Episode Transcript
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0:00
KEVIN PATTON: Sharon Salzberg,
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the American author and teacher, once wrote, 'Reflection is an essential part of learning.
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Debriefing after any experience is key to personal and professional growth."
0:18
AILEEN PARK: Welcome to The A&P Professor. A few minutes to focus on teaching human anatomy
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and physiology with a veteran educator and teaching mentor, your host, Kevin Patton.
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KEVIN PATTON: In episode 147, I debrief the past year of The
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A&P Professor, I revisit last year's predictions, and I make new predictions for the coming year.
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KEVIN PATTON: Well, it crept right up on me. That is,
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the time of the year when I do my annual debriefing episode, where I pause and reflect,
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just like I do in my courses and in other aspects of my personal and professional life,
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and think about how the year went, what I got done, what I didn't get done, what I
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should have gotten done, and things like that. And so, I think it's a good experience because
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all of us can go back and think about, wow, there were some things that I want to go back
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to and listen to again, or some things that you missed the first time around because, you know,
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we all get busy and we fall behind on our podcasts and everything else.
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So this might be a good little nudge to say, oh, there was an episode about that.
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I got to go back and listen. So let's take a look. What
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did we get done over the last year? Well, let's take a look at our listener base.
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Well, I wish I could because there's really no good way to count how many
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people are listening to any one episode or really the whole grouping of episodes.
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This is a well-known problem among podcasters. I mean, there are some podcasters that really
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tear their hair out about this, and I don't really care that much about it. I mean, I do.
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I want to see our listenership grow because that's just fun and it's motivating. But you know what?
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The lesson I learned in the circus is if there are only a handful of
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people out there in the audience, we're still going to go on with a show because,
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well, it's not their fault. Nobody else showed up.
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Let's give them a good time. We're ready to do it. We have things to give them.
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And so that's how I look at this podcast. But it turns out there isn't just a small handful.
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I reckon there's about a thousand regular listeners and maybe another thousand dabblers,
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people that kind of come and go and maybe listen to one or two and then never come back or listen
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to one or two and then skip a few and then come back and listen to another one or two.
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But I don't know for sure, because like I said, this is a problem.
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Statistics in podcasts are pretty much impossible to measure because even
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though we can count how many downloads there are from the main syndicator or
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distributor of the audio files, that doesn't really necessarily tell us
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how many people are actually listening to a significant part of the episode.
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I mean, they do have some algorithms to kind of weed out the people that like, oops,
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didn't mean to start that and come back. But it really isn't that great.
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And not Not only that, but some people listen on more than one device, and so that counts as two.
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I know that a lot of the podcasts that I subscribe to, I subscribe to in more than
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one podcast catcher because different podcast apps, they work differently.
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And some I'd like to listen to with a certain kind of functionality or a
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different kind of functionality functionality, depending on the kind of podcast it is or the
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context in which I'm listening to the podcast. Am I driving or am I there with my device in my
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hand where I can, you know, do some manual operations as the podcast plays or what?
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So, I mean, there's all kinds of what-ifs like that.
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So, I don't know, you know, the actual numbers could be twice what I just said, Or it could be
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half of what I just said, or maybe orders of magnitude more or less than what I just said.
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But I don't know. Let's just say around 1,000 listeners. That's pretty good.
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I mean, how many of us have 1,000 students that are in a class that
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are interacting and listening with us? Well, you know, that's a pretty big class
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that I have in The A&P Professor podcast. So that's pretty good. I mean...
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It'd sure be cool to have more. That'd be even more motivating for me.
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But, well, maybe if you share this podcast with somebody, that will help.
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Now, how many episodes did we have this year? Well, we had 16 episodes total.
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And you can see the titles of each of those, of course, linked to the episode page,
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as well as a listing of the main topics that were talked about in each episode.
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If you go to theAPprofessor.org slash podlist, that's P-O-D-L-I-S-T, podlist,
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and you'll see that table there. So you can scan through there,
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and it's searchable too. So if you're looking for a particular podcast
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that from the olden days or maybe just a few episodes ago, you can go in there and do a search.
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And most of the segments that are on this podcast are what we call evergreen.
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That is, they're not really tied to the current news or events or anything like that.
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There are a few like that, but mostly they're evergreen.
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So you can go all the way back to the very first season.
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You can go back six or seven years and listen to an episode and find that as far as what What
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you're listening to, it's new and fresh and applicable to what we're doing right now in the
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classroom as we teach anatomy and physiology. Now, of those 16 episodes,
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five of them were interviews. So that's the most interviews we've ever
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had in a season because this is mostly a monologue show where I'm sharing what I've learned with you.
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But I do occasionally have guests on and we talk about things that they've been doing that
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I know that you'll find interesting, and I mainly have them on because I want to talk about these
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interesting things that they have to tell us. So Mindi Fried, you may remember, in episode
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133 came on and talked about what it's like to have aphantasia, that is, a relative inability to
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picture things in your mind like many of us do. And how does she function as an an A&P teacher,
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and how did she function as an A&P student with that view of the world?
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And then in episode 134, I talked with Jason Organ, who had just been named as the new
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editor of Anatomical Sciences Education, which is a journal from AAA, the American Association
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for Anatomy, and what his ideas were for the continuing evolution of that journal.
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And we went off on a a couple of side tangents that were very interesting too.
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And then in episode 135, I talked with Michelle Lazarus,
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who had just written a book about the uncertainty effect.
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And that's a field of study for her, is uncertainty.
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And how do we prepare students, especially students in healthcare professions, for the
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uncertainty that they will grapple with every day in their profession?
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And she feels like we haven't done maybe the best job, and I agree with her.
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Up until my discussion with her, I never really even thought about it much,
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that trying to make things simple and certain and uniform for my students may be kind of
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the wrong way to go because they need to be able to grapple with uncertainty in a
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changing landscape and the fact that there maybe isn't always just one right answer.
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Things aren't black and white in the world of human biology, and especially when we start
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doing clinical applications of human biology. So that was another very interesting episode.
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And then in episode 142, Dr. Roy Meals, who's been on the podcast before, when he wrote a
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book about bones, came back to us with his newest book, and that one's about muscles.
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We talked about some of the stories he told in that book and just kind of cut up a little bit.
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And then in episode 144, our friend Mike Pascoe, whose voice you've heard on this podcast before,
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because he's interacted with us a number of times. Mike has just edited a brand new
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anatomy atlas that came out. It's called the Kenhub Atlas.
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And so he talked about his experiences doing that and what makes that atlas unique in the world of
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anatomy atlases. And there are some things. So if you haven't listened to that,
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you're going to want to listen. So that was five of the 16 episodes.
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And then two of the episodes were what I call winter shorts.
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So those are some of those evergreen segments from the olden days that I've
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remixed and remastered and chopped out some of the ums and uhs and a few of those things.
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And can you imagine, you know, I do edit that. And so can you imagine when you do hear the occasional
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um or uh or whatever, how many more there were that are laying on the floor of the editing room?
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[9:53] land on the floor. It's all digital. But you know
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what I mean. So one of those winter shorts was called Anatomy of Trust.
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So it was a couple of segments on promoting integrity in A&P education.
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And then the other winter short was called, A Tongue Twister's
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Guide to Mastering Anatomy Pronunciation. And that was a couple of different segments
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from different episodes on this idea of how do we handle anatomy pronunciation with our students.
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So those were the winter shorts. And then two of the episodes were all about explaining these crazy
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courses that I do, episodes 140 and 141. So in those courses, I do a supplement
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course and I do a pre-A&P course. I kind of held off on doing episodes about those
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topics because it's kind of summarizing my life's work in a way, because those courses were sort of
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the culmination of what I had I'd learned over an entire career of teaching anatomy and physiology
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in a community college for students that were going to either be transferring to a university
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or staying at our school and transferring into our nursing programs or health information programs
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or other health professions programs. So I kind of held back thinking, well,
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that's sort of like the piece de resistance. And so I don't want to release that early.
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And then I kept getting more and more questions about those courses and topics
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from within those courses kept coming up. So I thought, well, that'll be a good way
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to kind of put that all together so that folks have an even better idea of what I
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ended up with in those two courses and how they interacted with each other and with the
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main anatomy and physiology course. And so I went ahead and did it,
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went ahead and jumped in and did it and kind of pulled everything together.
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It was episodes 140 and 141. In there, things like my wacky testing scheme came up, the somewhat
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alternative grading scheme that I had in my pre-A&P course, and even in my supplement course.
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Although they were different in their grading, they weren't your
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traditional classic grading, at least not 100%. Ooh, 100%, that's sort of classical, isn't it?
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Anyway, and there was a whole lot about just different ideas about student success and A&P in
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those two episodes. So if you haven't heard those, you want to go back and listen to them.
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And I'll bet you there are one or two things that are going to pique your
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interest and maybe give you an idea for something a little different you can do,
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maybe even in just your A&P course without having to do some separate course.
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Another episode this season was my big rant in episode 143 about the dangers
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of rigid uniformity in our courses. And that kind of harkens back to that
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discussion I had with Michelle Lazarus about uncertainty in her book about uncertainty,
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which you ought to read because it's really, I think, very informative for anybody in education,
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especially healthcare education. But my point is, is that, yeah,
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it's, you know, maybe making things like really uniform and, you know, especially like course
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temp... Okay, I'm starting my rant again. I just don't like rigid course templates
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and rigid lists of outcomes that can't be altered and individual
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course because that, you know, reduces... Well, okay, I'm getting into it again. go
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back and listen to episode 143 and you'll know what I'm talking about and see if I
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just went too far with that or not. I don't think I did. I don't think
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I went far enough, but you be the judge and listen to episode 143.
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And scattered throughout the entire season were a whole bunch of different education
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topics besides the ones that I just mentioned. For example, in one segment, I talked about how
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some recent research has shown that animations that we use as sort of like little decorations
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or interesting things to make our slides come alive and more engaging and so on,
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but aren't necessarily animating a concept for better understanding.
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Those sort of decoration kind of animations add to the cognitive load of students and
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they can actually do more harm than good. They can be too distracting.
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I mean, we know some really are just obviously distracting,
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but some of them we think are just kind of cool. But it turns out that students get kind of
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hypnotized by them and then stop listening to the discussion. So that's not good.
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Another thing that came up is, should online tests be timed?
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And I advocated for untimed online tests, but you can listen and see what you think.
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I talked a lot about our teaching persona. There was one whole episode on our teaching persona and
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how that relates to authenticity and transparency. Transparency, all of those are interrelated topics
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that come up now and again in this podcast over the years and will continue to come
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up because they're important to me and I think they're important for us to discuss as a group.
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Another thing that came up that has come up before, and that is
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the idea of digital micro-credentials. That is digital badges or certificates
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that we can use within our course, and I have used within my course,
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to help motivate students and give them an idea of the progress they're making
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and make things just a little bit more fun. And I talked about how gestures impart meaning
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when we teach and some research related to that. And I talked about something
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that's often called deep elaboration as a teaching and learning strategy.
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And we now know that that really helps with neurodiverse students.
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And we know that our students do exhibit neurodiversity among the group.
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I mean, every one of us is unique in terms of the way our brain functions and how we think.
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And there are some big differences and some small differences.
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And deep elaboration is a good technique to use for all learners in our classroom.
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And another thing that came up pretty frequently is core concepts of A&P.
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That popped up here and there. And another thing that popped up
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a lot is our perennial favorite, and that is the topic of being playful in our courses.
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And there were a bunch of science topics too, not just teaching and learning topics.
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Among the science topics, we discussed the idea of do tattoos affect sweating?
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And we talked about aural, that is auditory diversity, and we talked about quantum activity
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and possibly related to consciousness in the microtubules of brain cells.
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And that could be related to another topic that came up,
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and that is the transducer model of brain action.
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Now, both of those concepts that, you know, there's some quantum activity in terms of
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consciousness and that it might be going on in the microtubules, and the other concept
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of the transducer model of brain activity, both those concepts are really out there.
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They're not really mainstream scientific thinking, but they're still inside the
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realm of current scientific thinking. So it's not pseudoscience, although
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there are probably some scientists who would claim, oh, that's pseudoscience,
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but that's just because they disagree with it. So it's that hypothetical kind of science that
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is still being argued about and still being investigated and we
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still need more information about. But it's very interesting, I think,
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especially in terms of how it affects the function of the human body, especially the
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brain and what consciousness is all about. And those are the kinds of things that help
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reinforce our understanding of the human body that we can share with students and we can keep them up
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to date on, well, what are some of the scientific questions that are being investigated right now?
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Another topic that came up, speaking of the transducer model of brain action, is
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just the idea of signal transduction in general. We know that signal transduction happens in cells,
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it happens between cells, and it's a core concept in understanding many topics and
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relationships throughout the A&P course. So we discussed that a little bit.
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And then another topic that came up was dendritic action potentials.
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And they're involved in a newly discovered kind of nerve signaling in the brain.
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And we don't normally think of dendrites as having action potentials, but they
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can and do. And we talked about that. Now, that may not be something we want
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to introduce in our introductory A&P course, but it's not a bad idea for us to know that
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it exists or that we think it exists. And maybe we need a little bit more
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experimentation before we start learning more about it and understanding it more deeply.
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And we learned about some new ideas about how organelles are moving around inside cells.
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It's a little more, well, it was described by some scientists as a dance.
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We focused in particular in the so-called dance between mitochondria
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and the endoplasmic reticulum, or ER. But we're finding out that, you know,
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there are organelles that are sort of, you know, touching one another and then moving
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back and touching one another again, and they're having interactions with each other.
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And we're going to be learning soon why they're doing that, how they're doing that,
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and what kind of interactions are going on in thus deepen our
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understanding of how cell biology works. Answer some unanswered questions.
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So that's That's been fun looking at sort of the cutting edge of science.
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Now, to wrap up our review of topics, I got to mention that one weird episode that I
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quickly snuck in there at the beginning of this year, and that was episode 131.
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That was titled, Is AI the Beginning or End of Learning?
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Now, you may recall if you were a listener back then that I had pushed back the annual
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debriefing episode last year so that I could squeeze in that extra episode because things
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were exploding at that time. It seems like it, in a way,
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it had to have been longer than a year ago when all of a sudden everybody,
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and I mean everybody everywhere, was talking about AI because ChatGPT had
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just started to become visible in the media. And then in education, we're like, oh my gosh,
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our students are now using this to generate ideas. And not only that, but to generate actual content.
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And what are we going to do about that? Is there anything we can do about that?
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Is teaching ruined now because students can just ask a bot?
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So anyway, those were some of the questions we were discussing back then.
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I think the view I took was a little bit outside the mainstream, but it has kind of become the
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mainstream there, which I hate because I kind of like being on the edge of the mainstream.
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I don't want to be part of the middle there, but oh well, that happens.
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So then we had the annual debriefing after that. But wow, that was a time, wasn't it,
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when that first hit us. And we're still kind of grappling
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with it, but I'm not done talking about AI. That'll come up again in a few minutes.
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We'll be right back with more.
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KEVIN PATTON: I'm popping in here between segments
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to let you know that this is a really long episode. episode. Really, really, really long.
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When I started editing and realized how long it was going to be, I wondered whether
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I should maybe split it into two episodes. But you know what? Nobody has to listen to the
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whole thing at once, so why not a long episode? Even better, all our episodes are chunked
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into segments, which makes it really easy to stop and then
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pick up where you left off at some other time. In many podcast players, you can skip directly
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from segment to segment and thus listen to them in any order you like, or re-listen to one that you
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realize you weren't listening to very well. Maybe something was distracting you.
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If your player doesn't allow skipping to the next segment, I always provide
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timestamps to help you do that manually. Yeah, this episode is long enough that it
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might take you a few days of listening now and then to finish this episode, maybe a few weeks.
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By the way, I've intentionally added a few brief messages in between some segments
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just just to give our brains a momentary chance to switch gears and refocus before
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moving back to a featured topic. If that annoys you because, well,
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maybe you just don't need a quick refocus, well then, just skip ahead.
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KEVIN PATTON: We're back now with more of our debriefing discussion. Another thing I want to mention during
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this debriefing is that during the last year, I launched a new version of our listener survey.
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And not very many people have taken the five minutes it takes to fill out that survey.
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But as I said, there really isn't a good way for me to not only count the people who are listening
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to the podcast, but really connect with them in a meaningful way so that I get good feedback.
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Now, I do get some feedback in a variety of ways from listeners.
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And if you're one of those listeners that have given me any kind of a feedback,
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I really, really, really, really appreciate it because I don't get as much of it as I'd like.
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And this survey is a way where I can ask some specific questions so that I know some things,
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some specific things about who's listening, what your interests are, what your preferences are,
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what ideas you have, and so on. So if you go to theAPprofessor.org
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slash survey and just take a few minutes, I sure would appreciate it.
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And another thing I want to discuss while we're doing a reflection of this
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podcast is 16 episodes is a little bit more than one episode a month.
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And when I started out, lo those many years ago, with the podcast,
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my goal was to do a weekly podcast. And I just can't sustain that. It's just,
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especially as time has gone by and I've added new features and more production value and
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hopefully usefulness for you, the listener, that all takes time and effort and energy.
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And I don't have unlimited time and effort and energy.
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And especially these days. There's some things going on in my life that are really drawing some
25:02
of that effort and time away from the podcast. And so I've had to slow down and
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made it more of a monthly calendar. I hope to increase that a little bit over
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the next year. We'll see how I'm able to do. And if I can't do it this year,
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then maybe the next year it'll work. But it's still a goal of mine.
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So bear with me, even though I'd like to do it more frequently. I just can't right now.
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And I don't know, maybe it's just all getting to be a little bit too much for me
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because there is a lot involved in this. And I enjoy it. It's a blast, but...
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To sustain that all the time is just very difficult.
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But I'm taking some steps to make it work better so that I can sustain it
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longer. So it's not just all me. And so, you know, there are some
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things that can be automated a little bit. There are some people that I can get to help me.
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You know, one of the things that helps is when it's not me just doing monologues,
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because it takes longer to prepare those episodes where it's just me talking about some topic.
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The research I I need to do, the organization,
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the planning out of the story that I want to tell and outlining that, that all takes a lot of time.
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It takes a little bit less time if I'm having a chat with someone.
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I mean, it still takes some prep time, but not as much prep time.
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I'm thinking that, you know, I'll probably, like I did last year, do a few more interviews than I
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had been doing in the years prior to that. Another thing I may do is get some more
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correspondents, like Krista Rompolsky, for example, has been our journal club editor,
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where a lot of the preparation falls on her. Well, cause, I don't mean it "falls" on her,
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She volunteered. She stepped up to do that when she and I had a discussion a few years
26:58
ago about my issues of sustainability. And so she offered to do that and is
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going to be doing it again going forward. But, you know, she does some of the preliminary
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research, and then we get together and chat. And those episodes have a little bit less
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production time behind the scenes for me than a regular episode, a regular monologue episode.
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It sure would be fun, too, to maybe have some guests host sometime.
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So if you, my listener, if you think about it, think about, you know, maybe you're
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thinking of doing a podcast of some sort. Or maybe you're just like doing this sort of
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thing, you know, using media and sharing things that you've learned and so on.
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Why not think about becoming a correspondent that comes on the show
27:47
every once in a while to share some things like correspondents do on news programs?
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Or maybe you want to be a guest host and take over an entire episode and do some
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monologues or interview someone that you'd like to interview,
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and then you could be the guest host for that episode.
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I've done that on another podcast. It's no longer being produced, unfortunately,
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it's one of my favorite podcasts. It was a podcast about podcasting,
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and that's a blast when you do that. I don't know, think about that,
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and I sure would love to hear from you with your ideas about how that might work.
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As far as production goes, someone who is helping me out a lot is Karen Turner, who
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was an editor of mine on my textbook years ago. And I have recently hired her in my business that
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I have in producing textbook content. And so she is my personal editor now.
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And in terms of what she does for me, part of it is she does help me with my textbooks,
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helps keep things organized for me and reviews manuscript and so on and helps
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me maintain the quality, catches issues that I might not have seen.
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But she's also helping out with the production of the podcast. So that has helped.
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And also, I'm spending some time keeping up with best practices in podcasting.
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And that kind of adds to the time, doesn't it? But, you know, if some people can share
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that with me, then maybe that'll help with the sustainability of keeping this podcast going.
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Transcripts have evolved. You know, now there's artificial intelligence that can help with the
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transcripts. But you know what? I still find myself having to
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use human transcribers. That's one thing that
29:40
Karen Turner is helping me with. And the thing is, is that even with
29:45
artificial intelligence, it cannot tell when I'm saying A and P, meaning A ampersand P or A and P.
29:57
It thinks I'm saying something like the letters A, M, and P, or A, N, and P.
30:05
There's a lot of terminology I'm finding that is very common, and therefore very frequently used
30:10
in this podcast, in the world of A and P, that artificial intelligence cannot separate out.
30:18
And it really needs a human to go in there and say, no,
30:21
that's not what he's saying. That's crazy. It's this other thing. So there's transcriptions
30:26
proper, but there's also the captions that are derived from the transcriptions.
30:31
So the captions in the captioned audiograms that we provide, for example,
30:36
that's linked to that as well. And so that all requires,
30:40
you know, humans to kind of make sure that they're readable and they make some sense.
30:46
We're also keeping up with best practices in websites because, you know, there's all this
30:52
website support of the podcasts that are available, the links and all that.
30:57
So, you know, something that we did this year is made the transcripts more searchable.
31:03
I'm not going to go into the details of how we did that, but now it should be
31:06
easier to use the little search box at the bottom of any page at theAPprofessor.org to
31:12
find any word that was ever uttered in any of the, transcripts of the podcast.
31:20
So you can find that episode again and either read the passage you want, or at least you'll know what
31:25
episode it is at that point that you could go back and listen or listen to that part of the episode.
31:31
Another thing we did this year is we made the transcripts more available in the PDF format.
31:38
Now, they were already available as a PDF in each episode of the TAPPapp.
31:44
That's the free app that you can get to use to listen to this podcast, but only this podcast.
31:52
And if you want the TAPPapp on your device,
31:56
all you need to do is go to your device's app store and search for The A&P Professor.
32:02
That's A ampersand P, The A&P Professor. Or you can search for my name, Kevin Patton,
32:10
if The A&P Professor doesn't show up because sometimes that ampersand messes up search things.
32:17
But you should be able to find it. It usually works. And you can download it. It's a free app.
32:22
There's no extra in-app purchases or anything like that.
32:26
And that's actually a really handy way to share this podcast with somebody who doesn't
32:31
usually listen to podcasts because that's a big hurdle to get over is like, yeah,
32:35
I know what a podcast is, but I have no idea where I go to listen to one or how I listen to one.
32:41
So that would be an easy way to do it is just tell them,
32:45
go to your device app store and just right now,
32:48
because everybody knows how to get to their app store and put in The A&P Professor and find it.
32:52
And then it's a go from there. but in that TAPPapp I have a PDF file that you can open
32:59
up and download of the transcript for each episode but now it's available in another place the PDF is
33:06
now available if you click the little PDF icon at the episode page on that transcript that's
33:13
on the episode page you click on it and it'll download a PDF for you right there so if that's
33:20
what you're looking for...Two different ways to get it, in the app or on the episode page.
33:26
Another thing we did was we increased the speed of web pages.
33:30
And we completely redesigned the homepage of the website and added a new set of graphics.
33:35
We got an artist, a graphic artist, to create original graphics and so on using
33:41
a very contemporary style similar to what you see in other websites.
33:45
So we did that. We updated the design of the podcast landing page,
33:49
the homepage for the podcast part of theAPprofessor.org.
33:54
So that would be at theAPprofessor.org slash podcast.
33:59
And speaking of online stuff, we expanded to more social channels this year.
34:05
In case you're there, we can find you or you can find us is really more appropriate.
34:11
So in the Threads app, Mastodon, BlueSky, we recently got our invitation for BlueSky and
34:19
got in there. Reddit, we're on Reddit now. And TikToks, take a look at those. And if
34:26
there is a social platform that you think we ought to be in, then send
34:30
me a message and let me know about that. And we'll see if we can get that going.
34:35
And another big change that you may have already noticed, we have had some comments over the years
34:41
that some people didn't appreciate having those sponsor messages in between segments.
34:48
But other people really liked them. So it's kind of like, well,
34:51
you can't satisfy everybody. But we haven't been having sponsor messages for much of
34:59
the year this year, about half of the year. And that was my decision to step away from
35:03
the sponsorships temporarily because things were just getting too overwhelming for me in general,
35:10
especially in the podcast and in all of this production that needs to go on and so on.
35:14
And believe it or not, that takes some extra time and effort to not only create those
35:21
sponsor messages, which are always things that I'm finding out and sharing with you.
35:27
That takes time and effort to do that, but also just even tending to the business relationship
35:33
that I have with the three sponsors in terms of those sponsorships have to be tended to.
35:39
So I just had to pull back temporarily. So we may do that again.
35:43
Going ahead in the future. We'll see. Maybe we can make that part
35:47
of a contribution of guest hosting or correspondence or something like that.
35:53
I don't know. Or maybe some guests on the show. But anyway, there's that.
35:57
And then something else in the world of The A&P Professor that's not directly linked to
36:01
the podcast is The A&P Professor Science and Education Updates.
36:06
That's the name of it. The A&P Professor Science and Education Updates, which is a
36:10
newsletter that comes out, I was hoping, like two or three times a week, but it's
36:16
becoming more like once a week these days. But again, after reflecting on that,
36:22
I want to move forward and make it go back to two or three times a week if I can.
36:28
If not this year, then next year. But I'm going to try this year.
36:32
And it's on a new platform. platform we've gone through several platforms because we find a good
36:38
platform for doing this and then they get sold to Twitter or something and then i think that
36:43
happened to both of them they got sold to Twitter and twitter says okay now that I bought you i'm
36:47
putting you away and not letting you out again so they like shut them down and maybe they're buying
36:54
like a patent or something that it was being used i don't know but it's locking us out of it
36:59
so now i'm on Substack and that was a little bit different and there's a learning curve.
37:07
So that took a lot more time and effort than the older systems I'd been using that no longer exist.
37:13
And that learning curve, yeah, it's been big.
37:16
But like any new learning, it's hopefully pushed back my dementia risk a little bit.
37:22
So that's the good part of it. It's been fun. But, oh, man, it came at a time when I really
37:27
didn't have extra time to do learning. So hopefully that has settled down.
37:32
And I'm really liking the format of it better. But it takes some work to get that to work.
37:39
We had 76 issues of that newsletter in 2023, and I hope to get that up to
37:45
at least 100 issues in 2024. So as I said, I'm going to
37:48
push it back up to more frequency if I can. And I also hope to add some articles of my own.
37:55
Right now, they're basically just headlines and snippets from other
37:59
articles that I've found that I think that you'll find interesting as an A&P educator.
38:04
It's sort of kind of getting back to the roots that The A&P Professor started out.
38:08
In 2008 as a blog and then we added a website to go along with the blog and then later on,
38:18
well 10 years later then we ended up with a starting a podcast on top of all that so, yikes
38:26
what goes around comes around right so if you want to sign up for that free newsletter which you can
38:32
always unsubscribe from if you don't like it. You just go to theAPprofessor.org slash updates.
38:40
So, looking at this from the perspective of having trouble keeping up the pace,
38:47
I seem to have accomplished more and better than I thought I had this year. So, Yeah,
38:54
I'm glad I took some time to look back.
38:57
KEVIN PATTON: Well, it's time to review the psychic predictions
39:03
I made last year, my predictions for 2023. And remember, when I use the term psychic,
39:10
you know, breaking the word parts down. [RUMBLING] Word dissection.
39:16
Psych means mind and ic means relating to, so I mean relating to the mind.
39:21
I used my mind. I basically used other people's minds by reading and listening to, I don't know,
39:28
the trends and what people were saying and then made up my own mind about what
39:32
I think might really happen in 2023. And I came up with 11 general categories
39:38
of predictions that I want to go back and see. Was I close?
39:44
Get anywhere near, anywhere in the ballpark around any of these predictions.
39:49
And I kind of did and kind of didn't. It was kind of a mixed bag, which one would
39:53
expect with that sort of thing, right? So there were basically 11 of them. And
39:57
the first one was AI issues, artificial intelligence issues, because, you know,
40:02
we had just seen explosive introduction and revelation of ChatGPT, and that had pushed off
40:11
when I actually did the prediction episode, the debriefing slash prediction episode last year.
40:16
Yeah, okay, that's still a thing, right? And I think our thinking as a group of educators,
40:23
the world of education, especially A&P education, has evolved over time as we
40:28
learn what it can and can't do, what some of the pros and cons are of it being out there.
40:34
But one thing we've learned is there ain't putting that genie back in the bottle.
40:38
We can't do that. That's not going to happen. So we now live in a world with
40:43
artificial intelligence. And so what we need to do is develop new
40:47
skills and new ways of thinking and new approaches and all that.
40:50
And I think that's what happened this year is, yeah, we started dealing with it.
40:56
The second one on my list was approaches to cheating mature.
40:59
And of course, that's based on the availability of artificial intelligence.
41:05
And I think our approaches to cheating have changed.
41:08
I think they're just beginning to evolve. And I think that we're starting to really face the
41:14
issue that there's a lot of collaboration that in one context could be cheating...
41:20
...or dishonesty, but in other contexts is really what you want to have, what you want to do.
41:26
I mean, in the real world, we collaborate with others to solve problems.
41:30
On a test, traditionally, you collaborate with others. That's considered to be cheating.
41:37
But maybe we need to rethink that. So there's that.
41:40
Then the third one on my list was, I'm going through these fast because I'm
41:44
realizing as I record these segments that I have a lot of talking I'm doing here.
41:50
So I want to kind of speed it up a little bit in any way.
41:53
So number three on the list is we got to stop trying to return to 2019.
41:59
Now that wasn't a prediction. That was just kind of a warning.
42:02
And what I meant by that is, you know what? Teaching and learning changed as a
42:08
result of the pandemic. And so many of us are trying
42:12
to just like reverse time and say, okay, hey, the pandemic is over. It's not really.
42:17
The pandemic has not been declared done. But I know some leaders, political leaders,
42:23
have said the pandemic is over and people talk and act that way.
42:28
But the thing is, is, you know, the pandemic approach to teaching has sort
42:33
of stopped or petered out. But the thing is, is that,
42:37
you know, as the students come back to the classroom, room, we're all changed people.
42:42
They've now been exposed to other kinds of learning. And some of it
42:46
went well and some of it didn't go well. But the thing is, is you just try to turn
42:50
back the clock and go back to exactly what you were doing, it's not going to work.
42:56
And so I think we're seeing that it's not working.
43:00
And so what are we going to do about that? What is the strategy to do And that is probably not
43:06
unrelated to item four on my list last year. And I said that we're going to get better
43:12
about turning things around regarding faculty burnout and faculty overwork.
43:19
I don't think we did get better about it in general.
43:21
I think probably in little pockets here and there that we got better about it.
43:26
I think the thing that got better was that probably more and more administrators and
43:30
other people not in the classroom did start recognizing it more widely and more deeply.
43:38
And I think that a lot of lip service has been given to it.
43:42
Like, take care of yourself. Well, telling me to take care of myself isn't helping me.
43:49
You need to help me take care of myself. You need to give me more time to take care of myself.
43:55
You need to give me some strategies and tools to take care of myself.
44:00
You need to encourage me to take care of myself, not take care of yourself.
44:04
And by the way, here's a new task that you need to add to your list for every course this semester.
44:11
That is the opposite of what needs to happen to take care of myself.
44:15
Yeah, I think I was being overly optimistic on that one.
44:18
Number five on the list was that we get better at assessments.
44:23
And that relates back to the fact that this isn't 2019 anymore. The world has changed.
44:28
And not only is it not 2019 anymore, it's not 2022 anymore where we were still
44:36
living in the world without ChatGPT. Now we have artificial intelligence,
44:41
not just ChatGPT, but other kinds of flavors or iterations of artificial intelligence as well.
44:48
You know what? That's going to affect how we do assessments, such as are we going
44:52
to allow collaboration or not? What kinds of questions are we
44:55
going to ask? And so on. I was involved in a team
45:00
effort to publish recently an article. I'll put the link for it. It was headed
45:06
by our friend Greg Crowther, who's been on our podcast before.
45:12
And it was sort of using ChatGPT to sort of analyze how students might be
45:19
able to process different kinds of test items that we ask on our test exams.
45:24
So, I think that we're just at the beginning of that, of trying to make better assessments and
45:30
assessments that maybe make use of artificial intelligence rather than, in a good way,
45:37
in a positive way, to demonstrate learning rather than as a way to cheat, get around
45:42
an accurate assessment of learning. The number six on my list was that
45:47
micro-credentials, such as badges and digital certificates and so on, that they advance.
45:53
And I think they did advance this year, not sort of in the striking way I was kind of anticipating.
45:59
So listen later, because I'm going to be putting that back on my list.
46:04
Another thing that's going back on my list is item number seven from last year.
46:09
Maybe not in exactly the same way, but I had mentioned the efforts for DEI,
46:14
diversity, equity, and inclusion, stalled. And I think it did stall in many areas.
46:20
It was blocked in many areas. You know, it's just beginning
46:23
back at the beginning of last year that model legislation was being sent around
46:27
to various legislators around the country to sort of break down some of the DEI progress
46:34
that had been made, such as banning DEI positions in colleges and universities.
46:40
And those have been spreading around. Well, guess what?
46:42
The legislators took them up and put them to a vote and passed them as laws.
46:47
And some are regulations at various levels within institutions and so on.
46:52
And there's a lot of pushback on this DEI stuff. And I think that's probably going to go back on
46:57
my list and happen some more. But then again, I mean,
47:00
we did make some progress, I think. And I'll be talking more about that
47:04
in the segment I'm doing in this episode about next year's predictions.
47:09
Number eight on last year's list of predictions was a greater emphasis on core concepts in A&P.
47:17
And I think that that's something that's had kind of a slow burn for a long time.
47:22
And I think people are recognizing more and more that that is a very useful approach to teaching,
47:28
not just to like, oh yeah, of course there's core concepts and then move on to the next thing,
47:32
but actually incorporate that in their thinking about how they teach and what kind of strategies
47:39
they can develop that make use of the idea of core concepts and how students
47:44
learn them and how the students use them as a basis for learning everything else.
47:49
So I think it's still continuing that slow burn, but I think that eventually it's going to,
47:55
that fuse is going to get down to the payload and it's going to explode.
48:00
So I'm still waiting for it. That'll be on the list for next year too.
48:04
And number nine on last year's list was a failure
48:08
of educational leadership is finally starting to be recognized more widely.
48:13
And I think it is being recognized more widely as we see many teachers unions...
48:20
(and I mean that at the secondary and the higher education level, are really making some strides.
48:28
Other unions are getting slapped down. So So it's kind of a mixed result there.
48:34
And I think that we're seeing in the news,
48:37
there's been some big headlines about various failures of educational leadership.
48:43
And I think as the general public starts to look more closely at higher education
48:49
and how leadership is not working is the way it should be on a very wide scale, I think that it's
48:56
going to be even more recognized in the future. And then number 10 on last year's list was that.
49:02
Was sort of related to that, and that is faculty start to crumble.
49:06
Departments start to get dissolved or eliminated. Divisions get rearranged and reduced in size.
49:14
Whole schools are in disarray. Whole institutions are messed up, and I
49:19
think that that's been happening for a long time. Damage that's being done to faculties that's been
49:26
going on for quite a while, and we're starting to to see the crumbling as a result of that damage.
49:31
And I think it's going to continue. So yeah, they start to crumble. They're
49:35
going to continue to crumble going forward. And then number 11 on my list was more use
49:40
of podcasts in teaching and coaching students and as learning and assessment projects for students,
49:48
that is podcasts by students. And I think we are seeing more of
49:51
that. I really, you know, I've mentioned many times that I try to stay abreast of
49:57
advances and trends and so on in podcasting. And I am seeing a little bit more of that, but I
50:03
think it still has not reached that wide explosion that I was thinking might have occurred last year.
50:10
So, eh, kind of a mixed bag of how well I did on my predictions last year.
50:16
Coming up soon are my predictions for this coming year.
50:22
KEVIN PATTON: I have just a bit more reflecting to do, but before we do that, let's just put that on hold for a second.
50:29
I want to talk about the Textbook and Academic Authors Association.
50:33
Now, they're not a sponsor of this program. I think you ought to know about them because I think
50:39
that you will find value in this organization. I've been a longtime member, decades.
50:46
I've been a member of of TAA, which again stands for Textbook and Academic Authors Association.
50:53
And yes, I was drawn to it because I'm a textbook author.
50:57
But I was drawn to it before I was really into the textbook part of it.
51:01
I was doing lab manuals and study guides and things like that and
51:05
wanted to work on a textbook, but I didn't really know much about that.
51:10
And luckily, TAA taught me a lot about that and gave me the skills and the knowledge to
51:16
kind of start moving into that. Not only that, but there's the
51:22
academic author part of it. And what do we mean by academic author?
51:27
There's several kinds of academic authors that we have among us, and that would be people who
51:33
do scholarly research of some sort, whether it's scientific research or the scholarship
51:39
of teaching and learning, and they need to write that up and submit it to a journal.
51:45
And there are certain skills that you don't learn in your college writing
51:50
classes or your high school writing classes or wherever you're taking writing classes.
51:55
You're learning a kind of writing that really isn't the same as journal writing.
52:02
And many scholars also do monographs. And many academics have dissertations
52:12
or theses that could be turned into a book, either a scholarly
52:17
book or converted into what we call a trade book. That is a book that you would find on your local
52:25
bookstore if we still had local bookstores or on the online bookstores and so on.
52:31
So there's all these different kinds of writing that we do as academics.
52:37
That's what we mean by an academic author. And it's not just how to
52:42
write, but it's the writing life. The writing life often benefits by
52:49
having other writers to stay in touch with. Small groups that you can touch base with
52:54
and encourage one another. There's time management.
52:59
There's workflow management. There's how do I find someone to edit this?
53:05
How do I find someone to do the stats for this? There's all those kinds of questions,
53:10
those practical workflow questions. There are some legal questions that
53:15
you need advice on. Sometimes you just
53:19
need to be trained on what are the legal questions you ought to be asking yourself.
53:23
You might think, what? Legal questions? I don't need to deal with that.
53:26
Well, maybe you do and you just don't realize that you do.
53:30
So there's all of that. And TAA provides so many resources.
53:37
We have an annual conference. It got kind of shifted to virtual for a couple of years
53:42
there because of the pandemic, but then, We're coming back to a face-to-face conference this
53:50
summer in Nashville, June 21st and 22nd. It's a two-day conference in Nashville.
53:57
And we get together and we talk about textbooks, yeah. We talk about people that are ready-writing
54:03
textbooks, people that want to write textbooks. There are editors there and publishers there.
54:09
There are authoring attorneys there and intellectual property attorneys
54:13
and so on that are giving presentations. They're available for one-on-one mentoring.
54:19
It's all included in the price of the conference. And then there are many resources available
54:24
on the website, which is at taaonline.net. That's taaonline.net. And there are on-demand
54:33
webinars, like a million of them. They're amazing. I've done a few of them, actually. So you can find
54:40
those needles in that haystack because it is a huge haystack.
54:44
And there's something called a writing gym where you work with someone,
54:49
sort of an accountability type thing that people that have done it have really raved
54:55
about. And there are other writing groups. And memberships are not all that expensive for a
55:02
published or aspiring textbook or academic author. It's $100 a year to join.
55:07
But they have a special deal right now that you can join for only $30.
55:13
Yeah, that's right. And you can test it out and see if it's worth
55:16
that (usual) $100 when it comes time for renewal.
55:19
The way you would do that is you're going to have to look at the episode page because I'll put the
55:24
code there, but there's a coupon code. It would be TAA20 if you're a graduate
55:29
student or TAA70 if you're a published or aspiring textbook or academic author
55:37
or you're an industry professional. So you put that in at the checkout.
55:41
So you pick the one you want, you know, let's say the $100 a year published or
55:46
aspiring textbook or academic author, and then at checkout, that'll be reduced to $30.
55:51
And I just mentioned graduate student, that is normally $50 a year, but that goes down to $30.
55:57
There's also, you can join as an industry professional. So that would be a publisher,
56:02
such as an editor, could be a authoring attorney or publishing attorney, could be a royalty expert.
56:10
It could be, you know, just a whole number of other coaches and trainers of authors.
56:16
So that's also $100 a year. And then there's group
56:20
memberships. This is actually a really rapidly growing area of TAA, where an institution,
56:26
such as a university or college, realizes that many or all of their faculty are
56:31
essentially writers as part of their job. And they're doing this authoring and need some
56:37
coaching and some help and some encouragement. And so they buy an institutional membership where
56:43
anybody at their institution can then claim an individual membership under that umbrella.
56:49
And not only that, but then the whole institution gets some additional
56:54
benefits for the members that are there. And you can start a TAA chapter if the
57:00
institution itself isn't interested. Then you could start a chapter at your
57:05
institution or within your organization and do something similar to that.
57:11
So I could just talk all day about TAA because I'm just so thrilled about it and so excited,
57:16
and it just, you know, I don't know, it just frustrates me to see so many people
57:22
who really could, the writing part of what they do could go so much easier for them.
57:27
I know it's made it so much easier and fun for me, and it's a great way to network with people,
57:34
especially across disciplines. Boy, is that fun.
57:37
And does that benefit me as an educator too? So once again, taaonline.net, check it out.
57:47
KEVIN PATTON: Well, now it's time to turn toward next year.
57:50
What are my predictions for the coming year in the world of teaching anatomy and physiology?
57:56
And last year I had 11 predictions. This year I have 12 predictions.
58:01
And, well, that's just the way I roll. I always add one more thing when I can, right?
58:07
And don't you do that as an educator too in terms of your course?
58:10
One extra activity or one extra concept that you didn't teach last year and you think is valuable
58:18
so you're going to put it in this year. One extra outcome or whatever,
58:22
but I have one extra prediction. So let's get to them. First one is,
58:27
I think that there's going to be an increase in the integration of augmented reality,
58:34
otherwise known as AR, and virtual reality, otherwise known as VR, into our courses.
58:42
And just to clarify and remind ourselves, AR, augmented reality, enhances the real world
58:49
by adding digital elements to the real world. In other words, we still see and hear everything
58:57
around us, but now we're adding to that. Virtual reality is different in that it attempts
59:04
to replace the real world temporarily with a simulated world that the students are working in.
59:11
So they have a lot of similarities, and they often work hand-in-hand,
59:16
so that's why I'm covering them together. And I think that we're going to have these
59:21
enhanced AR and VR experiences be more widely used in science teaching,
59:27
including anatomy and physiology, especially in our lab courses,
59:32
or at least things that are traditionally covered in lab courses.
59:36
For example, simulations of complex processes, physiological processes.
59:42
Simulations of dissections. We've already seen a lot of products for those.
59:46
Well, I think that's going to be more widely available, more widely used.
59:50
We're going to see more virtual labs and we're going to see more virtual reality and augmented
59:56
reality embedded into those virtual labs. We're going to see immersive learning
1:00:02
experiences that you just can't do in a classic classroom setting,
1:00:08
such as case studies and mock medical tests and imaging and things like that.
1:00:14
So let's look for that this year. So that was number one. Number two is
1:00:21
growth of artificial intelligence that is AI. And we're going to be seeing that being used
1:00:28
now more and more for personalizing the learning experience of students.
1:00:34
Now, we've heard about personalized education for a long time.
1:00:37
And a lot of times what that means is that the instructor works with
1:00:41
individual students to make sure that their needs are being met, that whatever it takes
1:00:46
for them to be successful is provided to them. And then, of course, over the last decade or so,
1:00:52
we've seen tools embedded in learning management systems and other digital learning platforms
1:00:59
that help do that personalization. A lot of those automated testing
1:01:04
platforms and quizzing platforms and in review homework platforms are trying to get to that
1:01:11
ideal of personalized learning experiences. Well, I think we're going to see more and
1:01:15
more artificial intelligence embedded into those tools, or maybe even new tools that
1:01:21
can do more amazing things than ever before. They can really react to individual student
1:01:27
needs and really figure out where their weak spots are on the spot and then come back to them again.
1:01:35
I've mentioned in several past episodes that I use Duolingo to learn and practice Esperanto.
1:01:42
And I know that many of you use Duolingo to learn Spanish and other languages.
1:01:50
And that kind of does a little bit of the same thing. There's an algorithm
1:01:54
built in there where they come back again with your mistakes,
1:01:58
and then they come back with practice sessions for your weak areas and so on. Well,
1:02:02
we're going to see that go through the roof. We're going to see artificial intelligence
1:02:06
grab a hold of that idea and really make it very, very personalized.
1:02:11
In using artificial intelligence in that way, you know, that promotes learning, right? Right.
1:02:17
But we're also going to see that flip side that we worried about from the very beginning,
1:02:21
you know, a year ago when I first brought this up in this podcast.
1:02:24
This is going to produce some challenges in academic integrity.
1:02:28
We're going to have to figure out how to do that. So I think that's going to be another main focus
1:02:34
of education and A&P going forward. Before I move on to my next prediction,
1:02:40
I want to share a couple of predictions from our friends Mike Pascoe and Jerry Anzalone.
1:02:46
Both of these folks did as I asked, and that is sent in a couple or three
1:02:52
predictions of their own, and I'm glad they did. It turns out that they kind of resonate with what
1:02:58
I had already planned to talk about, so this is going to be fun, I think.
1:03:02
The first one is from Mike Pascoe, and I want to warn you,
1:03:05
the first part of it is a little garbled. When Mike called into the podcast hotline,
1:03:11
I think there was like a solar flare or something. I don't know what happened, but there's a little
1:03:16
bit of cutting in and out, which we're kind of used to with today's technology, right?
1:03:21
So I did my best to fix it, but I think you'll easily understand his message.
1:03:26
And then that clears up, and the rest of what you'll hear from him
1:03:30
and from Jerry sounds pretty clear. So here's the first predictions from
1:03:37
Mike and Jerry. First, Mike.
1:03:39
MIKE PASCOE: Like, do you think we're going to continue to see artificial intelligence push the envelope a little bit more?
1:03:47
What would you indicate that perhaps the action is about AI
1:03:50
or [garbled] organization on a public structure?
1:03:55
Maybe seeing improvements in how clinical case scenarios are managed in AI. I'm really looking forward to enhancements
1:04:02
in AI-provided references and citations for the answers that are generated and provided."
1:04:10
KEVIN PATTON: Okay, now here's Jerry Anzalone's prediction.
1:04:13
JERRY ANZALONE: Regarding the ubiquity of artificial intelligence, if my microcosm of academia is any measure, I predict that we
1:04:20
will see continued confusion and concern over how students use this technology or maybe misuse it.
1:04:30
At a faculty workshop I attended in January, one speaker floored the
1:04:35
audience with just three words that she spoke in the context of AI's impact on instruction,
1:04:43
or at least the way she saw it. She said, content is dead.
1:04:49
While that comment may have been something of an overstatement, I think it gives faculty good
1:04:54
reason to rethink written assignments. At this point, faculty should know that
1:05:00
unscrupulous websites like Chegg, CourseHero, and Study.com sell the answers to homework,
1:05:07
including lab activities and even worksheets that instructors might hand out in class.
1:05:13
But AI makes it easier for lazy students not to think and to crank out responses with just
1:05:19
a few keystrokes to written assignments. So I think instructors need to rethink
1:05:25
how and what they may assign as homework or web activities.
1:05:31
And anyone who's experimented with AI knows that degenerative responses are far from perfect.
1:05:37
But like with most technologies, it's only going to get better over time.
1:05:41
KEVIN PATTON: So moving to my third prediction, I have in my
1:05:44
notes here, over-reliance on technology. What I mean by that is that we're going to become
1:05:52
so enamored of these artificial intelligence tools that personalize learning, and we're going to be
1:05:59
so enamored of the augmented reality and virtual reality, and all these other tools that have been
1:06:05
evolving all along with those tools. We're going to be so focused on those
1:06:13
that it's going to, we run the danger of over-relying on those and thinking, well,
1:06:19
the personalized learning platform, that's taking care of all this stuff.
1:06:22
I don't have to deal with it. When in fact, that human touch is still very important.
1:06:28
And even if we can do a good job of building things like empathy and compassion and support
1:06:36
of students into those artificial intelligence and other technologically enhanced tools,
1:06:43
it's still not going to be the same as having an empathetic, compassionate, supportive instructor.
1:06:49
And so we need to be careful of that. I think we're going to run into some
1:06:54
issues with that as we sort that out and try to find what the good balance is.
1:07:00
I think that we also need to be careful, along with that,
1:07:03
of a potentially widening digital divide.
1:07:08
Because when you advance in educational technology,
1:07:11
that means you're advancing in machines, and machines cost money, and not everybody has
1:07:16
money available to them for those machines. I mean, I ran into that years ago when I
1:07:24
first started using clickers in the classroom. And one of the big hurdles that I ran into is not
1:07:30
all my students could afford to buy a clicker. And we provided some alternatives so that we
1:07:36
could narrow that digital divide, that gap in ability to acquire the digital
1:07:43
tools that the students needed for my class. And as we go into augmented reality and virtual
1:07:50
reality, we might need special equipment or special software or probably both, and we're
1:07:58
possibly going to be buying additional resources. That is, the individual students are buying
1:08:03
additional resources, and if not them, then it's us, meaning our institutions buying it.
1:08:09
So not all institutions are rich enough to do that. Some are in real trouble, as a matter of
1:08:15
fact, and can't really buy anything extra. And grants for buying it may
1:08:21
or may not be available. So, yeah, that's an issue. As
1:08:25
we use these digital tools more, are we sure that it's equitable, that everyone has access to it?
1:08:33
So moving on to prediction number four, I think we're going to continue to see a decrease in
1:08:40
lecture engagement and even lecture attendance. Are students going to really
1:08:46
still show up for lectures? And I've been hearing from a lot
1:08:49
of my colleagues that many students just don't in the traditional ways of encouraging them,
1:08:57
in getting them, penalizing them in ways that try to get them to attend regularly
1:09:02
just aren't working the way they used to work. Students don't want to do that. And I think that's
1:09:08
partially from the experience they had during the pandemic when they didn't have to be at lecture.
1:09:13
There was no live lecture for them to be able to attend.
1:09:18
I think that we're going to continue to see that. And I think it's possibly going to get worse,
1:09:23
at least in some courses and some campuses and with some programs.
1:09:27
But I also think that eventually it's going to swing back up because you know what?
1:09:31
I think we're all learning ways that we can make our lectures more engaging and
1:09:38
make them places where students want to come to enhance their learning
1:09:43
and to improve their success in the course. I also think that at the same time, we're going
1:09:48
to find that having students come to every darn lecture in a semester just isn't workable anymore.
1:09:54
I think the the atmosphere of the classroom is changing and we're heading toward more
1:09:59
of a hybrid approach and you know, that's going to take flexibility and...
1:10:05
new learning, learning of new skills on the part of faculty.
1:10:09
It's going to take flexibility and learning of new skills on the part of our students.
1:10:14
But the place where I think we're going to really hit a wall is with administrators and policymakers
1:10:19
and accrediting agencies where they're going to be suspect of things that are not traditional.
1:10:27
We've seen that for a long time. And I think that these larger bodies and
1:10:33
these people with larger responsibilities in education are going to need to become
1:10:38
more flexible than they have been in the past in order for this to work.
1:10:43
Otherwise, it's going to break and nothing's going to work, in my view.
1:10:50
KEVIN PATTON: And that leads us directly into my fifth prediction that I have written down in my list here. But before we do that,
1:10:56
I want to take a brief break to talk about breaks. And the reason I'm doing this is because, well,
1:11:04
this is a long podcast and we're kind of in the middle of the longest part of this
1:11:10
long podcast going through these predictions for the upcoming year.
1:11:15
And I think it's always a good idea to break up our lectures and break up our podcast episodes
1:11:21
with short little breaks so we can refocus. We can kind of set aside what we were thinking
1:11:27
through and thinking about and just focus on something different for just a few minutes.
1:11:34
And in a lecture in A&P, that could be a clicker question or two.
1:11:39
It could be a quick pair and share type activity. It could be a playful activity. I've talked a lot
1:11:47
about little playful demonstrations that we can do in class or the students can do with each
1:11:52
other in small groups or in pairs. There are all kinds of things.
1:11:58
I sometimes stop and tell a story. Now, the story may not at first appear to be part of
1:12:05
what we need to be learning in A&P, but usually I swing around to show at the end how that was kind
1:12:11
of a parable or an analogy of some principle that I want to get across to the students.
1:12:18
By stepping aside from what we were talking about, telling this story, wrapping it up
1:12:24
with the moral of the story or the point of the story or what the analogy or the model means.
1:12:29
And then we're kind of refreshed. And when we go back into the lecture where we picked up,
1:12:36
then we're kind of approaching it with a fresh perspective.
1:12:40
So that's why I like to take brain breaks. And now this one's over.
1:12:45
Let's get back to the main part of this portion of
1:12:50
one of the longest podcast episodes in the history of The A&P Professor.
1:12:58
KEVIN PATTON: Prediction five relates to the idea of hybrid courses. I think we're going to see an
1:13:03
expansion of online and hybrid courses. And I realized that during the pandemic,
1:13:08
a lot of folks that weren't used to online education, and I include students, faculty,
1:13:13
administrators, the general public, everybody was not used to online learning in the way that we're
1:13:21
going to become come used to online learning. And so therefore, sudden imposed change,
1:13:28
that leaves a bad taste in everybody's mouth. Nobody likes dealing with it. It's
1:13:32
always difficult to deal with that. And you know what? We didn't do a very
1:13:35
good job of it in that sudden switch because, well, we couldn't. We weren't prepared for it.
1:13:41
Good online education, and I'm including in there hybrid education.
1:13:46
We need training in that. We need experience in that.
1:13:51
We need to prep courses in a certain way. And they require a lot of preparation,
1:13:56
maybe even more preparation than in a traditionally taught course.
1:14:01
So we suddenly had to leave that aside and just try it, try to make it work.
1:14:06
And it often didn't work very well. And it turned lots of people off,
1:14:10
Not only because it was a change, but also because we weren't doing it very well.
1:14:15
And so that left a bad taste in their mouth. But you know what?
1:14:17
There are more and more studies coming out that show that students prefer online
1:14:24
education or at least some online components built into the course.
1:14:29
That doesn't mean that they don't miss some of the things that you can do face-to-face.
1:14:35
And the same thing with instructors. Faculty are becoming more engaged with and better at
1:14:41
doing online learning and are finding that there are ways to connect with students
1:14:46
that are different than in a traditional classroom but can be just as effective.
1:14:52
I still believe that many of the connections I formed with my own
1:14:58
students in completely online courses were closer connections than I ever did
1:15:04
with face-to-face students because you do a lot more one-on-one interaction in
1:15:09
an online course, at least the way I've been teaching online courses.
1:15:12
And they also feel a lot more connected to the instructor, if you do it right.
1:15:18
I think we're going to see more and more expansion.
1:15:20
Again, there's going to be some walls to hit. There's going to be just the
1:15:24
resistance to change that we see in every field, you know, since the dawn of humanity.
1:15:31
But also, we're going to run into these structures, as far as as accrediting agencies go,
1:15:37
as far as institutions go, national and state and local policies on education.
1:15:44
There are all kinds of walls that are going to resist this
1:15:48
evolution toward online and hybrid courses. And so that's what we're going to be seeing
1:15:53
a lot of, I think, over the next year. But also remember that famous phrase
1:15:59
from Star Trek, if you happen to be a Trekkie, resistance is futile.
1:16:05
And so there is, you know, it's happening. It's going to happen whether we like it or not.
1:16:12
So moving on to prediction number six, I think there's
1:16:16
going to be continuing changes in textbooks. We're already seeing big changes in textbooks,
1:16:22
and I'll mention some of those in just a moment. But the first one is that
1:16:26
augmented and virtual reality. I think we're going to see some
1:16:29
of that embedded in some of our textbooks, especially, of course, the digital textbooks.
1:16:34
That's really kind of where you would do it. But there are ways of doing some augmented
1:16:38
reality with traditional print textbooks. I think we're going to start seeing those in anatomy and
1:16:43
physiology in the coming year or so, at least the beginnings of that, the hints of that.
1:16:50
We've had courseware evolving rapidly recently,
1:16:53
so we're going to see that continue. What I mean by courseware is learning
1:16:58
platforms that have what would traditionally be in a textbook are now in this courseware.
1:17:04
So it's still kind of a textbook, at least it's textbook content in a very traditional sense, but
1:17:11
it's embedded in this newfangled digital platform. So we're going to be seeing that evolve rapidly,
1:17:20
not only evolve in the sense it's going to be more widely adopted, but we're
1:17:24
going to see how it's put together and how it functions and how students interact with it.
1:17:29
We're going to see that evolve pretty rapidly too, and I think that's going to start this year.
1:17:34
We're going to see continued evolution of open educational resources.
1:17:39
There are many pros and cons of using open educational resources compared to traditional
1:17:46
textbooks that are purchased by somebody, by the institution or by the individual
1:17:52
student or rent it or something like that. And so we're going to see that whole balance
1:17:59
between open and not open educational resources, versus we're going to see
1:18:03
it bouncing back and forth and back and forth, and we're going to see how things evolve there.
1:18:08
But there is going to be a rapid evolution, I think, this year.
1:18:12
And then swinging back to digital books. Now, those have been available for a while,
1:18:16
and many publishers are now producing their A&P books in a digital-first approach, meaning that
1:18:23
they're thinking digital and, oh, yeah, if you want the print, we can get you a print.
1:18:28
Some of them aren't even doing that last part anymore.
1:18:32
Involved in that are not only these electronic textbooks,
1:18:36
e-textbooks, if you want to call them that. Mixed in with that is a subscription model
1:18:42
that some publishers have started where an institution, for example, can subscribe to a
1:18:48
publisher's library and they pay one licensing fee and then every student can have access to
1:18:55
any of the textbooks within that library. And so, of course, that's going to limit
1:19:01
teacher and student choice in textbooks because the institution's going to say,
1:19:05
well, it's got to be from this publisher. And if you say, well, that publisher...
1:19:09
Doesn't have an A&P textbook that really works for my course, that might be too bad.
1:19:16
Or you might have to really jump through some hoops or find some money somewhere.
1:19:21
I don't know how that's going to work. But we have that kind of subscription
1:19:25
model. And then, of course, there are subscription models where students either
1:19:28
pay a publisher for their library of textbooks. And of course, there are some subscriptions
1:19:35
where you subscribe to a smaller group of textbooks, or maybe even an individual textbook.
1:19:41
So that's still being worked out. And there are a lot of legal issues that
1:19:44
are in the courts right now about that too. So, you know, who knows where that's going
1:19:48
to land, but we're going to see a lot of back and forth on that too as well.
1:19:53
And also in digital books, I think we're going to see more and more interactivity
1:19:57
built into digital textbooks, where it's more than just reading.
1:20:01
And yeah, it's interactive in the sense that you can search easily using a search engine
1:20:06
that's built into the e-textbook platform and other kinds of lower,
1:20:12
levels of interactivity that the students and instructors, for that matter, can engage in.
1:20:18
I know one kind of interactivity I've used in digital textbooks is you can share
1:20:24
highlights and notes among individuals. And so I share my notes with all of my
1:20:31
students so they can go into their e-textbook and toggle my notes on,
1:20:36
and they can see little comments I've made. Like this section here is very important.
1:20:41
Make sure you understand this clearly. This section here is useful information,
1:20:46
but you're not going to be tested on any of this. This is not embedded in our course outcomes,
1:20:51
but it does help inform what you need to know for our course outcomes.
1:20:55
I don't say it that way. That's too long. But my point is that I can do those sorts of things,
1:21:00
or I might clarify something that isn't so clear in the textbook,
1:21:04
or I might emphasize something, like remember that this is so and that is this other way.
1:21:12
There is a level of interactivity already built in, but we're going to see more and more of that.
1:21:17
I think that's really going to merge with this whole courseware idea where there's just all kinds
1:21:22
of things to do, not just look at and read and try to understand that traditional textbook content.
1:21:30
Another thing that we're going to see more of, I think, in digital textbooks and in
1:21:34
the courseware is we're going to learn how to use all that data that we get.
1:21:41
And I think the data itself is going to start to be presented in a way that's a
1:21:45
little more more easily understandable, and a little more easily analyzed.
1:21:50
And maybe this is where artificial intelligence is going to come in and help us do that analysis
1:21:56
and kind of present the results and conclusions of the analysis of the data.
1:22:00
Now, what kind of data am I talking about? I'm referring to data such as
1:22:04
where are the students reading or not reading? I have assumptions about how much my students
1:22:10
read and about which parts they skip and which which parts they spend a lot of time with,
1:22:15
but that's all guesswork and that's based on very little feedback that is
1:22:20
extrapolated to every darn student and we know that that's not really good science.
1:22:25
It's not useful in any way really, but that's all we got, right?
1:22:31
Until we start looking at data. So if there's data coming back that's
1:22:36
showing what my students are doing as far as their reading.
1:22:40
And of course, you know, we need to develop better tools about how to trap that data, how to record
1:22:46
that data. But I think we're going to do that. And I think we're going to get some good data.
1:22:51
And I think we're going to get some help in interpreting it and analyzing it.
1:22:55
And then also making decisions about what to do about that. What does that tell us?
1:23:00
And not only in the reading part of it, but that interactivity part of it.
1:23:05
So if there are some review questions that students can do in the digital
1:23:09
textbook, we can get data on that. And we can already get data on some
1:23:13
of the courseware that we already use, right? Some of these quizzing platforms and so on.
1:23:17
But it's not always easy to interpret. And we don't always know what to do
1:23:22
with that information once we have it. Like, yeah, they're messing up on this
1:23:25
part here, but what do I do about that? And so I think we're going to get some
1:23:29
good suggestions sort of built in. And again, this is a good opportunity
1:23:33
for artificial intelligence to help us be better human teachers.
1:23:38
And this really reminds me of that concept of teaching, that strategy of teaching that has
1:23:43
been called just-in-time teaching, which a lot of us use some variation of it and don't realize
1:23:50
it has a name or it has been given a name. And there are some other names I've seen
1:23:54
for that kind of an approach as well. And what that means is you're looking
1:23:59
at what the students are doing, and just in time, that is in real time,
1:24:05
you're saying, okay, they're just really not understanding synaptic transmission at all here.
1:24:12
And so I need to do some things with these students to help them pass that
1:24:17
obstacle that most of them are facing now. And so that's called just-in-time teaching,
1:24:24
where you make last-minute adjustments based on the data that you see about what students are
1:24:30
understanding and what they're not understanding. So these data-driven options that are going to
1:24:34
be built into digital textbooks and courseware that are going to work much better, that sort of
1:24:41
fits into that approach of teaching, doesn't it? We'll be back with more after this brief message.
1:24:51
KEVIN PATTON: You already know that the episode
1:24:53
page for this episode and every episode of this podcast can be found online at theAPprofessor.org.
1:25:04
There you'll find a brief outline of the episode with segment timing and titles,
1:25:10
an embedded audio player to listen to the episode with a description of each segment,
1:25:16
and a list of links for further exploration. There's also a link to claim your credential
1:25:23
for listening to the episode. And by the way, there's a separate
1:25:28
page listing all the badges for all the episodes where you can also claim
1:25:33
your professional development credentials. But back to the individual episode page,
1:25:39
there's also an embedded video player to listen to a captioned audiogram of the episode,
1:25:46
as well as a complete transcript and a link to a PDF version of the transcript.
1:25:53
But wait, there's more! There are all kinds of other resources
1:25:59
for teaching A&P, such as on-demand seminars, The A&P Professor Book Club, and, well, lots more.
1:26:09
Just explore the menu along the top of any page at theAPprofessor.org.
1:26:14
KEVIN PATTON: So moving on to
1:26:22
prediction number seven, interdisciplinary approaches are going to be looked at a lot
1:26:30
more than they have been by educators. I mean, anatomy and physiology is already
1:26:36
interdisciplinary in the sense that we're combining what are
1:26:41
traditionally separate specialties like neuroscience and osteology and histology.
1:26:48
You know, all these different areas of specialization are coming together in
1:26:52
a pretty general way, mixed up a big picture way in an A&P course.
1:26:58
And that's good and that works well. And we can really identify core concepts
1:27:02
better and learn those core concepts better when we do it that way, right?
1:27:06
Because we can take signal transduction from neuroscience and then apply those principles
1:27:11
to endocrinology and other places in the body where we see that happening.
1:27:15
And we can see how neuroscience and endocrinology really fits into every
1:27:20
other system too because they're integrated and they interact with one another, right?
1:27:25
So we already have that kind of interdisciplinary thing. And then we have a wider interdisciplinary
1:27:30
approach going on in A&P when we bring in chemistry and we bring in physics,
1:27:35
you know, such as gas pressures in the respiratory system and so on.
1:27:40
So there's, you know, all kinds of physics and chemistry and other sciences that we bring into
1:27:46
A&P, and we know that that is helpful in learning. But many of us, and just the many conversations
1:27:53
I've had with y'all at conferences and interactions we've had through this podcast
1:27:59
and other kinds of interactions that I've had with my colleagues in the world of A&P,
1:28:04
it seems like it's pretty universal that we all bring in a little bit of social things,
1:28:10
historical things, historical context of things. Things, we bring in art and art history,
1:28:17
we bring in philosophy, including the philosophy of science, but even broader
1:28:23
philosophical principles and so on. They have a place in our discussions,
1:28:27
and that expands student understanding of what it is that we need to focus on in our course,
1:28:34
but it also connects it to other courses that that they're taking, or will take, or have taken,
1:28:41
and it starts to help them build this broad conceptual framework, this broad world view.
1:28:50
And know where A&P sits relative to some of these other disciplines.
1:28:55
And not only that, but I want to include in this interdisciplinary
1:28:59
approach more focus on soft skills, such as teamwork, including collaboration,
1:29:06
communication skills, problem-solving skills, just general logic and reason problem-solving.
1:29:14
There's lots of soft skills, interpersonal relationships, professional relationships,
1:29:21
professional attitudes, all of those things, we're going to see more emphasis
1:29:27
on bringing those into the A&P course. And we're going to see that operating
1:29:31
in other courses and other disciplines too, I think, but certainly within A&P.
1:29:36
Because all of those things are useful for students in A&P, but also to take that
1:29:41
beyond A&P, especially into their professions if they end up in a healthcare profession.
1:29:47
But even if they don't, if they end up in some other profession or career, all of those soft
1:29:53
skills are going to be portable and they're going to be able to take that with them.
1:29:57
We're going to see some ups and downs with this interdisciplinary thing though.
1:30:03
We're going to see more and more faculty putting a stronger emphasis
1:30:07
on interdisciplinary courses that blend a science with other subjects such as ethics or policy or
1:30:15
global challenges and so on that we face. On the other hand, students are probably
1:30:21
going to push back on that a little bit. Don't students sometimes tell us like,
1:30:25
I didn't think this was a chemistry course. Why are we spending so much time on chemistry?
1:30:30
Or, you know, when we're trying to figure out, I don't know, cardiac output and things like that.
1:30:35
Like, I didn't think this was going to be a math class. This isn't a math class.
1:30:38
You shouldn't expect me to be able to do math in this class.
1:30:42
And I don't even expect that much math from my students.
1:30:45
And they still sometimes make that comment because it's difficult for them.
1:30:48
And it's kind of a natural reaction to pushback, right? When you're faced with something difficult.
1:30:54
I mean, the first thing is, is like, I shouldn't have to do that.
1:30:57
It's too difficult. And it's up to us to get them over that hump and help them see that,
1:31:03
yeah, they can be successful in it. So we're going to have that kind of pushback,
1:31:07
but we're also going to have pushback from outside our course and outside our institution because
1:31:12
there's always this fear of mixing in concepts and soft skills that are not part of the course.
1:31:19
I mean, aren't we seeing that? Like I'm seeing that like in the news all the time,
1:31:24
like there is not a week goes by that I don't see where there's been
1:31:27
some challenge on the secondary or higher ed level where you're not supposed to do this.
1:31:34
I know of one institution that I'm very familiar with in particular, all the faculty were given
1:31:40
a directive to not talk about anything other than your subject in your class.
1:31:46
You stick to your subject. And I'm just like, I can't do that. I can't teach that way.
1:31:51
I'm sorry. I got to talk about art history when I'm talking about how we represent the body,
1:31:59
how we have learned about the body over the years and how that is an evolution.
1:32:05
And we're going to learn more because look where we came from compared to where we are now.
1:32:11
Just think ahead. head, we're going to be in an even better place in our ability to imagine
1:32:16
what the body's like and impart that idea to other people without having to do a dissection.
1:32:22
You know, I'm going to go off on a tangent here because I feel really
1:32:25
passionate about this interdisciplinary approach. And thank goodness that my undergraduate education
1:32:32
and my graduate education, for that matter, was done in institutions and programs that highly
1:32:37
valued interdisciplinary and implemented it. So I feel like I'm much more broadly educated
1:32:43
than some of my peers who were trained at the same time and have the same degree I have,
1:32:49
you know, in terms of what it says on their transcript or on their diploma.
1:32:58
interdisciplinary parts of courses and interdisciplinary
1:33:02
courses that I was forced to take. I remember complaining about it,
1:33:06
like, why do I need nine hours of philosophy if I'm a biology major?
1:33:12
Why do I need nine hours of theology if I'm going to be a biology major?
1:33:19
Now I am so grateful that I was forced into that by the requirements
1:33:25
of the degree program that I was in and the institution that I was in, their approach.
1:33:31
And so I think we're going to, you know, see an emphasis on that and we're going to see pushback from that.
1:33:36
So we're going to see some ups and downs and that's going to start this year or
1:33:40
it's going to really start to take off this year. It's already started.
1:33:44
And then prediction number eight is micro-credentials and badge systems.
1:33:49
And I've talked about that in previous episodes and I just mentioned it a few
1:33:54
minutes ago in this episode when we were reviewing the podcast over the year and
1:33:59
looking at my past predictions, I don't know. I think that this year, you know, that's going to
1:34:05
continue, the continued use of micro-credentials. But I think at some point soon, and maybe
1:34:10
it'll be this year, it's really going to take off in a big way.
1:34:13
I think it's like inching up and being more and more widely used.
1:34:18
And kind of it goes hand-in-hand with competency-based education.
1:34:23
Now, before you start choking and gagging, There are programs called competency-based
1:34:28
education that are rigid applications of one tiny part of what I'm referring to here
1:34:35
that I don't think are really a good approach. And so I'm not, you know, if that's what you think
1:34:41
competency-based education is, is some specific program that you probably don't like because
1:34:47
they're just, the ones I've seen are pretty goofy. And they're very rigidly enforced.
1:34:54
And, yeah, that's weird. But what I mean by that is we're going to really start to
1:35:00
use things like alternative grading and personalized education to get all of our
1:35:05
students at a certain level of competency. A lot of times, I have students with good
1:35:13
grades in my course, but I know they don't really understand major portions of the course.
1:35:19
At least that's happened in the past. Now, I changed my course,
1:35:23
so that's much less likely to happen later in my teaching of A&P than it would have
1:35:29
early in my career teaching A&P. So I've really embraced this
1:35:33
competency-based approach, but there are many different ways of doing it.
1:35:38
And I don't like rigid uniformity anyway. Did a whole episode on that, remember? And so,
1:35:46
yeah, I think this competency-based education is going to be more and more embraced.
1:35:52
And that's not only within individual courses taught by individual instructors,
1:35:57
but the entire course at an institution, if there are multiple sections, and throughout
1:36:02
programs and throughout whole institutions, we're going to see more of a switch to that level.
1:36:08
And we're going to see micro-credentials and digital badges incorporated in a lot
1:36:12
of those approaches. They don't have to be,
1:36:14
but the benefit of it is that they're portable and they can be made accessible.
1:36:19
So a student in my A&P course, they would learn how to use a
1:36:25
regular light microscope, not a virtual one. And I know some courses use a virtual one and
1:36:29
that's fine, but we teach our students students how to use an actual light microscope and use
1:36:35
it well and use that to identify and compare and contrast different tissues in histology.
1:36:41
And also look at cell structures and things like that.
1:36:44
That is a skill that if you look on their transcript and see that they have A&P or
1:36:49
even specifically A&P Lab, you might think that they know how to use a light microscope.
1:36:55
But maybe in that other section, they weren't using light microscopes.
1:36:58
They were using virtual microscopes. Maybe not even that. Maybe they were using
1:37:02
just images, just digital images and identifying those photographs taken by somebody else.
1:37:09
That doesn't tell you that they have that skill. But if in my course,
1:37:13
once they're competent with the light microscope, if I give them a badge...
1:37:18
[1:37:18] now they can take that badge and put that in their badge backpack.
1:37:22
They can publish that in various areas. They don't have to. They can keep it
1:37:26
private. But if they want to, they can. Let's say they're needing to get a part-time
1:37:31
job to help pay for their tuition or these fancy AR and VR goggles that
1:37:37
they're going to need for their courses. Or even just the clicker they want to use
1:37:41
in their course, they're getting, you know, maybe they're getting a
1:37:44
job in a lab somewhere as a lab tech or a lab assistant and they now have a badge that says,
1:37:50
yep, they know all about a light microscope. Now, they're probably going to need further
1:37:54
training on it depending on what they're asked to do, but they have the basics down.
1:37:58
And so that badge is useful, whereas having A&P or A&P Lab on their transcript...
1:38:04
isn't very useful to a future employer or even a current employer for that matter.
1:38:10
And so that's where you can build in some of those soft skills,
1:38:13
some of those interdisciplinary concepts that they've learned, and also the main things.
1:38:19
My students have badges that show that, yeah,
1:38:21
they learned about protein synthesis and they achieved a high level of competency.
1:38:27
Otherwise, they wouldn't have been awarded the badge.
1:38:29
We're going to see, I think, micro-credentials being used more and more.
1:38:33
It's kind of chaotic right now because a lot of folks don't know about them.
1:38:38
But not only that, we haven't gotten really good at sort of organizing how we use them
1:38:43
and how to verify how authentic the learning is in different badges.
1:38:48
There's still those early painful phases that we're going through.
1:38:52
Moving on to prediction number nine, diversity,
1:38:55
equity, and inclusion efforts, DEI. I think we're going to continue to have
1:39:02
really high ups and really low downs. Ups and downs over the next year.
1:39:08
Both Mike Pascoe and Jerry Anzalone had predictions related to this topic of DEI.
1:39:16
So let's listen to them. First, we're going to listen to Mike Pascoe's prediction.
1:39:22
MIKE PASCOE: I definitely think we're going to continue our good work on diversity and inclusion in anatomy education.
1:39:28
I think that we will continue to depemphasize eponyms.
1:39:31
We will continue to work on [garbled] our lexicon and include toponyms that
1:39:36
give us more information about an anatomic structure and really
1:39:40
just downplay that legacy of what was [garbled] done in anatomy education.
1:39:47
Thanks to Mike Pascoe for sending in his predictions,
1:39:51
and I think I agree with him completely. I think that he really hit the mark with that one,
1:39:57
and I think that we're already going to see some better representation and more
1:40:03
inclusive language in textbooks. We've already seen some of it. A
1:40:08
lot of it's still in the work. It takes a couple of years to
1:40:12
prepare a new revision of a textbook, and it takes a long time to incorporate
1:40:18
more art and to really do a thorough job of making sure that the language in every part
1:40:25
of the textbook is as inclusive as it can be. I know a lot of A&P authors that are really
1:40:33
working on that, but their book isn't out yet. They've already done a lot of the work, but the
1:40:39
work isn't out there yet, at least not all of it. Also, it happens in stages. You do as much as you
1:40:46
can in this revision, because even though it's two years, that's still limited time
1:40:50
for those big old A&P books. And then the next edition,
1:40:56
you do a little bit more, and the next edition you do a little bit more.
1:40:59
So it has to evolve, because that's the way the textbooks work.
1:41:04
Going to continue to see pushback. I mean, we've seen already some pushback from the outside world,
1:41:11
meaning outside of education. education, but also from within.
1:41:15
And there's a lot of pushing back and forth within and among educators.
1:41:20
And we're going to see lots of laws and regulations being put forth or considered
1:41:25
that are going to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion, and then others that push it down.
1:41:31
And we're going to build up some things that work really well, and we're going to see them
1:41:37
ripped down. And we're going to build some things that don't work really well, or maybe work so
1:41:42
badly they do more harm than good, and we're going to have to figure out how to fix them.
1:41:46
So again, as with micro-credentials, we're in a time of chaos and pain,
1:41:52
of growth, and so we're going to see that happening over the next year, certainly.
1:41:57
And now let's hear from Jerry Anzalone regarding some issues related to DEI.
1:42:04
JERRY ANZALONE: [1:42:03] My second prediction, and maybe this depends on the state in which one teaches, is that A&P instructors can
1:42:12
expect to see more controversy over issues of gender, biological sex, and sexual dimorphism.
1:42:21
Due to the political climate of some states, instructors have to
1:42:24
be extremely careful about the language they use. Using examples of sexual dimorphism, for example,
1:42:31
in the human skeleton, the reproductive organs, or even the sex chromosomes can be problematic,
1:42:38
depending on how faculty, or students, or worse, politicians and administrators
1:42:44
express or interpret that information. To a degree, this issue crosses over into
1:42:51
academic Friedom or maybe the lack of it depending upon your point of view and no i
1:42:56
don't have any answers to that one but i think we meaning society in this country is at least
1:43:04
at some kind of uncomfortable crossroads on the issue of sexual dimorphism so my non-committal
1:43:11
response is something that Yogi Berra once said, when you come to the fork in the road, take it.
1:43:19
KEVIN PATTON: Thanks for that comment, Jerry. And I agree with this overall idea that we're kind of still in turmoil.
1:43:27
Doesn't that happen when there are big changes anywhere in society or in science?
1:43:32
We have a period of sort of looking at a potential ideal that we want to get to.
1:43:39
And along the way, there's a lot of back and forth, a lot of struggling with the details
1:43:45
and the approaches that we're taking. And of course, there's always that
1:43:49
interaction between scientific disciplines and society and the back and forth there.
1:43:56
And we always have these agents, I'm not going to name them, but you know who they are,
1:44:01
agents that decide to poke their noses in areas that they're not experts in.
1:44:06
And that kind of makes it even more chaotic and filled with turmoil.
1:44:12
And even those ideals that we're looking toward may turn out to not
1:44:18
really be as ideal an ideal as we thought it should be or would be.
1:44:26
And so a lot of that angst and turmoil and wrestling back and forth actually,
1:44:33
in the end, we hope, produces a lot of good in that it refines that endpoint where we get to.
1:44:40
Now, that's the optimistic view, and you know what, that's where I'm going to leave it.
1:44:47
KEVIN PATTON: Hey, if you're still considering
1:44:49
your list of things that you want to get done this year that will benefit others and will
1:44:55
make the world a better place, then, well, why not consider sharing this podcast with others you know
1:45:03
in the world of anatomy and physiology teaching? It'll give them one more set of ideas to think
1:45:10
about as they tweak their teaching strategies and find more and better ways to help their students.
1:45:19
And it may spark an interesting conversation with your colleague.
1:45:24
Hey, this would be a great reason to drop a message to
1:45:27
that old friend you've been meaning to touch base with, wouldn't it?
1:45:32
And, well, it'll help motivate me to keep at this, to have some more listeners.
1:45:41
KEVIN PATTON: Moving on to prediction number 10, faculty life.
1:45:45
Wow, this is a big one. And this is one that really worries me and it really
1:45:49
makes me sad and it really makes me angry too. But I'm also trying to be optimistic because I
1:45:55
think that eventually it's got to get to a point where either things collapse and we
1:46:00
have to rebuild or folks are going to realize it's about to collapse and we need to turn it around.
1:46:05
Being higher education faculty, it's almost to the point where it's a mostly gig economy.
1:46:13
What I mean by that is we have far fewer full-time faculty than we ever did.
1:46:18
And that's even at institutions that are primarily teaching institutions like community colleges.
1:46:24
We're seeing more and more community colleges where they're not replacing faculty who leave,
1:46:29
or they're getting rid of some of the full-time faculty by collapsing departments or programs.
1:46:35
And what they hire instead are part-time faculty. And I've been a part-time faculty and full-time
1:46:42
faculty for decades. I've done that together.
1:46:45
And I know a lot of part-time faculty who do other things and teaching is
1:46:51
a love and a passion they have, but it's not their only source of income.
1:46:55
It's not the entire career or profession that they have, and that's great.
1:47:00
That enhances the richness of our offerings and student experiences within our institutions,
1:47:08
to have some of that going on, but when you get to a point where everyone is part-time...
1:47:14
then I think that the program suffers, student learning suffers.
1:47:19
We either need to find a better way of doing that, a more sustainable way,
1:47:23
because people People who live only on adjunct teaching salaries,
1:47:28
they can't sustain life that way. You just cannot go forward that way.
1:47:34
And so fewer and fewer people are going to stay in that situation, and fewer and fewer people are
1:47:39
going to choose to get into that situation. They're going to find other non-teaching
1:47:44
professions that can sustain their livelihood and sustain a family.
1:47:49
I think that that in itself is going to cause a collapse.
1:47:54
And something I've always thought is go to an institution and propose that all of the higher
1:48:01
administrators become adjuncts. Let's have, instead of a full-time college president...
1:48:07
let's have four part-time college presidents. Wouldn't that be great?
1:48:10
They can divide up all their responsibilities. Hey, there's a conflict in meetings. No problem.
1:48:14
One president goes to one meeting and another president goes to another meeting.
1:48:19
And get these five presidents doing all kinds of stuff.
1:48:22
And you probably get more hours for less pay if you have part-time presidents,
1:48:26
right? Because isn't that what they're doing with faculty?
1:48:28
And of course, every person I've proposed that to, usually just in conversation,
1:48:33
they're just like, you know, you are the goofiest person I ever met is the response
1:48:37
I get because that could not possibly work. I mean, you're just talking gibberish here.
1:48:43
That's just not possible. Well, why is it okay for faculty and not okay for higher administrators?
1:48:50
I agree it won't work for college presidents, but I also don't think it works for faculty either.
1:48:58
Another thing that we see happening in faculty life that's not good is that
1:49:02
we're seeing tenure or whatever passes for tenure at various institutions being weakened
1:49:09
more and more and more or even eliminated. And we're also seeing closing of programs
1:49:16
and closing of whole institutions, and that's contributing to chaos in faculty life, right?
1:49:23
If we're having to move to this institution and that institution and wondering whether
1:49:28
the institution that we're in right now is going to be here in two years.
1:49:33
More and more faculty are going to start developing side gigs related to teaching.
1:49:38
Not teaching side gigs, because I think we've always done that,
1:49:42
and I think we're seeing the danger in that. And, you know, it's not a bad idea, I guess,
1:49:45
to spread things around a little bit. So if you lose your full-time teaching job,
1:49:49
at least you have this part-time teaching job,
1:49:52
so you'll be able to pay a few of your bills until you find a new position.
1:49:55
Of course, then you'll find that nobody's hiring right now. And so, gosh, what am I
1:50:00
going to do? or at least hiring in your area. When I say nobody, of course, that's hyperbole,
1:50:05
but we do see drops in hiring faculty, especially full-time faculty in higher education.
1:50:12
I think we're going to see more and more faculty getting side gigs that are not teaching side gigs.
1:50:17
They'll probably be related to education, but they're going to be doing things like writing.
1:50:24
They're going to be maybe producing content for websites.
1:50:27
They're going to be doing things that science journalists do.
1:50:31
Or they might be doing something completely different, like having a cheesecake business
1:50:35
that they cater or something. And so we might see those kind of
1:50:38
side gigs. But we're going to see more and more faculty doing that because,
1:50:43
number one, they're probably not keeping up in terms of their compensation for teaching.
1:50:49
That is keeping up with inflation and other costs. But also, they're doing it as some security, some
1:50:57
financial security in case things go sideways. And all of that together, it means that we're
1:51:02
going to have more burnout, more fatigue, more early retirements or
1:51:07
forced retirements even because of health concerns, because of all this burnout.
1:51:12
And institutions, I think, are finally starting to recognize that burnout has been
1:51:18
a serious growth problem among educators. As I mentioned earlier in this episode,
1:51:24
I don't think they have the tools or the will to fix it yet.
1:51:28
And I'm hoping to see the start of that this year, so I'm trying to be a little optimistic there.
1:51:34
Jerry Anzalone's message on the podcast hotline included this bit about stress
1:51:41
and burnout in faculty, and it fits right in here.
1:51:45
JERRY ANZALONE: Many podcasts ago, you interviewed Rebecca
1:51:48
Pope-Ruark, who spoke about faculty burnout. I see the problems of faculty stress and burnout
1:51:54
being some of the biggest problems we face in academia today, especially as the higher
1:51:59
education landscape continues to evolve following the dark days of the pandemic and that frantic
1:52:05
transition to online teaching and learning, I'd be very interested to hear more, either from
1:52:11
you or from Rebecca Pope-Ruark, or maybe somebody else, about practical steps that faculty can take
1:52:19
to recognize and manage their stress so that they can avoid or better deal with burnout.
1:52:26
As I thought about this topic, it seems that there are many different levels of stress, depending
1:52:30
on where one falls on the academic spectrum. For example, faculty who are involved primarily
1:52:36
in teaching and college service roles at two-year colleges face a different set of challenges
1:52:43
to those who may be pursuing tenure-track positions in research-based institutions.
1:52:48
Instructors of undergraduate students face different challenges than those teaching
1:52:54
graduate or pre-professional students. But we all have something in common.
1:52:58
Many of us are faced with occupational stress. It's constant, and it can be crushing, and we
1:53:05
may not be handling it appropriately. And while I'm sure that there is no
1:53:10
one-size-fits-all solution, I'd like to hear what some of the experts,
1:53:14
hopefully people in the trenches with the teaching faculty, have to say.
1:53:18
And on that note, I've said enough, so I'll sign off now. Take care.
1:53:22
KEVIN PATTON: Thanks, Jerry, for sharing that on the podcast hotline. I think that you're appropriately concerned
1:53:28
about stress and burnout in faculty, not just A&P faculty, but higher ed and other faculty as well.
1:53:36
I really take your suggestion to heart... that's certainly already
1:53:40
on my list because you called about this of things that I'm hoping to get together
1:53:46
for the coming year or so in our podcast. If you're listening to this and you have
1:53:53
something to share or you know someone who has an important message for us regarding
1:53:58
faculty stress or burnout, then let me know that. We'll do something about it.
1:54:05
Prediction number 11 is science communications.
1:54:11
I think that we're going to see more and more researchers and other scientists focus
1:54:17
on more and better communications of what the scientific community is working on these days
1:54:23
and how we think as scientists and how we generally do what what we do in science.
1:54:29
And I think that'll pick up its pace this year. Personally, I think it's necessary.
1:54:35
First, I think a lot of us science folks don't really know or fully understand what scientists
1:54:42
outside our own specialties are doing. I don't really know what they're doing
1:54:48
in quantum physics these days. I mean, I know a little bit. I
1:54:51
read some headlines, but I don't KNOW know. I don't understand it fully.
1:54:56
Just because I teach A&P does not mean that I have any clue about some related topics like
1:55:03
contemporary practices or ideas in epidemiology or public health, or how that quantum physics that I
1:55:12
don't know much about, how does that play out in biological systems, because apparently it does.
1:55:17
Or, well, I just don't have a complete understanding of nearly all the various
1:55:21
little pockets of science. I think it relates to an
1:55:26
increased appreciation of an interdisciplinary outlook that I mentioned a few minutes ago.
1:55:32
The more interdisciplinary our outlook, the more we can understand that different
1:55:37
scientists do different things in different ways, and they've learned a whole lot of
1:55:41
stuff that I just don't know about. And they're going to be learning more
1:55:46
about different things that I'm not going to be able to keep up with.
1:55:51
Secondly, I think that we're going to see the bigger picture
1:55:55
being communicated to non-scientists as well. So, when I talk about science communication,
1:56:00
I'm talking about it within science and among scientists of various sorts,
1:56:04
but also outside of science with folks outside of science.
1:56:08
And that might cause some discomfort, which may cause even wider knowledge gaps in our society,
1:56:14
because people are going to push back and say, no, we don't want to know that.
1:56:18
That information is uncomfortable to us, or that strategy is uncomfortable to us.
1:56:24
But I'm trying to be optimistic about the outcomes.
1:56:27
And then let's cover prediction number 12. It has nothing to do with these things going
1:56:33
on in society or within our profession. Profession, it's more about science
1:56:37
and the teaching of science.
1:56:40
Now, this has been bubbling up for some time already, like lava below some isolated
1:56:47
Icelandic town, but I think we may soon see an eruption of understanding the roles of the
1:56:55
various kinds of fibers that are in our body, the various roles that they play.
1:57:01
For example, the microscopic cellular and extracellular networks of microfilaments
1:57:08
and intermediate filaments and microtubules. I think we're going to learn more about those
1:57:13
and see the wider role that they play in the body that we're not really focusing on in A&P.
1:57:19
And I don't think we really understand as completely as we soon will in science.
1:57:25
But not just those tiny little microscopic cellular, extracellular fibers, but also
1:57:32
the body-wide networks of collagenous fibers and elastic fibers that make up the fascia of
1:57:37
the body and many other structures of the body and how they relate to each other,
1:57:42
but also relate to those little microfilaments and intermediate filaments and other kinds of
1:57:47
little microscopic fibers in our body. And so I think we're going to see
1:57:52
fibers being a major topic in A&P. And I think that's going to start
1:57:56
this year, maybe, I don't know. And I think some people already
1:58:00
have an appreciation of that, that they're pulling into their courses.
1:58:03
But I think we're going to see it start to spread. And maybe that'll happen this year.
1:58:07
Maybe it won't. Those are my predictions. We'll review this again a year from now.
1:58:11
So hopefully you'll hear from me before then about other things going on in the world of A&P.
1:58:20
KEVIN PATTON: In episode 147, I reflected on the stats,
1:58:25
the topics, and the the sustainability of this chaotic podcast project that I started in 2018.
1:58:33
The 10th anniversary of the founding of The A&P Professor blog and website.
1:58:38
Yikes, I've been hanging in there for a while, so maybe I shouldn't
1:58:44
worry too much about sustainability. I also dissected my predictions for the
1:58:50
last year and made some predictions for the new year, with a little bit of help from our
1:58:55
friends Mike Pascoe and Jerry Anzalone. Hmm, now that I mulled those over,
1:59:03
Maybe I should predict that by this time next year, this podcast will be entirely produced by
1:59:13
an artificial intelligence bot. Nah, that wouldn't be any
1:59:18
fun. Forget I mentioned it. But you know what? Let me know your
1:59:24
thoughts about the past year of this podcast and your ideas and suggestions for the path forward.
1:59:32
Simply call the podcast hotline at 1-833-LION-DEN or 1-833-546-6336 or send a recording or written
1:59:44
message to [email protected] and I'll see you down the road.
1:59:52
AILEEN PARK: The A&P Professor is hosted by
1:59:59
Dr. Kevin Patton, an award-winning professor and textbook author in human anatomy and physiology.
2:00:11
KEVIN PATTON: Contents of overhead bins may have shifted in flight.
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