Episode

Episode | Quick Take

Steve Sullivan joins me for a lively conversation about podcasting, tutor videos, and digital A&P teaching. We explore how he humanizes online learning, why students crave multiple approaches, and what he’s learned after 23 years of teaching. From LMS-independent course design to global podcast reach, Steve shares practical strategies and inspiring stories that can help any A&P instructor evolve their teaching.

0:00:00 | Introduction

0:00:49 | This Episode

0:02:28 | Becoming Steve Sullivan

0:06:41 | Your Teaching Voice*

0:07:30 | Why Start a Podcast?

0:14:03 | Farewell to TAPP ed*

0:15:45 | Growing a Podcast & Growing Through It

0:19:56 | Authors Alert *

0:21:05 | Digital Teaching That Actually Helps

0:30:59 | When Our Tools Disappear*

0:32:48 | A&P Tools That Fit Any Textbook

0:48:36 | Collaboration Audit*

0:49:14 | What 23 Years of A&P Reveals

1:01:10 | Innovation Check *

1:01:44 | Staying Connected

* Breaks

Need help accessing resources locked behind a paywall?
Check out this advice from Episode 32 to get what you need!

Episode | Transcript

The A&P Professor podcast (TAPP radio) episodes are made for listening, not reading. This transcript is provided for your convenience, but hey, it’s just not possible to capture the emphasis and dramatic delivery of the audio version. Or the cool theme music.  Or laughs and snorts. And because it’s generated by a combo of AI robot and human transcription, it may not be exactly right. So I strongly recommend listening by clicking the audio player provided or the captioned audiogram.

Introduction

Kevin Patton (00:00:01):
In his book, The Innovator’s Mindset, educator George Couros states, “technology will never replace great teachers, but technology in the hands of great teachers can be transformational.”

Aileen Park (00:00:18):
Welcome to The A&P Professor. A few minutes to focus on teaching human anatomy and physiology with a veteran educator and teaching mentor, your host, Kevin Patton.

Kevin Patton (00:00:32):
This is episode 156 in which I chat with Dr. Steve Sullivan about podcasts as teaching tools, digital learning, and keeping it human.

This Episode

(00:00:42):
Hi there. This is Kevin Patton, and in today’s episode, I’m joined by my friend and colleague, Dr. Steve Sullivan. Steve is a professor of biology at Bucks County Community College where he’s been teaching anatomy and physiology for more than 23 years. Yes, you heard that right! He’s a digital author with McGraw-Hill Higher Education and he’s also the creator and host of the popular student facing podcast Anatomy and Physiology: Bit by Bit, which is part of the BLEAVE Network.

(00:01:25):
He started that show because like me, he wanted to give his students another way to connect with challenging content while they were driving, working or folding laundry, and it’s grown far beyond his classroom reaching listeners all over the world. If you were at the 2025 Virtual HAPS Conference in October, you may have heard me chatting with Steve about this in my presentation called The Audible Classroom.

(00:01:55):
Now, here in this episode, we’re going into all this in much greater depth by talking with Steve about how he uses podcasts, tutor videos, and digital learning tools to reach different kinds of learners, how he keeps it personal, even when teaching online and what he’s learned about teaching over more than two decades. Well, let’s dive in bit by bit.

Becoming Steve Sullivan

(00:02:23):
Well, here I am with Steve Sullivan, a fellow podcaster and fellow A&P instructor. And Steve, it’s so good to have you on my show after having been interviewed on your podcast.

Steve Sullivan (00:02:44):
Well, it’s super good to be here, Kevin. I really enjoy your podcast and I am very, very happy to be on it.

Kevin Patton (00:02:51):
Well, I think this is going to be fun because you and I have had conversations before, not just on your podcast but before, and we’re both longtime members of HAPS and see each other at those conferences and it’s fun to talk shop, and so that’s what we’re going to do today. And I guess to start off, if you can just give a brief outline of what is your current teaching role exactly and what got you into that teaching role and that kind of teaching.

Steve Sullivan (00:03:22):
Sure. Currently I am a professor at Bucks County Community College. I’ve been teaching there for 23 years, and so I am a tenured full professor and co-coordinator of our biology department, so that’s my current role. I teach face-to-face hybrid online learning courses in anatomy and physiology one and two. This is the nursing course, so this is the majors level two semester anatomy and physiology, so it’s the big one. I love it. It’s so much fun. The students are great. I love having A&P students, especially the ones who are looking for a healthcare field because there’s nobody in that classroom who’s thinking, why am I here?

(00:04:10):
Right. It’s not like when you’re teaching a non-majors bio course. I’ve taught a non-majors A&P course that we have, we call it basic human anatomy, but it’s really non-majors A&P, and there’s music majors in there, there’s business majors in there, and they’re just mad at you for teaching it because they don’t want to be there. That does not happen in the two semester A&P course. Everybody knows why that class is important, and I think that’s what makes it so much fun to teach. All as interested as I’m, so I love that.

(00:04:43):
I started teaching A&P about 23 years ago. My undergrad was from Rutgers University. I was an exercise physiology major there, and after I finished there, I went to New York Chiropractic College, which is now Northeast College of Health Sciences, and I got my doctor of chiropractic and I practiced for a few years mostly working with athletes, treating musculoskeletal injuries, and I thought, I’ve got some time.

(00:05:12):
I could probably teach an A&P class at night. I did that when I was in school because not everyone in chiropractic school has a physiology or biology background, so I spent a lot of time tutoring and teaching review classes when I was in school because I was bringing a lot of these students, helping them kind of bring them up to speed on the things that we were learning that I had already done. So I really liked the teaching part, and so I thought, well, why not try that? I put my resume in. I didn’t hear back from them until about a year and a half later I got a call and they said, are you still interested in teaching this class? We just had someone leave with three weeks notice on a class now. And so I said yes, and I just loved it. I taught the class at night and then the next semester they offered me two sections and I took them and I did that, and then three years later they offered me a tenure track position and I’ve never looked back, stopped practicing 2007, and all I do now is A&P. So that’s kind of how I got into it. I absolutely love it and I can’t imagine doing anything else.

Kevin Patton (00:06:29):
Well, it seems like you have a great passion for it. I mean, considering all that you do within that world of A&P teaching.

Your Teaching Voice *

(00:06:37):
Let’s take our first brain break to think about your own teaching voice, which is part of that teaching persona that I often talk about in this podcast. When students hear you, whether it’s in the lab or the lecture hall or through a podcast, what tone do they experience? What vibe are they getting off of you? Is it warm or curious? Maybe encouraging, maybe it’s all of those or something else. Well, think about it. What’s one small change that you could make this week to make your voice a little more inviting or a little more memorable? Think about it.

Why Start a Podcast?

(00:07:27):
Steve, now that we’ve heard your story of how you got into A&P teaching, that leads us into my next question, which is this podcast that I mentioned. Tell us a little bit about that.

Steve Sullivan (00:07:45):
So back in 2019, I was thinking that I wanted to start an anatomy and physiology podcast, and the reason is because I love podcasts and I’ve been listening to podcasts probably since 2005, 2006. I remember my wife and I drove to Florida to visit my family for Christmas, and I had an iPod and I bought a connector to plug it into my car so that we could listen to the iPod on the car. And what I found was these things called podcasts and there wasn’t that many of them. They were free, which was awesome. And there was like Kevin Smith had one—the director—Ricky Gervais had one, and we would listen to those. My wife and I both really like comedy, so we listened to these comedy podcasts and I was like, this is great. And then over the next few years, some big podcasters really started coming out, like Mark Maron is one, he revolutionized podcasting.

(00:08:46):
And then of course, serial came out and that was really huge from NPR and then a lot of my favorite NPR shows like Radio Lab or Science Fridays, if I can’t have a radio on at that time, I could get the podcast. So this was great. It was basically on demand listening to whatever I wanted to listen to. So I’ve been a huge fan of podcasts for a really long time. I’ve got some favorites. I’ll put a little plug out there for Malcolm Gladwell who I think has the best podcast that you can get. Revisionist History, I just love podcasts, so I thought, why don’t I do a podcast? And so I thought, well, okay, it shouldn’t be too hard. I already had equipment because I already make tutor videos, so I do voiceover for tutor videos, so I already had a microphone and I knew how to record the audio and edit the audio, so why not just throw one more thing onto my plate?

(00:09:44):
And I did it to post to my students, especially my online students, because some of them needed to listen or absorb the content when they were on the bus or driving or working or doing laundry or whatever they were doing. And so I started just posting it. I used SoundCloud I think, and I would just post links to the episodes on my canvas spaces for my students. And that was kind of how it got started. And the students really liked it because it was another way for them to engage in the material for anatomy and physiology, which is really hard.

Kevin Patton (00:10:21):
I think that’s golden to give them another way to engage. As you say that, that really is helpful because as you say, they know why they’re there and they know that they need this information. Sometimes they’re not so sure about particular concepts. Why do we need to know that though? But beyond that, they know they need to, that you’re telling them they need to, and so they’re going to do it, and they’re struggling a little bit. And I think they love to have choices too about how they consume it. So if they want to bury their nose in the book for a while and they’re able to do that, okay, fine. But this is an opportunity for those that don’t like that or just can’t stay focused, and this gives them something else to weave into the things available to them. So that’s great. So this podcast now, well first of all, before I forget to ask you this, how does one find your podcast?

Steve Sullivan (00:11:24):
So you can get it anywhere that you find podcasts. It’s called Anatomy and Physiology: Bit by Bit. It is student centered. So it is basically the content of anatomy and physiology. So I start with chapter one in a typical two semester book. So I call it unit one, but it’s body organization and terminology. And then I just go and order all the way to the end of a two-semester anatomy and physiology course with episode after episode covering everything from protein synthesis to the action of water-soluble hormones to fetal development. So it’s just basically that’s the content.

(00:12:06):
And occasionally I have guests, you’ve been a guest on my podcast, which was fantastic, and I have other guests. Sometimes I have healthcare practitioners that talk about their field and how they got into their field, how you get a degree in there, what is a day in the life of that healthcare professional, so that way the students could hear from nurses and optometrists and physical therapists and dental hygienists and all the people who work in careers that they might be thinking of.

(00:12:38):
So occasionally I’ll have a guest for 20, 25 minutes where we just kind of talk about that. Or I’ll have other anatomy and physiology professors or authors. I’ve had some Instagram social media influencers who talk a lot about things like nutrition and healthcare and anatomy and physiology. So I’ve had some of those on. And I recently had on a science writer named Sam Keen, who wrote about five or six books. He’s a New York Times bestselling author. He wrote a book called The Disappearing Spoon about the Periodic Table of Elements, and we talked about being a science writer and all that.

(00:13:17):
It is a lot of fun, so you can find it anywhere. It is actually on the BLEAV network, which is B-L-E-A-V, which is mostly sports oriented. There’s shows like Believe in the Philadelphia Eagles, Believe in the Edmonton Oilers, things like that. But they wanted to branch out into health, fitness, and education. So they reached out to me a few months ago and asked if I would join their network. So that’s the network that it’s on, but you can get it, Apple, Spotify, Overcast, whatever podcast app someone uses, just search for it and you can find it.

Kevin Patton (00:13:56):
It’s free, right?

Steve Sullivan (00:13:58):
Yes, it is.

Kevin Patton (00:13:59):
Yeah. Okay.

Farewell to TAPP ed *

(00:14:03):
Hey, let’s pause for a quick update in TAPP ed, which is The A&P Professor Education program. Our TAPP ed digital micro-credential program has officially wrapped up. You can still earn existing credentials for past episodes, for book club readings and on-demand seminars through the end of 2025. After that, all earned badges will remain available indefinitely in your digital backpack.

(00:14:34):
After several years of experimenting with digital badges and certificates, most of you let me know that you’d rather document your own professional development. And, well, Canvas Credentials, the platform we used for our badges suddenly withdrew their free basic tier of service. The only options I could find were way, way out of our budget. Okay. That’s not exactly right. We don’t have a budget other than how many quarters I have in my pocket at any one time. So yeah, no badges for us, I’m afraid. So we’re retiring the taped credentials, but we’re continuing to expand our learning experiences for A&P professors. You can read about what we built and what we learned and how to access your badges and all other related topics at theapprofessor.org/education. Okay. Ready to learn the next bit.

Growing a Podcast & Growing Through It

(00:15:41):
I just want to congratulate you too on the fact that it’s a big podcast. I mean, you’re on at least one, I think a couple of different lists of top podcasts in your area. And that’s amazing that, I mean, to me, that feels being a fellow podcaster in the A&P niche, except I’m in an even smaller niche, I guess, aiming at instructors rather than students or many more students than there are instructors of A&P. But even so compared to all those podcasts out there that are just kind of for general public, but might have a focus in fitness or science or anatomy or whatever, and you’ve just floated right to the top, well, not floated. It’s a lot of hard work. I don’t want to dismiss that aspect of it, but there you are, and that’s amazing. So congratulations. I bet you feel good about that.

Steve Sullivan (00:16:47):
Well, thank you. I do. And just so everyone knows, you are on those lists as well, so I don’t stand alone on those lists. You are usually up toward the top as well. I think you’re right though. I think because it is targeted to the students, and so it’s a much larger demo than A&P instructors. And so I think that that’s a huge part of it. And the occurrence of being on those lists was something completely unexpected. I honestly thought that this was something that my students were going to listen to, and then that’s who it was for. And then I actually took a pretty long break. It hasn’t been constant from 2019 to now. It took a pretty long break of about two and a half years where I didn’t post any episodes. I kind of let it go. It was a lot of work, and I just was running out of time.

(00:17:45):
It was COVID. And so during that time, pumping out so much digital media for my students, everything was online. My kids were home doing their school online. They’re older now, but at the time it was really super busy. And then all of a sudden I went back to the podcast for a second and noticed that I had all these comments that were like, what happened to Dr. Sullivan? What happened to these? Are there any more episodes coming? And all of a sudden I was like, oh, other people are listening to this. It’s not just my students. And then I would look, and some of the episodes had two, three, 4,000 downloads, and I was like, wow, that seems like a lot. I didn’t realize anyone else was listening to this. So I decided to start making more episodes again. And then that’s been pretty consistent for the last couple of years now.

Kevin Patton (00:18:40):
Yeah, I remember because like I say, I do listen to your podcast, and I remember when that happened and there was a break, and I’ve had several shorter breaks in my own path with my podcast. And so at first I figured, oh yeah, okay, he’s got something going on in his life, whether it’s work or family or whatever, and he’ll come back and then you didn’t come back for a while, and I’d go back and check every once in a while and no more episodes. And I was so glad when you did and have been able to sustain it and so on. And who knows, maybe you’ll take another break soon or something. And we all do that. I mean, it is a lot of work, and it’s not easy to sustain that forever. So I think those breaks are good for us personally, but also I think that it helps our work because then we come back to it fresh and can really kindle that initial excitement again. And I think that shows, so you’re certainly on a roll now in your recent episodes, so that’s really cool.

Author’s Alert *

(00:19:51):
If you’ve written textbooks, lab manuals or scholarly articles, you’ll want to know about this. There’s been a recent court settlement involving Anthropic, an AI company that produces the Claude platforms that may have used your published materials for training without permission. If your work was used, you could be entitled to compensation, sometimes a thousand dollars or more per work.

(00:20:28):
The Textbook and Academic Authors Association, TAA, which I’ve mentioned here lots of times before, is helping authors navigate the process even if you’re not yet a member of TAA. To see if your works are affected, to learn how to file a claim, or to ask questions, visit taaonline.net/anthropic-settlement.

Digital Teaching That Actually Helps

(00:20:50):
Steve, earlier in our chat, we were getting into how your teaching evolved over time, and that sets up something I really want to talk about now. You talked about the different kinds of digital things that you do for your students, and of course we all kind of got forced into that during COVID because that’s just the way things had to work. What kinds of things are you continuing to do on the digital realm with your students? And of course, some of your courses are online, so that kind of has to be, what kinds of strategies are you using and maybe some advice that you can give the rest of us for some of those tools.

Steve Sullivan (00:21:52):
Yeah. Well, before I get into that, let me first say thank you for everything that you do, because you are a huge inspiration for doing a podcast and doing anything, right? So you’ve done so much to advance the teaching of anatomy physiology, and I can’t thank you enough for that. And to know that you were actually listening to my podcast before I even knew that and looking for more episodes, that makes me feel better than being on any list because to know that Kevin Patton was actually listening and looking for episodes makes me feel really, really good because you are the pinnacle. So I appreciate you saying that.

(00:22:36):
But as for the digital stuff, so I started making tutor videos back in around 2008 because I had a hybrid anatomy and physiology class that I was doing where we met only for labs and everything else was online, and this was at the behest of the administration at my school.

(00:22:54):
They really wanted to be in the online space for education, and they asked me to do that. I was using a lot of technology for my traditional face-to-face students anyway, and so they came to me and said, Hey, do you think you could do this as a hybrid course? And so I said, well, let me have some time to build it. And so I started making tutor videos because my students just weren’t getting some of the more complicated physiology concepts just from reading the textbook or looking at PowerPoints for some students, totally fine, but there’s just some students that just need a different way to engage in the materials.

(00:23:34):
So I started making tutor videos. They were really rudimentary. It was basically me narrating PowerPoints for 10, 15 minutes or so while I drew on them with a tablet PC that I had. And then that started to evolve where I became interested in learning how to make more high quality videos that animated the physiological processes that were happening.

(00:24:04):
So using existing static artwork that would come with the textbook I was using, for example, and trying to animate that and edit something down with a higher quality audio that was a little tighter, more pointed toward a particular topic, rather than me talking for 15 minutes or so, maybe a five minute video that covers one topic, like transcription, for example, or endochondral ossification, something like that.

(00:24:30):
So I started making those and posting them on my Blackboard at the time, I think it was Blackboard or WebCT, whichever one my school decided to use at that time. And that was really popular with the students. They really got a lot out of it, and that was great. And then my school decided to change from Web CT to Blackboard, I think, and I had to rebuild my whole space. And then a couple of years later, they decided to switch to something else, and that’s at the time around there where I said, I’m not doing this again.

(00:25:09):
So I started building my own website and my own website that is proprietary for my students. It’s not available. You can’t just Google it and look for it and find it. It’s proprietary content for my students. But that’s where I housed all of my PowerPoints, my notes, my lab materials, photos from the lab, digital photos from the lab that I would take, my tutor videos. All of those things were housed in my website that I would build. And now all I have to do when my school changes learning management systems is just swap out the links because everything just links right to my website, and that’s where they get all their content.

(00:25:47):
So that was a big difference for me. Difference. That was a change maker for me because it liberated up so much for me to do. I was not constrained by whatever learning management system we were using. And then I partnered with McGraw Hill with the tutor videos. I had already been working as a digital author for Ken Saladin and creating the digital content that came with his textbook. And then I started doing my own thing with McGraw Hill, and we started making the tutor videos, something available through McGraw Hill’s Connect space, their connect delivery system.

(00:26:28):
And so now that’s where they all are. They’re all assignable in Connect. You can do ’em as adaptive learning tools where the videos will also have study guide narratives as well as adaptive learning questions that you can run through to make sure that the students can show that they’ve understood the learning objectives that are covered in the tutor videos. So just give students another way to engage in the material. Some students prefer reading the text, some students prefer listening to audio, some students prefer watching the video. So that’s kind of what was the impetus of all of that. And now that exists as something we call Anatomy and Physiology Digital Suite. So it also includes lab simulations in there as well.

Kevin Patton (00:27:14):
That’s awesome. I want to highlight that strategy that you talked about of keeping resources that you’re using, especially homegrown resources, keeping those outside of the learning management system because we’ve all, well, not we’ve all, but if you’ve been teaching for a while, you’ve experienced switches in the learning management system, and they all will send their reps to the campus and tell all the faculty, don’t worry. We have a tool that’ll import your course as is into our system and everything will be there. And I’ve never had that work for me.

(00:27:55):
I mean, some things do come across, but only the very basic things, the things that make my course, my course generally don’t, or they don’t come across the way they need to come across. So that takes, as you know, that takes a lot of time and effort to try and rebuild that. What did I do with that video file and go find it? And then having to upload that again. And of course the first time you uploaded it, there was probably some glitches where you didn’t link it the right way for that system or whatever. And so you got to relearn all that. But if you have it all somewhere else and where it is and it’s all organized, then like you say, that’s not such a big, I mean, it’s still a chore, but it’s not the huge overwhelming do I really want to keep teaching kind of thing that you’re facing. So I’m glad you brought that up.

Steve Sullivan (00:28:55):
I remember the phrase, seamless migration. It was never that. It never worked, ever, ever worked. And I really got fed up. I get it. My school was looking to save money or try a better system, and I was at a point where technologically I had advanced my course beyond what any learning management system could really do. Anyway,

(00:29:23):
So I finally said, I think when we switched to Canvas in 2012, I finally said, this is the last learning management system I will convert to. And I made everything. I started building, I built my original websites on Apple, on the Mac. It was like, I forget what, I don’t even remember what they used to call the program, but you could make a website. And then I hosted it on my school’s server. Okay. But then I needed a little more functionality, and so I started using Weebly. Weebly as an online company. It’s kind of like Squarespace and I use Weebly, and I’ve built all my stuff in there.

(00:30:04):
And actually during COVID, with the permission of McGraw Hill, we actually made everything available to anyone who wanted to use it. So I had, through HAPS, I was sending people links to my website so that they could access all the digital stuff that I had already built before COVID because there was a lot of instructors who were not prepared to deliver their course digitally, and by no fault of their own, they had been teaching traditional face-to-face courses. They weren’t teaching online courses as long as we have and things like that. So we decided to make whatever we had already built, because Digital Suite wasn’t completely done yet, but we decided to make whatever we built just free for everyone to use until everybody was back again.

Kevin Patton (00:30:55):
That’s awesome.

When Our Tools Disappear *

Kevin Patton (00:30:59):
You may have noticed that the TAPP app, our standalone custom mobile app is no longer available. Well, that’s because Libsyn, our podcast host suddenly discontinued that feature. Frustrating. It sure is. But it’s also a great reminder for educators, and that is always build flexibility into your tech toolbox. You just never know when something might disappear or change without much or any notice. Look what happened with the cost-free tier of Canvas Credentials I mentioned earlier in this episode. Sometimes our LMS changes whether we want it to or not.

(00:31:45):
So yeah, I mean, staying flexible, being able to pivot and maintaining a good positive mindset, while all that’s going on is very useful to us, and it’s a good model for our students too, because they’re going to face all kinds of uncertainty and changes and pivots in their professions. And if we’ve modeled that for ’em, then they’re going to be ready for that much more so than if we throw up our hands and give up. And sometimes that’s just not an option, anyway.

(00:32:19):
The good news is that you can still listen to our podcast anywhere. You normally listen to audio, so we don’t need that darn old TAPP app. No. We have Apple Podcasts, we have Spotify, we have Amazon, we have Pandora, Audible, YouTube, or The A&P Professor website. That’s theAPprofessor.org.

A&P Tools That Fit Any Textbook

(00:32:43):
Getting back to the Digital Suite, I just want to kind of clarify in my own mind what’s involved. Actually, I have the webpage up and I’m looking at it, and there’s a couple of things in there that I’ve used before as a standalone thing, I guess before the digital suite was built. A couple of those things that are included were kind of their own thing sitting there on their own, but the lab simulation thing and so on, I’ve used in courses that I’ve taught.

(00:33:19):
But I guess that gets to my question, and that is, you mentioned that you kind of got started with McGraw Hill by working on the digital resources that are associated with Ken Saladin’s anatomy and physiology books. I take it though that this Digital Suite is something that a person could use with any of the textbooks, wouldn’t necessarily have to be Ken’s.

Steve Sullivan (00:33:49):
Correct.

Kevin Patton (00:33:49):
Is that right? Okay.

Steve Sullivan (00:33:50):
That is correct. In fact, that was the purpose of it. What happened was McGraw Hill would send me to campuses to present all of the materials trying to make a sale, and that was helped. And they’d be using another textbook, Marieb or Patton, or a lot of, there’s a lot of really good stuff out there, Tortora,

(00:34:15):
And people didn’t want to change their books, and that’s fine. And so what people were saying to us though was, we think you have the best digital offer out there, but we really like our tech, so we’re going to stick with Patton or Marieb. And so we put our heads together. And back in 2016, McGraw-Hill said, how do you feel about using your tutor videos as the core for building something that can go with any textbook people want to use? It’ll be less expensive. It’ll be what they call book agnostic. And that was the goal.

(00:34:54):
So also, if anyone’s using OER resources, open educational resources that don’t really come with a digital companion so that you can give homework assignments and quizzes and exams and assign lab simulations for the anatomy and for physiology and things like that, this is a solution for that. That’s low cost.

Kevin Patton (00:35:14):
I like the idea of OER and it works really well for some people, but that’s an area that still needs a lot more developing within that realm is.

Steve Sullivan (00:35:24):
Yeah. Well, and I know when you’re working with a company like Elsevier or McGraw or Pearson, what goes into making these resources and making them quality and vetting the quality and things like that. So that’s the thing that scares me the most about the OER is do they have the checks and balances and things like that that we have. My great friend, Beth Kirsten, who you probably know from HAPS, she accuracy checks everything I do good. And she’s real good at sending me a long report of the ways that it could be better. And that’s the best way to do it. I’m sure you get the same thing.

Kevin Patton (00:36:02):
Oh, yeah. That’s something that sometimes I’ll work with contributing authors and so on. And now I have three co-authors on my books, and that’s been going for a few years. And at the beginning, I think a lot of times some of those individuals have had a hard time getting used to that because as instructors, I mean, we do get that kind of feedback, but usually when it’s too late from our students, they’re in the middle of an exam and I don’t understand the question, and you read it and you realize that you left out the most important clause. Oh,

Steve Sullivan (00:36:43):
There’s a pretty bad question I wrote.

Kevin Patton (00:36:45):
Right. It does take a little getting used to because you’re not used to someone going through your stuff and trying to find issues with it. What’s

Steve Sullivan (00:36:58):
That? But it makes us so much better.

Kevin Patton (00:36:59):
Oh, it does. I mean, my view is it’s like having a free faculty at, because that’s what my writing faculty when I was in college and was learning how to write, that’s what they did. They found all the things I did wrong or weren’t clear or didn’t make any sense, or they found those for me and they really helped me be better. And so that’s what the people in the publishing world are doing for me only. I’m not having to pay any tuition to them.

(00:37:32):
And so I’ve learned a lot about even just things like certain grammar rules and so on that I never really was aware of. I guess most of it, I kind of probably just picked up from talking with people that knew how to use grammar properly, but didn’t really know the rule behind it. And so when you’re writing sometimes you miss that. So anyway, yeah. So there’s all of that, and that is something that I think a lot of people outside the area of producing these resources don’t realize that it really is a team effort, and it really has to be because there’s so many different things that can go wrong.

(00:38:13):
And of course, after all of that, a million people look at your stuff and then it goes out, and there’s still going to be a handful of things that everybody missed somehow.

Steve Sullivan (00:38:22):
And

Kevin Patton (00:38:23):
You have to learn how to live with that too. Oh my gosh, that mistake got out there, but those little glitches happen all over the place. We’re all human. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, so I guess just to swing back to how this digital suite is used, and I don’t want to make this episode an infomercial for this product, but Yeah,

Steve Sullivan (00:38:47):
No, me neither,

Kevin Patton (00:38:49):
But I’m intrigued by it mean, I guess, okay, I’m not teaching right now, but if I was teaching and using my own textbook from Elsevier and I wanted to use some of these resources in the digital suite, I could have my students purchase that digital suite anyway. I could have ’em use those things, right?

Steve Sullivan (00:39:07):
Yeah, you would set it up in Connect, basically. So Connect is in McGraw Hill’s version of Mastering, or Wiley Plus was Wiley’s. Cengage has one as well. It’s just basically their homework management system that comes with all their textbooks. So that’s their platform. You would set it up in Connect, you would set up your course, and then you would get a URL and you would direct your students to that URL. And when they go to it, they would be given the option to purchase from there.

Kevin Patton (00:39:41):
Yeah. Okay.

Steve Sullivan (00:39:42):
And that’s something you would set up with your McGraw Hill representative because they’ll negotiate a good price for you and things like that.

Kevin Patton (00:39:49):
Sure. Yeah. Okay. Well, that’s really awesome. I mean, it’s interesting to me how a lot of us who are teaching A&P get in there and try to solve problems in our own unique way, and I don’t want to say problems, but challenges in teaching things to help our students. And we do that, and it ends up kind of taking on a life of its own and really growing.

(00:40:15):
So I’m always amazed and amused and really interested in intrigued by all these stories about people. Well, I felt I needed to do this or that for my students, and it just blew up and everybody wanted to use it. And I think that’s great. Then it expands your teaching. I mean, you clearly have that passion for teaching A&P. I don’t know if you’re like me, and a lot of us, I think mean one of the things you like about it is you’re really making a difference in the world by giving future health professionals or even just future adult humans, the foundation, they need to understand the human body in a much deeper way and a much more accurate way than they ever did before.

(00:41:06):
And by doing these kinds of projects, it’s not only the students in your classes, which is plenty enough, but it also reaches beyond that, and you’re starting to teach many thousands of students beyond that or at least be part of their learning experience. That gives me a warm feeling that I’m helping at least some of those students, and not only those students, but their future clients if they get into healthcare or some related field.

Steve Sullivan (00:41:40):
I was at a doctor’s appointment just last week, and the medical assistant who brought me in was a former student.

Kevin Patton (00:41:46):
Oh, that’s great.

Steve Sullivan (00:41:49):
I’m running into things like that all the time. But I will say this one again, yourself, with the way you started in the very beginning of HAPS and the influence that you had on the Human Anatomy Physiology Society, and the effect that HAPS has had on A&P teaching, I mean, you basically started a butterfly effect that has probably affected millions of students. So kudos to you, Kevin Patton, because again, we are all standing on your shoulders right now, so thank you for all of that.

Kevin Patton (00:42:23):
Well, I appreciate that, but it’s not just my shoulders, and that’s the thing about HAPS. So here’s a little quick infomercial for HAPS. If you’re not a HAPS member, you need to be because happily, this part of the culture has been retained. And I mean, it takes work to retain this aspect. And that is that when it was just, I don’t know, luck of the draw or whatever that even heard about what was going on at the beginning of HAPS, that we came together and started going to these workshops and conferences and people were saying, we need to formalize this and we need to continue this, and we need to build this out. So I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to be part of that team. And there are a number of those team members from the early days that are still there.

(00:43:12):
But the great thing is that as time has gone by, new members coming in become part of that team that is helping build it out. And there’s so many cases of people who haven’t been in HAPS for very long. It might even be their first meeting, and they’re already volunteering for things being on these committees. And the HAPS committees are very active and have been forever building new resources and revising older resources and finding new opportunities to support A&P teaching and learning all over the world.

(00:43:49):
That’s one of the things I love about HAPS is that it’s the teamwork. It’s not any one of us or any handful of us. It’s kind of everybody pitching in because the culture is such that it draws you in and makes you want to help each other. So it really

Steve Sullivan (00:44:08):
Is, and I love the people, and I will say this, if I could go back to the podcast real quick, I’m really humbled by the listeners. I get a lot of messages from them emails and also comments that they leave on Spotify and things like that about how dedicated they are to doing whatever they have to do to learn A&P the best they can. And only 48% of my listeners are in the United States, so more than half of the listeners are outside the United States. And it’s getting to a point. There’s a real broad reach. That’s one thing that’s great about podcasting is it’s on the internet. It’s wherever anyone is, they can get it. And eventually, I started it out to give to my hundred students that I had in any one given semester, and now it’s about 20,000 downloads a week. The, so it’s really gotten to a point where it’s a lot of students or people just interested are looking for ways to learn it. And I think that that’s the key right there.

Kevin Patton (00:45:23):
I’m glad you brought that up because I think that kind of adds to the warm feelings that we get. And for me, it’s motivating when I’m kind of falling behind maybe or something. Think there are people out there who are wanting to use our podcasts and our episodes. And the thing is, there are a lot of areas of the world too.

(00:45:46):
I don’t probably have as broad a spectrum of people from around the world, but I do have some, and it’s always a surprise to me, and I don’t know why I’m surprised, I guess anatomy and physiology, something interesting to everyone everywhere for one reason or another. But I’ll sometimes see Holy smoke, why am I suddenly getting a whole bunch of downloads from Iran and well, of course they’re teaching A&P in Iran, and of course their instructors and their students as well are looking for other ideas and strategies and so on, and so why not? Besides that, there are also areas of the world that just don’t have many resources for education

(00:46:31):
Available to them. They don’t have the resources to purchase books, even to hire enough instructors and so on. And so things like podcasts, which as you point out, are available on the internet anywhere. So unless it’s being blocked from a particular area, which would be unusual for our podcasts to be blocked, it’s available to anyone.

(00:46:55):
And so someone sitting under a tree while they’re tending their family’s goat herd, if they have broadband in that area, and more and more even very remote areas are getting resources from outside their area to build those kind of networks, they can at least sometimes get our podcast or go in town and download it and then go out in the field and listen to it. So

Steve Sullivan (00:47:21):
Yeah, for me, it’s the Philippines. Something’s going on in the Philippines. Yeah, something’s going on there where they really need help with A&P. Maybe it’s like what you said, it could be financial. I mean, it doesn’t cost anything to download a podcast. I mean, the most it costs them is to listen to a 32nd30-second commercial for something. So yeah, so Philippines, Australia, those seem to be the big places outside the U.S. obviously, those are places where there’s a lot of English being spoken because it’s not translated into any other languages.

Kevin Patton (00:47:56):
Right. Well, we’re going to have that technology soon, where you flip a switch on your podcast player and select which language you want to translate it into. So that’ll probably be coming soon. Maybe I better go patent that idea before.

Steve Sullivan (00:48:16):
Yeah, maybe. Because there’s probably someone who just heard that from an AI company who now working on it. Yeah,

Kevin Patton (00:48:25):
Yeah, I’m sure. Anyway, I bet you it’s being ready to be rolled out.

Collaboration Audit *

(00:48:32):
Let’s take a moment for a quick reflection. When was the last time you teamed up with someone outside your usual circle, maybe a lab tutor, a community college colleague, an A&P teacher at a nearby high school, or a friend from HAPS? Why don’t you send one short note this week just to say, Hey, I’d love to swap some ideas with you.

(00:49:03):
That’s how collaborations start and how teaching communities grow stronger.

What 23 Years of A&P Reveals

(00:49:10):
Just kind of wrapping up here, you’ve been teaching for a little while. I mean, you’re still new, but how many years did you say you’re teaching?

Steve Sullivan (00:49:23):
23.

Kevin Patton (00:49:24):
Yeah. Okay. Obviously you’ve learned a lot in those two plus decades of teaching A&P. It’s been reflected in a lot of the things you’ve said so far, but just diving deep into that reservoir of your experience and wisdom and so on. What are one or two things that you wish you would’ve known as an early-career A&P faculty that now something maybe perspective on things, a strategy, anything?

Steve Sullivan (00:49:56):
That’s a great question. I wish that in the beginning I would’ve known how valuable it would be to give students resources upfront before class. Instead of expecting them to write down every single word I say in front of a classroom. I think that would’ve been helpful. I figured that out fairly quickly, but within the first few years, figured out that it might be helpful for them if they could just really participate a conversation rather than just have to write down whatever I say, and that they can do that.

(00:50:35):
If they have outlines and notes and PowerPoints and things like that, all those resources, tutor videos, podcasts, whatever, all available for them in advance, and then they can not have to worry about the real picky details. They can just kind of pay attention and know that they’ve got it to review later on. That was something that it took me a little while to pick up on that.

(00:51:03):
I think that that really, really helped with my students, and it really helped my class be a little bit more interesting than just me standing up front talking for two hours. Nobody wants that. So that one, that’s something I wish I had known that I started teaching.

(00:51:22):
Another one, probably I will say this, this was one of the biggest challenges I had with teaching anatomy and physiology, is that I had never taken an anatomy and physiology course before. I had taken anatomy, and I had taken physiology courses, so they were always separate. So I had a lot of anatomy, a lot of cadaver dissection. We did cadaver dissection for four semesters when I was in school. I did my cats and undergrad. I had my systems physiology course. I had my musculoskeletal physiology, my neurophys, all those things were separate. And then I came in to teach the class words together and granted at a different level, but that was a little bit challenging because of time. It’s a lot of content in a very short period of time, we have to teach it.

(00:52:12):
And so that’s something that I wish I had done something like that. And also, I would say this, now, I’m 23 years in, but if the program at the Northeast College of Health Sciences for teaching the MS… Master’s of Science in teaching anatomy and physiology program at Northeast College of Health Sciences, if I was just starting out today, I would do that.

Kevin Patton (00:52:39):
Yeah, I would do that too. I actually did have an A&P course in high school. It was like a college level. They didn’t give college credit for it. They were in the process of building that out, but it was intended to go in that direction, and I think it eventually did. So I am so lucky I had that. But then through my undergraduate, it was all separate too. I didn’t do any combined A&P in that master’s program at Northeast. They do that. They integrate that and also integrate in some of the teaching strategies and so on, including things like giving resources out ahead of time that is a possibility to do that and so on. And I did some of that too.

(00:53:30):
And I don’t know if you experienced this when you started with that, but a lot of times when you do something that’s not the traditional way of doing things, you kind of get pushback. I mean, your colleagues kind of question what you’re doing, I mean, in a friendly, collegial manner. I’m not saying you get attacked or anything but that. They’re like, really, you’re doing that? Is that really you think the best way to do it? But then also the students push back. We never had to do that before in our other class. And so did you find that too, or?

Steve Sullivan (00:54:02):
Yeah, a little bit. I mean, I started teaching anatomy and physiology totally online in 2008. And at that time, people did not want online. A&P. A&P instructors were purists. And I remember I did a presentation at HAPS in 2009 on teaching A&P totally online, and I was hit with slings and arrows. People were upset. They didn’t like it. They were like, there’s no way that this is a quality thing for students. And now I have people coming to me asking me to help them put their online course together. And so everything changed. And it wasn’t just COVID, it was before then.

(00:54:52):
Where we started to realize that some of these cadaver dissection simulations and physiology lab simulations were actually pretty good. Dissecting is great, and doing them in person, I still do that. I don’t think one is better than the other. I just think that we have students for whom one is good enough and one the other one is better or whatever.

(00:55:14):
And then we also have students for whom access is the issue. And I don’t think that we should deny students because of the access. And I think that they’re still learning the learning objectives of anatomy and physiology, even if it’s a lab simulation versus an actual hands-on lab. So, so that was definitely something,

Kevin Patton (00:55:36):
And I guess that just reflects human nature. I mean, this is probably true in all disciplines, that we kind of have an idea of the way things, how we learned things for the first time, and we carry that into how we’re helping our students learn things and we see what other people have been doing for a long time, and we sort of fall into this. I don’t know. It’s kind of a trap in our thinking that that’s just the way it’s supposed to be. And when things, we see things happening outside of that pattern that we’re used to, our first reactions to kind of challenge it, and no, that can’t work. That’s not right, that’s wrong. Do it that way. And I guess sometimes it is, but I mean, as scientists, maybe we should be more open to that because I mean, isn’t science all about having new ideas occur to us and trying ’em out and see if they work?

(00:56:37):
And if they don’t work, set ’em aside and try something different. And I think that that’s true in teaching science as well. You and I have been in this business of teaching A&P long enough to see that sort of common approach or widely held ideas, they do evolve over time. And what early career faculty are being told now as an ideal in some places is way different than what we were told we should be doing when we started. And that’s because of that evolution of people trying things. And eventually the word spreads and it gets out there.

(00:57:17):
So I guess the bottom line is when you’re threatened by new ideas, and we all are threatened by new ideas at some level to step back and look at that and think, well, could it work? And there’s so many things that I’ve ended up adopting and really loving in my teaching that when I first heard about ’em, I was hurling slings and arrows at whatever workshop I heard it at. That’ll never work. And my students wouldn’t do that. And then later on, it’s like, oh my gosh, I don’t know what I ever did before this. But it took a while for me to get over that hurdle.

Steve Sullivan (00:57:57):
And the HAPS conferences are a great place to see those things because so many of our colleagues are doing innovative things that I never would’ve come up with on my own. And so I get to see them and what they’re doing. And then so many times I come back from HAPS and I immediately implement something I learned there, learned there,

Kevin Patton (00:58:14):
Right? And all those brave people. Well, like when you did your online teaching thing back in the day when that wasn’t a thing that most people were doing, that takes some guts to get up there in front of your colleagues and say, look, I’m doing something really different here. And this is, I know it sounds crazy, but it works for me and here’s what it is. And I’m glad people do that.

(00:58:43):
So I’m encouraging anybody listening to this that if you got some idea that you haven’t heard a lot of other people doing things the way you’re doing it and it’s working for you, come to HAPS and present a poster, or do a workshop and share it with the rest of us.

(00:59:01):
And there might be a few people in there that say, I don’t think that’s going to work for my students, but they’re not going to say it in a mean way. And I don’t think anyone has thrown any tomatoes yet at a perhaps conference, but you might get some professional resistance, but expect that. But you’ll also get those people who stop you afterward and say, can I get your email? Because I think this is amazing, and I want to learn more about it.

Steve Sullivan (00:59:31):
For sure. The community is phenomenal,

Kevin Patton (00:59:34):
Right? So anyway. Well, I tell you what, let’s wrap it up there. I always enjoy talking to you, Steve, and you always have great ideas and you’re always doing amazing stuff. So it’s fun to just watch what you’re doing. Good luck with all of that. Continued good luck and hard work. And I’ll probably see the next face-to-face HAPS meeting and Yep.

Steve Sullivan (01:00:03):
Kansas City.

Kevin Patton (01:00:04):
Yep. And that’s right in my backyard. So

Steve Sullivan (01:00:07):
Yes, that’s an easy one for you. This year I got to drive to Pittsburgh, so it was kind of a nice one for me. Not have to fly anywhere, but

Kevin Patton (01:00:16):
Well, and that’s a good thing. Oh, I’m sorry.

Steve Sullivan (01:00:19):
That’s okay.

Kevin Patton (01:00:20):
Yeah, I was just going to say that’s one good thing about HAPS, too, is they really make an effort to move it around so that there are times when it’s going to be close to you if getting there is an issue, they do try to move it around as much as they can. And there are regional conferences too that are amazing.

(01:00:39):
So anyway, so Steve, again, thank you very much for spending time with us and looking forward to seeing you again. And maybe we should make this a regular thing, like an annual touching base with each other on our podcast podcasts, and good luck.

Steve Sullivan (01:00:57):
Well, thank you so much for having me on, Kevin, and I’m up for that. It’s always a pleasure to talk to you. So anytime you want to come on or have me on.

Innovation Check *

Kevin Patton (01:01:07):
Let’s take a breath and think about our comfort zone. What’s one teaching idea that you’ve been curious about but haven’t tried yet? Maybe an audio assignment or a grading twist or maybe a new lab activity. What is it that’s holding you back and what might happen if you just gave it a try?

Staying Connected

(01:01:40):
Well, we’ve covered a lot of ground with Steve Sullivan, and I hope you came away as energized as I did. A few things really stand out. First, Steve reminds us that students love choice and giving them multiple ways to learn, whether that’s audio, video, or digital simulations, helps every kind of learner find a path that works for them. He also showed how podcasting can humanize online learning, even when students are behind a screen, hearing familiar voice builds connection and motivation. Another takeaway is the value of independence from the learning management system.

(01:02:30):
By keeping his materials on his own site, Steve avoided the endless migration headaches. Many of us know all too well. It’s a simple move that gives us control and saves time. We also heard how collaboration and feedback from colleagues, accuracy, reviewers, and even publishers, makes our teaching materials stronger. None of us does this alone.

(01:02:56):
And finally, I love Steve’s point that we should embrace change instead of fearing it, whether it’s online A&P podcasting or OER. We learn by trying new things, reflecting and sharing what works through communities like HAPS.

(01:03:20):
Before we wrap up, I want your thoughts on something new I tried in this episode, the slightly more conversational brain breaks that invite you to reflect while you listen. Did they help you engage, or should I put those back in the lab for more testing? Well, let me know by calling the podcast hotline at 1 8 3 3 LION DEN. That’s 1 8 3 3 5 4 6 6 3 3 6. Or send me an email at podcast@theapprofessor.org. I’d love to hear from you. Well, thanks for staying connected, and as always, I’ll see you down the road.

Aileen Park (01:04:08):
The A&P Professor is hosted by Dr. Kevin Patton, an award-winning professor and textbook author in human anatomy and physiology.

Kevin Patton (01:04:18):
This episode was recorded in a controlled environment by trained professionals. Do not attempt to teach A&P on your own without proper hydration, adequate caffeine, or supportive colleagues.

* Breaks