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Related Experiment Videos

Physiology is hard: a replication study of students' perceived learning difficulties.

Tara Slominski1, Sarah Grindberg1, Jennifer Momsen1

  • 1Department of Biological Science, North Dakota State University , Fargo, North Dakota.

Advances in Physiology Education
|March 6, 2019
PubMed
Summary

Students and faculty find Human Anatomy and Physiology (HAP) difficult due to the discipline's inherent nature, not teaching methods or student study habits. This replication study confirms previous findings, enhancing confidence in these conclusions.

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Area of Science:

  • Physiology Education Research
  • Human Anatomy and Physiology (HAP)

Background:

  • Human Anatomy and Physiology (HAP) is widely perceived as a challenging course.
  • Previous studies explored faculty and student perceptions of HAP difficulty but lacked broad generalizability due to limited replication.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To replicate and validate previous findings on the perceived causes of difficulty in Human Anatomy and Physiology.
  • To investigate whether student and faculty perceptions of HAP difficulty are consistent across multiple institutions.

Main Methods:

  • Survey responses were collected from 466 students across 4 institutions.
  • Survey responses were collected from 17 instructors across 15 institutions.
  • Data analysis compared current findings with those from prior studies by Michael (2007) and Sturges & Maurer (2013).
Keywords:
physiologyreplicationstudent difficultiesstudent perceptions

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Main Results:

  • Student perceptions in this study mirrored those in the original research, identifying the nature of the discipline as the primary source of difficulty.
  • Faculty perceptions aligned with previous studies, attributing HAP's difficulty to discipline-specific factors.
  • Both student and faculty respondents indicated that teaching methods and student learning approaches were less significant contributors to the course's difficulty.

Conclusions:

  • The inherent nature of Human Anatomy and Physiology is consistently identified by both students and faculty as the main reason for learning challenges.
  • Replication across multiple institutions strengthens the claim that HAP difficulty stems from the discipline itself, rather than instructional or student-related factors.
  • Findings support a more confident assertion regarding the intrinsic challenges within the physiology discipline.