Classroom practice

A typical day for me while I am lecturing in Gross Anatomy II consists of a one-hour PowerPoint lecture, for which the students have the handout in advance (usually at least 2 days), followed by two hours of lab, the last 30 minutes of which is the daily quiz. I take a 2-minute break in the middle of each class session, and also intersperse “practice quiz questions” throughout the lecture. 

My lectures are very visual, and I like to make them attractive as well.  I try to use attractive color schemes, and I prefer to have an illustration of some kind for every slide.  Illustrations are of several types: textbook diagrams, actual photographs, line drawings, and schematic illustrations I have created.  I like to think that although I am now lecturing with slides, I still incorporate some of what was good about my earlier, more traditional “chalk talks” – good illustrations to drive home a point. 

One of the aspects of my teaching style in this class in particular about which I am very proud is my use of PowerPoint.  I feel that PowerPoint is a great tool if you use it properly.  You can make changes “on the fly”, and immediately correct mistakes found, even during presentation.  It makes generation of a handout a very simple task.  But I feel its real power is in appropriate use of the animation tools. I have created many schematic illustrations with the drawing tools in PowerPoint, and incorporated animations so that students can “build” up the diagram with me.  This platform can also be used to illustrate simple movement concepts; I have successfully used animations to illustrate rotation of the 3^rd phalanx in laminitis, or synchronous movement of the stifle and hock through the reciprocal apparatus, for example.  I also strive to use this medium to help students understand three-dimensional concepts in gross anatomy.  I recently had a student stop by my office to compliment me on the way I use PowerPoint in my lectures – she said that she and her study partners felt I really used it to enhance the concepts, and not just state facts.  On the following page are examples of some typical slides from my lectures.

As do most instructors, I spend many hours of preparation to teach each one one-hour lecture and prepare each quiz.  My estimate of my preparation time is 4-6 hours for updating each PowerPoint presentation, and 2-3 hours for each quiz.  Some of this time is the preparation of appropriate illustrations and diagrams for the lectures and quizzes, which can be used again in the future.  In theory, the amount of time spent in preparation for lecture should decrease with each successive year, but I have not found this to be the case so far in this course.  I think this is due to several factors.  I have re-arranged my lectures extensively each year, partially in response to student comments about the lecture content and illustrations, and partially because of difficulty with attaining a good match of the lectures to the dissection assignments.  This past year was the first year I really felt comfortable with the material covered in each lecture, and so hopefully preparation time will decrease next year.  I am also a perfectionist, and find it difficult to be “done” with a presentation.

I have spent a great deal of time preparing illustrations for lectures and tests.  During the first year, I took a lot of the skeletal and ligament illustrations that had been scanned from the textbooks, added color to them for better contrast, and eliminated many of the labels (which I found difficult to read and distracting on the slides/handouts).  I have searched the Internet extensively for pictures of real animals with their limbs in motion that I can “borrow” to use as illustrations in the lecture.  I have just gotten a digital camera (OK, it’s the Department’s – but I have custody) and I am beginning to accumulate my own library of images of equine and bovine limbs.  I have included in the Appendices a CD that contains examples of illustrations and PowerPoint presentations I have created.

One of the more difficult areas that I teach in this course is the nervous supply to the limbs.  We go into greater detail of the nerves to the distal limb than we cover in the previous course.  Much of the terminology in this section, and the practical application of the information, is also new to the students.  I address this problem in several ways.  I attempt whenever possible to relate the material back to what they already know of canine anatomy.  In particular, I refresh their memory about the nomenclature of the distal vessels and nerves, and relate that to the terminology used for the equine (where the information is most critical).  In addition, I provide reason for them to learn the material (for example, understanding terminology related to and results of nerve blocks).  I also try to illustrate the material visually, providing concrete clues to the logic of the terminology.

Another particularly difficult topic in my section is radiology of the carpus and tarsus.  This requires a high degree of visualization, because oblique views of these areas are standard.  Students are exposed (so to speak) to radiographs in the canine anatomy course, but they are difficult for many students.  I try to visually illustrate the mechanics of making a radiograph, how that relates to the resulting shadow, and to the interpretation of the image.  However, I know that this remains a very difficult area for students.  I also feel that my role as a gross anatomy instructor should be primarily to introduce radiographic anatomy – the students will learn greater detail of radiographic anatomy in later courses.  Nonetheless, I try to show students how to see the details of a radiograph.  I may emphasize this more than I need to for this particular course, because I have a strong personal interest in helping students learn to visualize anatomical structures, and radiographs are one area where this skill is necessary. 

I also personally find the course structure challenging, because I am more used to presenting information with a topical approach, rather than the regional approach of matching the lecture to dissection schedule.  In most courses in which I have been involved in the past, the course examinations occurred at 3-4 week intervals, and relevant material could thus be presented over a period of time.  In Gross Anatomy II material is organized and presented in smaller “packets”, to accommodate the daily quiz approach.  At times I feel constrained by the need to present a certain number of facts relevant to that day’s assignment.  Whenever possible, I try to organize the necessary facts in such a way as to make them fit into a conceptual framework (for example, by presenting them in an organizational chart). 

I also found when I started teaching in this course, that the dissection assignments were a little unorganized, and the guide skipped around more than I would have preferred.  This made it difficult to structure the information into logical 50-minute “packets”; I found that I felt obliged to address more topics than I would have preferred for a 50-minute presentation.  However, with each successive year I feel better able to choose a core topic for the presentation for that day, and still match the dissection assignment reasonably well.  We are also gradually revising the course dissection guide so that the assignments flow better.

In the gross anatomy laboratory the main process that I engage in is response to questions asked as the students are working on their dissections.  I try to guide them toward the answer through the use of questioning about what they do know about the structure in question – I often answer a question with a question.  I feel that this process helps students to see the relationships between structures, and to understand the naming of the structures.  Because students must learn the names of all the body structures in order to communicate about them, and because they feel great frustration with what seems to them to be endless memorization, I try through this process of reasoning to give them a context in which to place the name of a given structure. 

The drawback with this approach is that some students become frustrated because they do not receive a direct answer, and this approach also takes more time with each question.  Students often comment (on written evaluations) that they are frustrated with me because I don’t recognize that they are stuck and just need an answer to get going again.  More often now than I used to, I give in to the temptation to do what the students prefer and answer or show them the structure quickly, because they are sometimes so pressed for time in this lab.  But I still try to get them to relate their question to previous knowledge.