their computer world and having the desire to learn by doing…not just being told. (Generation Me article -Twenge, 2009)
I have personally observed the shift of learners needs over the past decade, and this emerging research has helped me to feel confident that the approaches I have included and continue to evolve are successful ones moving forward.
1. Making Anatomy Interesting:
There is nothing worse than having a teacher whose style is so one-dimensional that the learner gains little from interacting with them. For many years I have worked hard to incorporate aspects of my lecturing/teaching to address multiple learning styles. I provide succinct, written notes prior to class usually with associated reading from the text (should they want to skim prior to lecture). Within the notes, I include diagrams, photos and pictures from both their text and other sources so that they have a number of views of the same structure.
I utilize videos, animations and physical demonstrations throughout my lectures to illustrate complex concepts, or to bring perspective to structures in regions difficult to visualize. I often build 3D models to bring to lecture and lab which aid in appreciating content which often is presented in word or 2D picture format. Students have consistently commented on how helpful these models are in learning the material and colleagues have also borrowed my models for teaching across the years. Luckily for me, with the advent of sophisticated technology available, I have been able to connect with programs & resources to develop even more dynamic models for my teaching in the future. I provide multiple descriptions of structures and regions, having built up quite a repertoire of silly illustrations, analogies, amusing anecdotes and mnemonics over the years.
Having taught anatomy for nearly 20 years, I have a very good idea of which particular topics are likely to cause more struggle in grasping than others and to that end I have built up a number of online resources, usually from university or trusted academic sources which provide additional ways for students to learn, review and quiz themselves. In recent years, I have taken to reviewing electronic ‘apps’ and software for their usefulness and accuracy so that I can make intelligent recommendations to students, as they are more likely to utilize these on their tablets, laptops and phones than to refer to a text. I post all of these resources on the course Blackboard throughout the term.
As this generation likes to learn by doing, it is often easy to engage them in dissection tasks in the lab but for some the task is daunting for reasons of unfamiliarity/lack of preparation or simply fear of ‘wrecking’ the specimen. To help alleviate some of these issues, I also have gathered and posted various short dissection videos for students to use for preparation or guiding.
Lastly I incorporate peer teaching opportunities whenever possible to allow those who also like to ‘do’ through instructing. Sometimes these are very informal arrangements, like encouraging students to answer their peers questions before I provide my answer and other times it is a formal portion of the curriculum (ie., Peer Presentations in Dentistry) which is assigned a small mark value. Often these presentations result in students following my lead and creating their own models and schematics which in some cases are so good I’ve asked to keep them to help with future teaching!
2. Making Anatomy Relevant
For me, making anatomy relevant is what I find the most natural aspect of my teaching and the most rewarding. As I have had many years of part-time clinical practice in Physical Therapy as well as having been a competitive athlete and coach, these two realms provide more than ample fodder for bringing up examples from either sports & exercise or clinical scenarios related to anatomy. There is not one lecture that I have ever given which hasn’t included at least one story from my clinical practice, injuries related to sports or examples from workouts in the gym to ‘bring to life’ the anatomy, so to speak. I often specifically mention what I call “exercise & clinical myths” - usually with the musculoskeletal content to relate it to their own lives. For example, I might challenge them to consider whether reverse crunches are necessary to strengthen the ‘lower’ abdominals or whether or not rolling on a foam roller can really ‘stretch’ the iliotibial band.
I also explain those conditions that students have heard of within the context of the appropriate lecture like ‘sciatica’, ‘water on the knee’, ‘twisted ankle’, etc., and routinely ask students to share if they know of someone (themselves sometimes) that have these conditions and encourage their related questions. Often this sparks more inquiries from the students in (or after) the lecture regarding exercise routines, personal injuries or the ‘I was wondering about…’ type of questions. It makes the lecture material suddenly more interactive and memorable. I also include applied anatomy questions in the lab manual, so that while they are working through content they have opportunities to problem-solve clinical or exercise scenarios.
3. Teaching Students to Learn Comprehensively
Regardless of whether I stand before a group of undergraduates or a professional program cohort, I know that I am the one that is responsible for not only guiding them through the complicated new 'language' of this science but learning the art of negotiating, sometimes delicately, the human tissue.
I strive to teach anatomy with the expectation that students don't merely memorize the content but have the knowledge retained (at least some of it) and understand how it provides the foundational underpinnings for problem solving in the exercise and health care fields.
Over the years, I’ve realized that students who are more successful in learning the Anatomy content are those that bring material together comprehensively, rather than rote memorizing. As a result I have adapted my instructional methods from simply teaching the content to teaching students study skills and how to learn the content.
My premise of comprehensive learning & studying relies on using more than their ‘typical’ study approach in many cases and often I offer to meet with them in my office hours to tailor how that might look for them as an individual. For the class, several times throughout the term, I remind them that is essential to do a base amount of memorization (no getting around this with anatomy!) and then review with a comprehensive approach. This typically means layering on visual learning (taking the time to look at the structure in multiple views in a text, animation or lab) in conjunction with a verbal or written review of everything they know about that structure including anatomical relationships to nearby structures. Next they should review function and the related ‘dysfunction’ whenever applicable. I try to provide examples of this approach in each lecture but usually demonstrate this best in my review lectures when I teach, for example, “everything you learned over the past month in 20 minutes”. It is my consistent mantra to the students that “you need to know what it [the structure in question] is, what makes it work, where it lives, what it does and what happens when it is broken!”
To ensure that the comprehensive learning that I encourage is in line with exams, I ensure that evaluation components reinforces this teaching & learning approach. For example, in the bell ringer 50-60% of the questions will be the straight out ‘identify’ the structure pinned; 30-40% will be what I term “applied identify” (what is the function, innervation of the structure pinned or what is superior to it etc., ) and the final 10-20% will be of the nature of what happens if this structure is damaged.
One of my favorite quotes about teaching is: "I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework." (Lily Tomlin). Not too long ago a student came up to me after class in a sling and said that he hurt his arm skiing. Despite this clearly being not an ideal event, he had the biggest smile on his face and he said: "You know Dr Laprade, when I got to the emergency and the doctor started to check me out, I already knew what was broken and once we got the xray back, he agreed with me! It was so cool!" These are the moments I know that my teaching is giving students something more to take home than homework.