Patton: Anatomy and Physiology, 11th Edition

Teaching Tips

● Less is more!
The biggest mistake new teachers make in teaching human Anatomy & Physiology is
trying to cover everything that is in the book. Cover the essential elements only.

Some of the extra material in the book is there for several reasons:

A. Some teachers want to emphasize particular areas of study for their students—and
broad coverage allows them to do so.

B. Extra detail sometimes clarifies points in the reading—but this does not mean that
the students have to learn it.

C. Many students continue to use their textbooks as reference books for many years
after taking Anatomy & Physiology.

So how do you know how much is enough and how much is too much? Be sure to check
out the TEACH instructor resource, which is on the My Evolve Resources Content.
TEACH includes lesson plans and PowerPoints and is also mapped to the Human
Anatomy & Physiology Society (HAPS) learning outcomes. You might also find it
helpful to network with veteran Anatomy & Physiology teachers through this society.
Connect with HAPS at https://AandP.info/HAPS

Textbooks fit like a mitten, not a glove because the best they can do is approximately
match course objectives and content, student learning needs, and your teaching approach.
But mittens are great. They cover your hands and give you some wiggle room. The key is
to think of a textbook as an off-the-shelf item that will never fit precisely. It's up to you to
make sure it fits well enough. And the only way to get that fit is to really put your hand in
and see what features suit you, your students, and your course. Keep in mind that the fit
will change as you and your course evolve, as your students’ needs change, and as you
gain teaching skills and adjust your techniques.

Kevin regularly offers additional tips for new and seasoned instructors in his blogs and
newsletters available online at https://AandP.info/KevinNewsletters

Listen to Kevin and friends reveal their secrets of A&P teaching in The A&P Professor
podcast—available wherever you listen to audio and at
https://theAPprofessor.org/podcast

● Double quizzes and pre-tests

If you have the time, these can really help motivate students. Before beginning a major
topic, give students a quick quiz on the topic’s main elements. Though this quiz won’t be
graded, it can help students focus on the topic and identify important points. Then, after

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you’ve covered the topic, give the students the SAME—or essentially the same—quiz,
perhaps rewording the questions and mixing them up a little bit. Comparing the scores on
these two quizzes will show students how much they are learning. It will also highlight
challenging areas and difficult concepts—giving students the chance to get some extra
help before they get too far behind.

Learning science indicates that pre-tests help enhance student learning. Each of the 6
units in the textbook begins with a page of illustrated questions that build on prior
knowledge, prime students for content in the coming chapters, and challenge them to
predict while providing immediate feedback. To facilitate long-term proficiency, this
design feature engages students through active application, practice, and retrieval and
encourages them to recognize connections they might otherwise miss.

Remind your students to review these 6 Unit Openers in their textbook to jumpstart their
learning. Instructors can also use them in their double quizzes and/or test questions.
Quick check questions at the end of each section and Review Questions at the end of each
chapter are another good source of questions for this type of non-graded learn-by-quiz
strategy.

● Active Concept Maps

Concept maps are diagrams that relate different elements of a concept to each other
and/or to the main idea. Many of the figures in the textbook provide examples of different
types of concept maps. By graphically organizing concepts, students learn more deeply
and remember more easily. These maps can explore terms (directional), concepts
(homeostasis), structures (organelles), chemicals (hormones), and systems (ANS).

In My Evolve Resources - Content Library, Active Concept Maps are available in Student
Resources by chapter (use search feature). These animated and narrated video clips walk
students through the process. They help students visualize and understand the content
while also learning how concept maps work.

The next step is to help students learn to make their own maps. Instructors can do this by
scaffolding. Scaffolding is an instructional method that progressively moves students
toward greater independence and understanding during the learning process. Start by
using some concept map images in the PPTs during your lecture, revealing each part in
sequence and narrating them yourself. Then create worksheets by removing select
information, providing the hidden answer choices as a “key”, and having students fill-in
the missing information. Eventually students will be able to create their own concept map
on a given topic or expand earlier concept maps as the course progresses. To include
assessment, replace text in a concept map with numbers or letters and use that image in
quiz and/or test questions.

Kevin has additional examples and tips for instructors and students at
https://AandP.info/concept-maps-d54077

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Teaching Tips 1-3

● Connect It!
Throughout the textbook, there are Connect It! articles referenced with an icon. There are
over 100 short articles available in My Evolve Resources - Content Library, in Student
Resources. These are updated regularly and provide material beyond the basic A&P
content.

Some of the extra material provides:

A. Current Clinical information: Rhabdomyolysis, Opioid Crisis, Vaping, Artificial

Cardiac Pacemakers, Blood Transfusions, and Lactose Intolerance.

B. Tips for learning processes: Tracing Blood Flow Through the Kidney, Heart
Sounds, Summary of Gas Exchange.

C. Answers to Student Questions: mmHg, Brain Wrinkles

D. Connections for broad concepts across different chapters: Osmotic Pressure of a

Solution, Microbiome.

Instructors can use these to tailor course content, create engaging activities, provide
related but new clinical information, and encourage application. This helps make learning
more meaningful and retention more likely.

● Netter 3-D
Netter’s 3D Interactive Anatomy images are now available in My Evolve Resources -
Content Library, in Student Resources. Icons in different chapters of the textbook
reference related 3-D models in the image library. It gives students and instructors a real-
time interactive model of human anatomy using advanced gaming technology. The
original Netter art is digitized and modeled to simulate a realistic environment for virtual
dissection and exploration of human anatomy. Users can rotate virtual bodies, peel apart
individual structures, and have precise control over their view. The ability to move and
rotate these structures gives students a better appreciation for spatial relationships.

In addition, some guided activities for student self-directed learning have been created.
These 3-D tours include labeled, pinned, or colored parts for students to manipulate and
explore. Each activity concludes with self-test review questions that reinforce content just
presented. Topics include the skull, brain, cranial nerves, heart, respiratory system, and
kidney.

Instructors can use these 3-D models and/or tour activities during lecture or lab to
simplify difficult concepts and clarify 3D relationships. For example, they could show the
foramina of the skull or the valves in the heart from different angles or views to improve
their students’ abilities to visualize—or they could distinguish the renal sinus from the
renal pelvis in the kidney to clear up confusion between these two kidney features.
Instructors could also make a recording while they manipulate a model or narrate an

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Teaching Tips 1-4

activity to produce a personalized virtual lesson. They could also use screen capture to
produce static images of dissected 3-D specimens for PPT slides or test questions.

● Body Spectrum Coloring book

Another easy and fun approach to learning anatomy is available in My Evolve Resources
- Content Library, in Student Resources. Body Spectrum is an educational software
program that helps students learn about human anatomy by working with anatomical
drawings on an interactive drawing pad. Users can save a plain or colored, labeled or
unlabeled image as a PDF, creating their own off-line coloring study tool. It has two
modes: Study Mode or Quiz Mode. Body Spectrum covers twelve anatomical categories
including: the nervous system, the skeleton, the senses, cell structure, and eight others.
Users can also look up terms and definitions in an online glossary.

Instructors can also use this feature to create their own images for PPTs, handouts, or test
questions. Or they can use it as the basis for a collaborative assignment when studying,
for example, the skeletal muscles. For this kind of assignment, assign different muscles to
each student and have them color their muscle(s) in Body Spectrum. Once completed,
students can capture the image, paste it into a PPT slide, and then label the muscle’s
attachment sites and describe its action. By combining all the slides into a shared class
“Muscle Atlas”, students will be creating their own shared study tool while learning.

● Helping students take notes

Many students have difficulty trying to take notes during class—and even more difficulty
with organizing their notes. Consider distributing a “skeleton” outline of the lecture
before class to help students with these two challenges. Such a skeleton saves the
students a little note-taking time by identifying the major topics and serves as a logical
framework for organizing their notes. As the semester goes by, you can make the handout
outlines sketchier and sketchier so that the students rely more and more on their own
note-taking skills.

Using the chapter outlines provided in the Instructor’s Resource Kit makes this technique
especially easy to carry out.

● Use CATs in teaching

No, not felines, as you might use in some laboratory dissection activities. CATs —
classroom assessment techniques — have been pretty hot techniques among college
instructors for a few years now, but the idea they are based on is as old as teaching. CATs
are simple, short, in-class techniques that assess where your students are and therefore
where you might need to take them next.
One of Kevin’s favorite CATs is the “minute paper.” This is simply a one-sided mini-
essay written by students at the end of a class to summarize the most important thing they
learned that day. It can be very revealing and help determine whether students really “got
it” or not. Similarly, the “muddiest point” CAT asks students to write on an index card
what most confused them during class which they then submit to the instructor before
they leave.

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Teaching Tips 1-5

For more information, consult the book Classroom Assessment Techniques by Angelo
and Cross.

● Teaching homeostasis
We think the concept of homeostasis is a valuable one. It was first articulated in the late
1800s by the French scientist Claude Bernard and was named in the 1920s by an
American, Walter Cannon. Kevin likes to use the “Wallenda model” in his classes,
comparing the work of the famous high-wire artists The Flying Wallendas to the work of
the body in homeostasis — that is, the homeostatic balance of the body is much like the
balance maintained by a high-wire artist.

In the Wallenda model, the variable is the position of the performer’s body and the
setpoint is the position in which the performer’s center of gravity (around the umbilicus)
is directly over the wire. Most wires are at least 35 to 40 feet high, so maintenance of
balance is as VITAL TO SURVIVAL as maintaining our acid-base balance or oxygen
balance, among others. If we lose our balance, we risk death, the price paid by Karl
Wallenda in 1978 when (at age 73) he lost his balance and fell during a “sky walk”
between two hotel buildings in Puerto Rico.

The high-wire performer uses sensory feedback (vision, equilibrium, kinesthesia) that is
interpreted by integrators in the CNS — just as it occurs in physiological feedback. For
the high-wire performer, the effectors are the muscles that are working to move the body
back into setpoint position over the wire.

The Wallendas are famous for their seven-person pyramid, in which a performer balances
on a thin bar on the shoulders of two performers, who are themselves balanced on thin
bars on the shoulders of two bottom pairs of performers — quite an unstable
arrangement. Just as in the body, where each homeostatic variable is related to all the
others, each performer is related to all the others in the pyramid. This exemplifies
INTERDEPENDENCE, and its importance to survival is illustrated in the case of the
famous collapse of “the seven” in Detroit in 1962. The bottom front performer lost his
balance and the entire pyramid collapsed, leaving two dead and a third permanently
paralyzed. (The Wallenda family has since recreated their famous seven-person pyramid
and in 2001 performed an eight-person pyramid for the Guinness World record.)

The high-wire act of the Wallendas not only illustrates negative feedback, the
relationship of balance to survival, and the interdependence of variables, but it also shows
that energy is constantly being consumed as a relative balance is maintained.

For another analogy of homeostasis, see the Frequently Asked Questions, which are
available to students through the Evolve website.

● The continuous nature of the meninges

Students often don’t understand how each meninx is a single piece that covers both the
brain and spinal cord. The analogy of pantyhose — a single piece of fabric that covers
both the legs and lower torso — is often useful in conveying this concept.

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Teaching Tips 1-6

● Lymphatic drainage
The concept of lymphatic capillaries that begin “blindly” in the tissue spaces is
sometimes difficult for students to grasp. Comparing lymphatic capillaries to closed-end
perforated drainage tubes buried under the sod of football or soccer fields may help.
These tubes collect excess water that would otherwise flood the field. The tubes then
divert the water to appropriate drainage pathways.

● The “cold” war of the immune system

The idea of espionage provides both teacher and student with almost limitless
opportunities to study the functions of the immune system — defenses against both
external and internal enemies — as they might be adapted to structure a plot for a classic
Cold War era espionage and counterintelligence saga. John Le Carre (The Spy Who Came
in from the Cold and others) might just be a frustrated immunologist!

Student teams working on this type of “James Bond” theme are quickly involved in both
cooperative and active learning opportunities. Lines of defense, mechanisms of
nonspecific defense, antibody- and cell-mediated immunity, and the “code” of antigen-
antibody interaction are all topics that can be worked into this learning technique. For
example, mechanical and chemical barriers are easily understood by students as first-line
defense strategies if comparisons are made with bulletproof vests, armor plate, “energy
shields,” castle walls, or medieval moats.

● Respiratory regulation
Complex physiological control systems are difficult and multifaceted learning challenges
for students, and the use of analogies can be helpful. Air travel and air traffic procedures
are useful examples to help students understand the interrelated homeostatic mechanisms
of respiratory control.

Use the following examples:

A. Inbound or outbound airline passengers can be used to represent oxygen and

carbon dioxide molecules.

B. The capacity of passenger transport can be determined by the type and size of the
plane, the length of the flight, and the frequency of departure and landing. For
example, total surface area of the lungs (and rate of respirations) determines total
oxygen transport.

C. Jetways separate and yet connect the terminal building and plane (respiratory
membrane).

D. Air traffic controllers use incoming messages from pilots (weather reports,
density of traffic, equipment problems) to regulate and control the movement of
planes. (Feedback control by the nervous system.)

With a little encouragement, creative students can apply this analogy to almost every
aspect of respiratory control.

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Teaching Tips 1-7

 Role of the sarcoplasmic reticulum in excitation-contraction coupling

We have demonstrated the role of the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) by picking up pieces
of chalk or dry erase markers (symbolizing calcium ions) from the floor. This represents
the SR pumping calcium ions from the sarcoplasm and “hoarding” them during
relaxation. The instructor is the SR, and the instructor’s hands are the calcium pumps.
When the SR is stimulated by the impulse traveling through the T-tubule, which you can
demonstrate by backing up to the chalkboard or whiteboard ledge (the T-tubule) and
describing an impulse traveling toward you, the calcium ions are released into the
sarcoplasm. This event is represented by you dropping the chalk pieces or markers to the
floor. As in a muscle cell, the availability of chalk or markers on the floor is limited to a
brief time because the instructor immediately resumes “pumping” the chalk pieces or
markers off the floor (just as the SR immediately resumes pumping calcium).

● Conduction of an action potential

Many instructors use domino chain reaction as an analogy for the conduction of an action
potential along an axon. Another good model is a Jacobs ladder toy. Because each square
flips back and forth, it can represent the ions moving into and out of the cell across the
cell membrane in one location, but when it happens in sequence, we see the appearance
of something moving down the ladder as the action potential. Another analogy is the
“wave” stadium cheer. All of these help students understand that conduction of an action
potential is an apparent movement, but a real physiological phenomenon.

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