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Preview | 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 machine and human transcription, it may not be exactly right. So I strongly recommend listening by clicking the audio player provided.

This searchable transcript is supported by the
American Association for Anatomy.
I'm a member—maybe you should be one, too!

---

Introduction

Kevin Patton:
Hi there. This is Kevin Patton with a brief audio introduction to episode number 62 of The A&P Professor podcast, also known as TAPP Radio, an audio laboratory for teachers of human anatomy and physiology.

Topics

Kevin Patton:
Well, this is a preview of the upcoming full episode, which is episode number 62, and it’s titled Another Big Year in Teaching Anatomy & Physiology. And that parallels the title from an episode we did about a year ago called A Big Year. That was a debriefing, a review, a look back of the first year of The A&P Professor podcast. So we’re going to do that again in episode number 62. So it’s all about debriefing. It’s all about reflecting. It’s all about looking back and reviewing what we did. So we’re going to take a moment to think about, to remind ourselves about how we as teachers can debrief in a way that is constructive, and helpful, and affirming. Then we’re going to dive right in and…

summarize a whole year of this podcast. Well, okay, not exactly summarize everything, but at least sit at the scenic overlook and take in the broad view of everything, pointing out a few of the most interesting things that happened along the way over this last year.

Sponsored by HAPI Online Graduate Program

Kevin Patton:
The free distribution of this podcast is sponsored by the Master of Science in Human Anatomy & Physiology Instruction, the HAPI degree. I’m on the faculty of this program. And guess what? We’re looking for another online adjunct professor with extensive experience in teaching undergraduate A&P to join our tight-knit, fun-loving, and hardworking faculty. Check out the job posting for this position or details about this online graduate program at nycc.edu/hapi, that’s H-A-P-I, or click the link in the show notes or episode page. And to find the job post, just scroll to the bottom of the landing page and click Employment Opportunities. It’s already been posted in the free TAPP app, too. Whether you’re looking to join us as a learner or as faculty, be sure to mention that you heard about it here.

Word Dissection

Kevin Patton:
Well, it’s time once again for word dissection where we practice what we all do in our teaching and take apart words and translate their parts to deepen their understanding. And since this is the preview to the looking back episode, I thought we would take this time to look back over the terms that we dissected over the last year. And you know what? I counted them up. There’s 107 of them. That’s amazing! 107 terms we dissected, we took apart. And as I just said a moment ago, sometimes they’re terms that are very familiar to us and sometimes they’re terms that are new because they’ve just been coined in the literature or they’re things that we just don’t run across much being A&P teachers. And you know what? I’m going to make that 108. I’m going to go ahead and deselect one new term, or at least one term that we haven’t dissected before, and it’s a term that is very, very familiar to all of us, and that is the word dissect.

Kevin Patton: If we break that apart, we have two main or in parts dis, D-I-S, and sect. Dis, the first word part, literally means apart, or away, or asunder, or having a negative or reversing force on whatever other word part it’s attached to. And then sect, that second word part, literally means cut. So we put it together and dissect means cut apart. Which makes sense, right? I mean, that’s what we do when we dissect something. We’re cutting it apart so that we can understand it in a different way than we can possibly understand it when that thing is whole.

Kevin Patton: Now, in anatomy and physiology, we normally think of dissecting as dissecting a body or an organ so that we can understand it better. That is cutting it apart. At least some of it gets cut apart or cut away, and we can see what’s going on. But what we’ve been doing, of course, in these previews is dissecting terms. So we’re cutting the terms apart into their word parts so that we can get a little bit different understanding than we have when we’re looking at them whole. And even that word dissect, when we pull it apart and put it back together again, I think we can understand it more deeply and think about it in a different way than we would have if we hadn’t stopped to really be mindful of what the word parts are.

Kevin Patton: Another aspect of this particular dissection, dissecting the word dissect, is that I think it kind of helps inform our pronunciation of the term. Now, I’ve been using the pronunciation dissect, but you might use the pronunciation dissect. And you know what? When you look in the dictionaries, even the medical dictionaries, you will see that both terms are, or both pronunciations I should say, are acceptable. So neither one of them is more correct than the other in terms of pronunciation.

Kevin Patton: But, I do have a preference, which you now know what it is. It’s dissect. Because I think that is a little more clearly tied to its word parts dis and sect. Remember, we have two SS in there, so they come apart in between those two Ss. If we use the pronunciation dissect, then it sounds like the first word part is di, which means something different than dis. It could mean two, for example, or it could mean through, or others. There’s other interpretations, but it’s not the same as dis. So dissect could be misleading to a beginner, especially beginner who’s starting to pay attention to how word parts are put together to form scientific terms. So that’s why I prefer dissect over dissect. But you know what? Missouri, Missouri, it doesn’t matter. It’s okay. I’m just pointing out why I have that preference.

Kevin Patton: So let’s go through the 107 dissected … No, we’re not going to go through all 107 of them, but I am going to mention all 107 of them. And I’ll stop occasionally in this list just to mention one or two things about them, but we’re not going to actually do the dissection. But I think this is a good exercise to go back and review and to reinforce what we learned. Because remember, we’re all about long-term learning here, and it might remind you of something that you might want to go back to and look at again, or listen to again, I should say.

Kevin Patton: So in episode 37, we dissected five terms. Neurogenesis. And boy, remember neurogenesis has come up a lot over the last two years in this podcast because of different discoveries that are being made about neurogenesis in adult brains. So we have neurogenesis, and then we talked about some emerging ideas in autonomic pathways. So we decided the terms craniosacral and thoracolumbar. We also dissected the term hematopoietic stem cell, or HSC. Then we talked about the term rosette, specifically anatomical rosette because we talked about it as a tool for helping students get oriented to anatomical positioning.

Kevin Patton: Then in episode 38, we dissected the term chimera and chimerism. Those came up, actually, in the most recent episode, the episode before this one, as well. So we did that one twice. Then, allograft is another term we did in episode 38 and progenitor cell.

Kevin Patton: Then in episode 39, we dissected a very, very familiar term, actually several very familiar terms. One was cerebellum. We dissected muscle, which oddly means little mouse, so we talked about that a little bit. We dissected the term tendon and anglicized, because we were talking about terminology and how we anglicize Latin terms sometimes.

Kevin Patton: Then in episode 40, we dissected the term eponym and toponym. Remember, a toponym is named after a place, whereas an eponyms is a term that is named after a person. Then we talked about haversian canal and even the pronunciation of haversian canal, which is an eponym.

Kevin Patton: Then we went on to episode 41 where we dissected duodenum, or duodenum. And we talked about the plural forms. There’s more than one plural form. And then hippocampus.

Kevin Patton: Then in episode 42, well, that was the Kevin’s Unofficial Guide to the HAPS Annual Conference, 2019 Edition. So we dissected the terms conference and the proper noun Portland because the meeting last year was in Portland, Oregon. And we found out it was actually named after a different city named Portland.

Kevin Patton: Then we have episode 43 where we had a long list of terms that we dissected, and all having to do with anatomic variation, which was the topic of that episode. So we looked at the difference between the terms anatomic and anatomical and why there are two different versions like that that we use. We likewise compared physiologic with physiological. Then we looked at the terms situs inversus, situs solitus, levocardia, dextrocardia, and fabella, plural fabelli, which is a bone that exists in actually an increasing number of people in the knee joint.

Kevin Patton: Then we went on to episode 44 where we dissected the terms gamification, zygote, old friend of ours that, zygote, we use that term a lot, tripolar, which is kind of weird. We don’t really run across that much, but it was in one of the news updates that we talked about in the full episode. And in that news update, we also talked about pronucleus, so we dissected that term, locus, and blastocyst, another old friend that we’ve used a lot in our teaching and learning of anatomy and physiology.

Kevin Patton: Then we have episode number 45 where we dissected an old, old, old and dear friend, and that is homeostasis and thermostat. We looked at the term sodium and its origin, and also the origin of the symbol Na for natrium. And then we likewise did the same with potassium and looked at the origin of the symbol K for kalium.

Kevin Patton: In episode 46, we talked about chondrocyte, another often used term in A&P, and chondroprogenitor cell, which may not be so frequently used in A&P teaching. Then we dissected the terms epiphysis and epiphyseal plate. We dissected the term amnesia, and we dissected the term measles, which we found out literally means specks, which makes sense when we talking about measles, right?

Kevin Patton: And then we went on to episode number 47 where we dissected the term artificial intelligence, the term microbe, and microbiome.

Kevin Patton: In episode 51 … And notice I skipped from 47 to 51 because we had special summer classic episodes in between there. So in episode 51, we dissected the term transparency because we were talking about transparency not only in this podcast but why we should have transparency in our course and really tell students why our course is designed the way it is and why our policies are the way they are. Then we also dissected the terms olfaction, gustation, and subventricular zone, or SVZ.

Kevin Patton: In episode 52, we looked at the word case, as in case study, and its origin. We dissected the term hypercalcemia, the term parcellation, and looked at the origin of the word atlas. We also dissected the term epigenome.

Kevin Patton: Then in episode 53, we dissected metastasis, extracellular vesicle, exosomes, oncosome, and transcytosis. Remember, transcytosis is the process of going across a cell, that is through the middle of a cell.

Kevin Patton: Then in episode 54, we contrasted the terms isovolumic and isovolumetric. That had to do with a change in terminology in the HAPS Learning Outcomes. And similarly, or for similar reason I should say, we compared the terms hemopoiesis and hematopoiesis. We also dissected the term vaccination and dissected the term CD8 cell.

Kevin Patton: In episode 55, we looked at the term perineum and peritoneum, and talked about the fact that they’re very close to one another but they mean very different things, and some really commonly used terms in A&P, and that is femur and fibula. We also looked again at that word case, but this time not in the context of a case study but this time in the context of a letter case, that is upper case letters and lowercase letters, because we were talking about spelling and proper use of terms and so on, and we wanted to talk about how to capitalize terms properly when using scientific terminology.

Kevin Patton: Then in episode 56, we looked at the origin or the meaning of the terms formative and summative as they relate to different kinds of assessment. And we broke down the term practical, as in a lab practical, a lab test. We dissected the term rheumatoid arthritis, and we looked at a fairly newly discovered form of RNA called Y RNA. So we looked at that term, and we looked at the term glycan and some terms related to it in the story that was told in the full episode. So besides glycan, we had oligosaccharide. We had N-glycan and O-glycan, and … Oh my gosh. I can’t. Why can’t I say that? Did I have trouble in the episode, too? I’m going to have to go back and listen again to that. Glycosylation. Okay. I think Susie collected them down by the seashore, didn’t she? Or Peter Piper picked them or something. Glycosylation. Okay. I guess I need to use that word more so that it just flows off my tongue like carbaminohemoglobin does.

Kevin Patton: Then in episode 57 we revisited some terms that we had come up in the previous year and we looked at, and that is syllabus, and syllabi, and syllabuses, which is, yes, a legitimate correct pluralization of the term syllabus. Syllabi is okay, too. And that’s what I think most of us use. But, syllabuses is correct as well.

Kevin Patton: Then in episode 58 we talked about anosmia. We talked about cribriform plate. We dissected polydendrocyte, oligodendrocyte, the NG2 cell or NG2 glia, and figured out what NG2 means. Then, we took a very ordinary term that everybody knows, even outside of anatomy physiology, and that is flashcard. But we kind of extended our conversation a little bit and learned that flashcards evolve from an old learning tool called the hornbook. So you might want to go back to episode 58 if you want to learn about that.

Kevin Patton: Then, episode 59 we looked at the terms obverse and reverse because we were still talking about flashcards and those are terms that are useful when you’re discussing how flash cards are used. Then, we looked at the term mnemonic, which had been used in a lot of the episodes up until that point, but this was the first opportunity we had to dissect it. Mnemonic as in a mnemonic phrase or any other kind of mnemonic device or tool that we would use for memorizing things. Then, we also dissected the term pneumonic because a lot of people spell mnemonic as if it were the word pneumonic and mnemonic and pneumonic mean very different things. Pneumonic means relating to the airways. Mnemonic means relating to memory. So yeah, they are somewhat similar, and they both have a silent letter at the beginning, so I think that’s why they’re so often confused, but they are two different terms. Then, we also decided the term pseudogene in episode 59, or preview episode 59.

Kevin Patton: Then in preview episode 60, we dissected the term allostasis and allostatic. Then we dissected the term emoji and looked at the word emoticon. We also decided the term cumulative.

Kevin Patton: Then episode 61, chimera came up again, and forensic, and apoptosis. And we talked about the controversy surrounding the pronunciation of apoptosis. Then, we discussed Wi-Fi, which we learned is a registered trademark.

Kevin Patton: So, phew. Man, 107 terms, and I made it 108. A lot of terms there that we dissected over the last a year. So now I think we can better see that when we do just a few word dissections at a time in our classes that over the course of many classes over one semester and then the next semester in A&P 1 and AP 2, it really gives the students a lot of examples. And of course, those aren’t just examples. They get the students started on doing their own word dissections.

Sponsored by HAPS

Kevin Patton: This podcast is sponsored by HAPS, the Human Anatomy & Physiology Society, promoting excellence in the teaching of human anatomy and physiology for over 30 years. And don’t forget February 21st. It’s coming up soon. And that’s the deadline to get the early bird rate for the HAPS annual conference in Ottawa, Ontario this May. It’s also the deadline to submit a proposal for a poster or a workshop at the conference. I hope I’ll see you there. Just go visit HAPS at theAPprofessor.org/HAPS, that’s H-A-P-S.

Book Club

Kevin Patton: Okay, I’ll tell you right from the start. I don’t have a new book club recommendation for this preview. The reason is is because this is a looking back preview. So I’m going to quickly run through the books that were recommended over the last year, and there were 25 of them. So they add up, right? And five of those came directly from listeners. Now, a few more than that I was reminded of these books by people who happened to be listeners but I saw some comment that they made on Twitter, or Facebook, or in an email to me, or something like that, but they weren’t specific recommendations for the book club. So let’s go through what some of them are.

Kevin Patton: In episode 37, we recommended the book Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk by Massimo Pigliucci. And then episode 38 was Small Teaching. One of my favorite teaching books of all times called Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning. It’s by James Lang who has written several really good books on teaching. But what I like about Small Teaching is he really takes it from the perspective of here is some things that are evidence-based that we can do in just tiny dribs and drabs. We don’t have to redo our whole course, or even a whole section of our course, or a whole unit of our course. We can just walk in fresh that day that we read about it and experiment with one or the other of these techniques.

Kevin Patton: Episode 39, we talked about an old, old favorite of mine, and it is old, old book, called The Gift Of Pain. It’s by Paul brand. It’s based on a personal recommendation to me from another HAPS member back in the 1990s. John Martin, who generously funds the John Martins Scholarship in HAPS, he was talking to me about Paul Brand who he had met and had heard him speak and was talking about his book and how it relates to anatomy and physiology, but also people going into health careers. So that was in episode 39, preview episode 39.

Kevin Patton: Then we have in episode 40 the recommendation, The Secret Language Of Anatomy by Cecilia Brassett, Emily Evans, Isla Fay. Then in episode 41, I recommended Skeleton Keys: The Secret Life of Bone by Brian Switek. And episode 42 was another of my favorite books about teaching, and that is Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Brown, and Roediger, and McDaniel.

Kevin Patton: And then episode 43, I mentioned a big, giant book. I mean, this is a huge book, but man is it fun to flip through. And that is Bergman’s Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Human Anatomic Variation. That’s by Tubbs, Shoja, Loukas. That was based on a Twitter recommendation from Mike Pascoe.

Kevin Patton: Then episode 44, I recommended Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach who has written several different books, some of which are going to appear on future episodes, future recommendations of The A&P Professor Book Club. She’s a really, really great writer and does some excellent research and really tells an entertaining story. And this one was about what happens to human bodies after we die. That was based on a Twitter thread from Krista Rompolski.

Kevin Patton: Then episode 45, I talked about a rather old book called Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky. And boy, I learned a lot from that book. Doesn’t sound like an interesting book, a book about salt, but it is. I mean, I’m a big salt fan anyway, but I really liked that book.

Kevin Patton: Then, episode 46 we didn’t have a book recommendation, but episode 47 we had Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?: A Neuroscientific View of the Zombie Brain by Verstynen and Voytek. That was recommended directly by listener Mindi Fried.

Kevin Patton: Then, the next three episodes didn’t have a recommendation because those were classic episodes that I repeated. Then episode 51, the recommendation from my friend Margaret Reece was Trail Guide To Movement Building The Body In Motion by Andrew Biel.

Kevin Patton: And then episode 52 was a book by Sandeep Jauhar, and that was Heart: A History. And then 53, Prime Mover: A Natural History of Muscle by Steve Vogel. Episode 54 was Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes by Nathan Lents. In preview episode 55, we had a recommendation from my friend Elizabeth Granier for the book Endurance: My Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery by the astronaut Scott Kelly.

Kevin Patton: And then in preview episode 56, I recommended The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking: Concepts & Tools. That’s from Thinker’s Guide Library. That’s by critical thinking experts, Richard Paul and Linda Elder. And it’s a tiny little guide. That’s why it’s called the miniature guide. You can go back to preview episode 56 to learn more about it.

Kevin Patton: Then, preview episode 57, I talked about the Book Powerful Teaching, a relatively new book that just came out. Well, sure, if it just came out, it would be relatively new book, would it? It’s called Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning by Pooja Agarwal and Patrice Bain. That was recommended by listener Kim Terry. That’s a great book.

Kevin Patton: Then in preview episode 58, I talked about a book called The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson. And that was recommended by listener Marty Port who also won the drawing for a Kindle 10HD tablet. Because remember, I have that promotion going for a while for people who submit recommendations for the book club.

Kevin Patton: Then in preview episode 59, I recommended the book Anatomists and Eponyms: The Spirit of Anatomy Past by Gilliland and Montgomery. And in episode 60, we talked about the book, The End of Stress As We Know by Bruce McEwen. Because in the full episode, I had given kind of a toast to Bruce McEwen who has just passed away recently.

Kevin Patton: And then in the previous episode, episode 61, the previous to this one, I recommended a book that doesn’t sound like a good book for A&P teachers, but it is. Just trust me. It’s called To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others by Daniel Pink. And if you don’t believe me, go back to a preview episode 61 and listen to what I have to say about it. And I don’t know. Maybe it’ll change your mind, maybe it won’t, but it’s your loss if you don’t read it. It’s really a good book.

Kevin Patton: So yeah, 25 books. That’s a lot to go through. Thank you if you’re still with me here. But, I think it’s a good idea to go back through them to kind of jog our memories a little bit like, “Oh, yeah. I reserved that book at the library. I wonder if it’s still there for me,” or, “It’s on my Kindle. I guess I want to get around to reading it,” or, “I forgot to order it at the library or at the bookstore and maybe I want to do that.” So some good reminders there. It also is a good way to look at the wide variety of recommendations that we get in The A&P Professor Book Club. You can access not only these recommendations but all the prior recommendations, and of course those that will be coming moving forward, at theAPprofessor.org/bookstore.

Survey Says…

Kevin Patton: Hey, you probably forgot about that survey that I’ve been taking that’s part of my end of season debriefing. I’m asking you now to please take just a few minutes of your time to respond to that anonymous survey because it’s your experience as an individual listener that’s important to me. Just go to theAPprofessor.org/survey. And as always, thanks for your support.

Sponsored by AAA

Kevin Patton:
A searchable transcript and a captioned audiogram of this preview episode are funded by AAA, the American Association for Anatomy at anatomy.org. Don’t forget that if you’re already a member of HAPS you can join AAA for a greatly reduced rate. Check it out at anatomy.org and click the membership tab.

Staying Connected

Kevin Patton: Well, this is Kevin Patton signing off for now and reminding you to keep your questions and comments coming. Why not call the podcast hotline right now at 1-833-LION-DEN? That’s 1-833-546-6336. Or visit us at theAPprofessor.org. I’ll see you down the road.

Kevin Patton: Support for this preview episode comes from the American Association for Anatomy, the Human Anatomy & Physiology Society, and the Master of Science in Human Anatomy & Physiology Instruction.

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 machine and human transcription, it may not be exactly right. So I strongly recommend listening by clicking the audio player provided.

This searchable transcript is supported by the
American Association for Anatomy.
I'm a member—maybe you should be one, too!

---

Kevin Patton:
Cartoonist and film producer Walt Disney once said, “We keep moving forward, opening new doors and doing new things because we’re curious, and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”

Aileen:
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:
This episode is a review of the past year of this podcast.

Kevin Patton:
As I just mentioned in the intro and also talked about in the preview episode that preceded this full episode, what I’m going to be doing is debriefing what went on in our podcast over the last year. I did something similar last year at the end of the first full year of The A&P Professor podcast, and I called that episode A Big Year, and so this episode I’m calling Another Big Year. I should’ve called it An Even Bigger Year because I was actually kind of surprised as I went through my process of debriefing and looked at what went on. Holy smoke. We covered a lot of stuff, and…

I’ll be getting to that in a minute.

Kevin Patton:
But before I do, I just want to remind you that debriefing is something that I’ve mentioned a lot and that’s because I really believe in it. I think that at regular intervals throughout the academic year, and maybe even separate debriefings at the end of multiple years, like every five years or something like that, we should step back and really take some time and effort and really mindfully debrief, and dissect, and review, and reflect on what we’ve been doing because I think this can be really affirming.

Kevin Patton:
I mean, it is for me that I can go back, and especially in a year, or a semester, or even half a semester when I’m thinking that all I’ve been doing is putting one foot in front of the other and not really accomplishing anything much, not anything useful, I often find that when I go back and actually tally it up, and look at it, and think about it, I’m really happy about the fact that there were some things in there, that I really did accomplish some things. So that’s one of the main reasons why I like debriefing is because it makes me feel good. But it also gives me some great ideas on things that I can leverage and maybe do better next time, or extend and do more of, or gives me an idea to do something completely different. So I just want to spend a few minutes talking about the advantages of debriefing. It’s a good reminder for ourselves of what worked well and what didn’t work well over the past period of time.

Kevin Patton:
It’s also a good time to bring our CV up to date, our resume, or our publication list, or however it is that we’re recording our life’s work. We can do anything related to that, such as at some schools you need to submit a timeline of things that you’ve done, committees you’ve been on, projects you’ve done, how often you did pet sitting for your dean’s pets, and that goes into your promotion package or it goes into your evaluation file or something like that. So you can really make that debriefing time, you can roll a bunch of different tasks into it and make it a really useful thing in many different ways.

Kevin Patton:
It’s also a form of spaced retrieval practice because it gives us an opportunity to identify and reinforce core concepts because we’re going over them again and recalling them again and pulling them back out of our brains. So as I go through this episode and I mentioned past topics, things are going to get pulled out of your brain. You’re going to go in there and start pulling things out again, and that’s going to help keep them in your long-term memory.

Kevin Patton:
When we do this in our courses, we could ask students to do that. Students always want in-class reviews, right? For them, I think they see that sometimes as a substitute for actually studying, like, “Let’s review the test,” meaning I don’t want to spend my own time reviewing for the test. I want you to review for me. But it might not be a bad idea if you have class time to do that. Yeah, they’re looking for specific hints on exactly what’s going to be on the test. They’d probably prefer it if you just gave them a list of the correct answers or something. But what you can do is just spark them a little bit and get them thinking about all of the different things that they have been learning all along and that will help them with their retrieval practice.

Kevin Patton:
There are other ways to do it, too. The way I usually do it it’s not in class but in the form of online practice exams right before the midterm exam and final exams. So that gives them a way to do their debriefing and relearning of stuff because it’s kind of showing them where in their study materials and in their textbook they need to dive back in and refresh themselves. So let’s do it. Let’s do some debriefing.

Kevin Patton:
A searchable transcript and a captioned audiogram of this episode are funded by AAA, the American Association for Anatomy. You can find them at anatomy.org. And don’t forget that if you’re already a member of HAPS, you can join AAA for a greatly reduced rate. Check it out. Just go to anatomy.org and click the membership tab.

Kevin Patton:
I don’t know. Maybe it’s the scientist in me. But when I do debriefing, one of the first steps I take is to count things up because, I don’t know, I just feel more comfortable starting with numbers, with data in the form of numbers and work from there. And that’s what I did with the podcast over the last year. I came up with some numbers that kind of surprised me, So I’m glad I did it this way.

Kevin Patton:
The first somewhat surprising number, I guess I should have known it if I had been keeping track of this, is the number 1,453. That’s how many minutes of listening we had this year. So you add that up, that’s 24 hours and 13 minutes. I didn’t realize I could talk … Yeah, okay. We all realized I can talk that much. And that’s over the course of a year, so yeah that’s doable. And I sure did it, didn’t I?

Kevin Patton:
Another lucky number is number 25, which if you listen to the preview episode you know is the number of book club recommendations that I had this year in The A&P Professor Book Club. And in the preview, I listed all 25 of them. I didn’t stop and talk about each one, but I did list them all to kind of remind us and maybe a shake loose our memories so we know what’s still sitting in our Kindle waiting for us to read or on our Audible library shelf.

Kevin Patton:
And our next lucky number is five. There were five contributors to The A&P Professor Book Club, and each one of them got a $25 Amazon gift card. That promotion is ongoing. So if you want to get a $25 Amazon gift card and you have a book that you think will be helpful to other A&P teachers … And it doesn’t necessarily need to be directly related to anatomy and physiology content. It could be, but there’ve been a variety. If you listened to the preview, you heard there’s a whole variety of kinds of books that in some way help us as A&P teachers. And the five contributors we had this year, I thank them very much, they are Mindi Fried, Margaret Reece, Elizabeth Granier, Kim Terry, and Marty Port. And by the way, Marty also won the drawing for a Kindle Fire HD10 tablet. So that drawing promotion is over, but maybe we’ll have another kind of promotion coming up this year.

Kevin Patton:
Then the next lucky number is number 26. So write these down because if you’re going to go out and buy a lottery ticket you might need some lucky numbers. Lucky number 26 is for the 26 regular episodes, that is full episodes that we had this year. We had 22 preview episodes. And that’s a lower number than the regular episodes because a few of those episodes did not require a preview because there was something special about them.

Kevin Patton:
We also in the previews dissected 107 terms because we have that segment called Word Dissection. And in the preview to this episode, I listed all 107. As a matter of fact, I upped it to 108 because I added word dissect and we dissected that term. So it’s a mix of commonly used terms in A&P and also new terms that are going to be coming up in the segments. Because as you know, I have some science content updates and sometimes the terminology’s not familiar to us as A&P teachers or there is new terminology, some new discovery that requires a new term, and we dissect that and look at that. So 107, well, really 108 terms, we dissected this year. So good opportunity to go back and refresh those.

Kevin Patton:
Lucky number one. One for one extra bonus episode. That occurred in October when they announced the Nobel Prize in the category of physiology or medicine. We had a whole episode on what that was about and how that relates to us teaching A&P.

Kevin Patton:
Lucky number three. That’s for three special episodes. That’s what I called some longer single-topic episodes that had classic segments in them. That is segments that had appeared on previous podcasts over the course of the past year or longer. They were things that were related to another, so I pulled them together so that they were all together on a single topic. So there were three of those this year. And let me know whether you enjoyed those or not. I think you probably did because I had a lot of downloads of them. But give me some feedback on those. Would you like to see me go back and pull together some other topics and put them all in one place and give us a chance to refresh ourselves on that? Let me know. Call the podcast hotline. Let me know.

Kevin Patton:
Next lucky number’s number 94. We had 94 different segments over the course of the last year. 34 of those were science updates. 41 of them were teaching strategies. 19 of them were special segments where they were announcements about different things that didn’t fit really in the category of a science update or a teaching strategy. There were actually more segments than those 94, but I didn’t count some of them. Some of them, like in the special episodes where the segments were repeated from previous episodes, I didn’t count those. Sometimes in a featured topic I’ll break it up a little bit just so it’s not one long rant from Kevin, and so I’ll put like a little break in between. So I didn’t count those as separate segments usually either. Then, of course, I didn’t count the sponsor mentions, even though technically those are segments. And announcement I didn’t count. So really, there were way more than 94 segments, but 94 sort of featured segments if you want to call them that.

Kevin Patton:
Next lucky number is lucky number two. That is the number of new sponsors that started with us this year. We already had, in the first year, at different points, we added AAA, American Association for Anatomy, which had a big thing happen this year. They changed their name from the American Association of Anatomists to American Association for Anatomy. So they were an existing sponsor, and HAPS also was an existing sponsor, Human Anatomy & Physiology Society. But this year we added two more. First, in episode 38, we introduced our new sponsor, the HAPI program. That’s H-A-P.I. That’s the Human Anatomy & Physiology Instruction program from NYCC.

Kevin Patton:
Most recently, that is in January 2020, we added a month-long sponsorship from ADInstruments. You may recall that they’ve been running a promotion that actually goes all the way through March, even though they advertised it only during January. That is you get 10% off of select solutions if you go to their website at go, that’s G-O, .ADInstruments.com/podcast and use their solution builder and then mention this podcast in any web form. That goes through the end of March. Now, ADInstruments may come back as a sponsor later for another promotion. And I suspect if you go to go.ADInstruments.com/podcast and actually take advantage of this 10% off, then maybe they’ll be more likely to come back. So thank you to all of our sponsors because they help defray some of the expenses and helps keep this podcast going.

Kevin Patton:
Another lucky number’s lucky number 10. That is the number of extra bonus content that was made available in the free TAPP app in addition to what had been there from the previous year. So let me go through the 10 things just to give you an idea of the kinds of things that I add to the TAPP app that you can’t really get when you’re listening from the webpage, or listening from Apple Podcasts, or Google Podcasts, or Spotify, or Pandora, or Stitcher, or Pocket Casts, or Castro, or any of the other ones. And those are all great programs, and go on listening to them, but you might also want to get the free TAPP app. All you need to do … It’s only available on mobile devices. You go to your mobile device store, your app store, and just type in The A&P Professor. Don’t forget that initial the. I found out just a couple weeks ago somebody was trying to do that and if you just put A&P Professor it’s not going to show up. You have to put The A&P Professor. Then you just download it for free and put it in your device.

Kevin Patton:
So what are they? What are the bonus content items that are in there? One is a little video showing you how to make flash cards flip in the air. So that one was a silly one. But the rest of them were much more to the point in terms of actual teaching and learning. One was a list of syllabus warnings that I include in my syllabus, and we talked about in one of the episodes. So that gives you a copy of what I have so you can use that as sort of a launching point for perhaps including your own warnings in your syllabus. And along similar lines, I also had a page, a handout-type thing that have my safety information called Safety First. So that gives you the kind of safety addendum that I give in my syllabus.

Kevin Patton:
I have another resource there that’s called Terms That Are Often misspelled or Confused in A&P. I think that’s a good one to revisit every once in a while. Just print it out or save it on your desk or something somewhere and go through it every once in a while. That is useful for students because they can go through it and see where they’re likely to make mistakes. But it’s also good for us because we make mistakes, too. But it’s also good in helping counsel students.

Kevin Patton:
Then, another resource was regional spelling differences. I was going to say it spells out, but maybe that’s not a good way to say. It walks you through how spelling is different between U.S. spelling and non U.S. spelling. So it gives you some of the patterns and then gives you examples of each of those within anatomy and physiology so that you’re aware of some of these different spellings. So those are the regional spelling differences.

Kevin Patton:
Then the next resource was … Actually, it was published or put out there before that one. I’m going kind of reverse order here. Is a handout on the fishbowl model of homeostasis, which I talked about in one of the episodes. So it kind of spells it all out. You can use that handout with your students or just use it as kind of a starting point if you want to tell the fishbowl story or stories similar to it.

Kevin Patton:
I also had a video which was a seminar that I did at one of the HAPS meetings on running concept lists. So you can go look at that. Then, I had a little video showing you a sorting folder that I use when I’m doing tests and exams in class. This is especially useful for a large class, but even a smaller moderate sized class. What it does is it kind of automatically alphabetizes student papers as they turn them in in a very simple, straightforward way. The video shows you how it works.

Kevin Patton:
Then, I have a diagram that you can use in your course if you want that shows the location of the fabella, which is a bone that more and more of us are showing up. They’re showing up in our knees. It’s increasing its frequency in the population. It was considered to be a relatively rare anomaly and now it’s becoming more common. That was discussed in one of the episodes.

Kevin Patton:
Then we have another table that you can use as a handout for your students or just for your own use, and it’s a muscle name table where it translates each of the major muscle names. It translates them literally. And we can use that as a mnemonic device to help us remember characteristics of that muscle.

Kevin Patton:
So, phew. Lots of stuff this year, and that’s not the end of it. I’m going to actually dive into some of those groupings that I just talked about in later segments of this episode.

Kevin Patton:
The free distribution of this podcast is sponsored by the Master of Science in Human Anatomy & Physiology Instruction, the HAPI degree. I’m on the faculty of this program, and you may have heard we’re looking for another online adjunct professor with extensive experience in teaching undergrad A&P to join our tight-knit, fun-loving, hardworking faculty. Check out the job posting for this position or details about the online graduate program at nycc.edu/hapi, that’s H-A-P-I, or click the link in the show notes or episode page. To find the job post, just scroll to the bottom of the landing page and click Employment Opportunities. And it’s already been posted in the free TAPP app, too. Whether you’re looking to join us as a learner or as faculty, be sure to mention that you heard about it here.

Kevin Patton:
Now, as I mentioned earlier, there were 34 science update segments over the last year in this podcast. Now, that’s not anywhere close to the number of actual discoveries this year that are relevant to the A&P course. But I look at this kind of like I do the A&P course itself. You cannot possibly discuss everything or have students try to learn everything, so you pick and choose a manageable set of concepts that will tell the story well, that is in a way that will help students get a deeper understanding of the core ideas they need when they walk away from the course. And just as every A&P teacher makes choices that differ, at least in part from other A&P teachers, I probably made some different choices than you would have made in my shoes, and that’s okay. I’m just hopeful that the choices I’ve made have been helpful to you in some small way.

Kevin Patton:
I do want to emphasize that I don’t give these science updates as recommendations of what you now need to add to your A&P course. First, they’re often new, new, new reports, which means that they need more testing and more discussion among scientists before they’re considered ready for inclusion in a course. Second, they’re often at a level of understanding that is far more detailed than most, perhaps all, of us should be discussing with our students. Which leads me to the main reason that I give these science updates, That is to sort of extend that deep training we got way back when we were students and then moved up through graduate level courses and kept on adding to our knowledge and understanding since graduation. I’m just sort of sharing what I run across that you might want to add to that background knowledge that informs your teaching of A&P without it actually becoming part of your course.

Kevin Patton:
Okay. All that being said, yeah, okay, there are some of the science updates that will and should make it into your course. I just wanted to make the point that we shouldn’t look at them as must-adds but more as professional updates for our own use and for making our own choices about what goes into our course.

Kevin Patton:
So what are the science updates that came up over the last year? Well, we revisited that recurring question of whether adult brains produce new neurons, which has sort of morphed into more of a question of where adult brain neurogenesis happens and how much and what regulates it. And for me, a question that is all-important regarding adult brain neurogenesis is, how can I increase the rate of forming new neurons? Really, I need that. It came up several times during the first season and again this season in episodes 37 and 41.

Kevin Patton:
Now here’s some other topics that came up. I am going to run through them pretty quick, but it’s meant just to kind of stimulate our recollection and to kind of remind you that we covered these things. And you might want to go back and review them again if you’ve already heard them or it might be a good stimulus to go back and to listen to episodes that you haven’t heard before because it has this content in it.

Kevin Patton:
So in episode 37, we talked about adult neurogenesis, as I just mentioned, yet again. And we discussed this idea that came out a while back about whether sacral neural outflow, is it sympathetic or is it parasympathetic? And we know what the classic model is, but, I don’t know, some people have been challenging that. That was also in episode 37. There was also a segment on reserve hematopoiesis.

Kevin Patton:
Then in episode 38, we had several updates. One was, what happens when you swallow a Lego? How long does it take to get from point A to point B? That is how long does it take to get from mouth to anus in case you were wondering. We know that questions like that to come up in our class, so you want to check that out to get the answer. We also talked about how the gut makes 10% of our blood. So we’re talking about hematopoiesis, well, yeah, the gut makes 10% of it. Do you teach that in your class? Do you even mention the gut is a source or a site of hematopoiesis? We also in episode 38 talked about the speed of sperm and why they must be fast.

Kevin Patton:
In episode 39, we talked about the evolving understanding of the cerebellum’s functions. Also in episode 39 we talked about how scientists have discovered how the liver anticipates food that is going to be ingested. Then, episode 39 also talked about how we really in science just don’t know much about how exercise, diet, metabolism, body weight, how all that fits together and how it works as a system. It’s still far from being worked out, and that’s an important concept when we teach A&P.

Kevin Patton:
In episode 41, we did yet another one of those updates in adult brain neurogenesis. And in episode 43, we talked a lot about anatomic variation. So the whole episode was about anatomic variations. In episode 44, we talked about something called semi-identical twinning, which I had never heard of it before. But now I know what it is.

Kevin Patton:
In episode 46, we did an update on bone growths. There’s some new information about how bone grows. And also in episode 46 I talked about the idea of measles, which unfortunately is part of our disease outlook in modern times again. It sort of went away, at least in most areas of the world, and now it’s coming back in many areas of the world. We see that it causes, or at least can cause, immune amnesia. So when you get measles, measles itself can be very serious. It can be mild, but it can be very serious. But not only that, it’s going to mess with your immune system so that for several years you’re more prone to getting other kinds of infections. Ouch.

Kevin Patton:
In episode 51, we, again, revisited the idea of making new neurons in the adult brain. We also talked about how the senses of smell and taste overlap. We did a segment understanding how mouse brains and human brains, eh, you know, are they really that useful for understanding neuroscience when we use animal models or are they? So those questions were explored in episode 51.

Kevin Patton:
In the following episode, episode 52, we talked about some issues regarding mapping out the brain. We also talked about some things we’ve discovered about the possibility of reversing biological age and what that even means. Also, we talked about the genes for left-handedness and what kinds of factors go into making us left-handed or right-handed.

Kevin Patton:
Then in episode 53, we talked about the role of exosomes and the metastasis of cancer, and that was a new discovery. Also in that episode we talked about how the kinds of activity you do in terms of the kind of exercise, assuming you do some kind of activity, how that affects the overall shape of your heart.

Kevin Patton:
We also, in episode 54, talked about vaping, not only the sudden awareness of some of these vaping-related illnesses, but how we might incorporate that in our A&P course as a sort of practical application of some important principles about human anatomy and physiology and as a basis for case studies and things like that. We also talked about how it matters what time of the day you get your vaccination, that vaccinations are not equally effective given at any time of the day. There are certain times of the day where they’re most effective. We also talked about neurons that cause forgetting, and forgetting is important. We need to forget some stuff so we can make room for the stuff we want to remember. So that was all in episode 54.

Kevin Patton:
Then, there was a bonus episode 54 that I labeled episode 54 A. And that was the one on the 2019 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. That was all about how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability, and we put that in the context of what we are learning about cells and oxygen availability in the A&P course.

Kevin Patton:
Then in episode 56, we talked about a newly discovered form of RNA called glycoRNA. You may have heard about sugary RNA or some other variation of that, but it’s usually called glycoRNA. So we talk about what is it and why should we know about it. Also in episode 56 we talked about how macrophages form a barrier. They form a membrane in synovial joints. There was even a little diagram in the show notes and episode page.

Kevin Patton:
Then, episode 58 we talked about how gene therapy can grow new adult brain cells. And in that episode we talked about how some people can smell even when MRIs show that they don’t have an olfactory bulb. So how can you smell without having an olfactory bulb? Well, listen to episode 58 and you’ll find out.

Kevin Patton:
In episode 59, we talked about the term pseudogene. We talked about how at least some scientists are saying that that’s a misleading term. They didn’t really offer a substitute, but they talked about the fact that it can be dangerously misleading. So I’m thinking maybe when we want to keep that in mind if the term pseudogene comes up in our course. I also did an analogy that I use with my own students about the role of junk DNA or pseudogenes in the human genome.

Kevin Patton:
In episode 59, I talked about the discovery that podcasts may be safe and effective sleep aids. As a matter of fact, you might be sound asleep right now and you don’t even know that I’m telling you about this because they’re so effective sleep aid. So I talked about why that is so, and that helps us understand the process of sleep.

Kevin Patton:
Then, episode 61, which was the episode right before this one, we talked about transplant effects in the human genome and how when you get transplanted stem cells as you would in a bone marrow transplant that that can actually alter your genome. at least in certain ways, and looked at a particular famous case of that. Then in the same episode, we also talked about the biological hazards of Wi-Fi.

Kevin Patton:
So wow. That is a lot of different stuff. There’s a lot of stuff I could’ve covered and just didn’t have time to cover, but that’s okay. I’m keeping a list. I don’t know that I’m going to get to all of it, but I am certain I won’t run out. And you know that somebody’s discovering something right at this very moment that you’re listening to this that will probably end up in an episode sometime this coming year.

Kevin Patton:
Marketing support for this podcast is provided by HAPS, the Human Anatomy & Physiology Society, promoting excellence in the teaching of human anatomy and physiology for over 30 years. Have you seen the latest issue of the HAPS Educator? As always, there’s a great variety of interesting content including some great teaching tips. Go visit HAPS at theAPprofessor.org/haps. That’s H-A-P-S.

Kevin Patton:
If you’re a regular listener, you know that the other big thing, the somewhat bigger thing that I do in this podcast, is share strategies and insights on the art and science of teaching anatomy and physiology. Or maybe I should say the art and science and magic of teaching anatomy and physiology. Now’s probably a good time to remind you that what I share is based partly on my own experience teaching anatomy and physiology for several decades, and partly on what I’ve seen and heard from colleagues over the years, and what I’m seeing in the literature of teaching and learning in anatomy and physiology or just teaching and learning in general. Often, I get insights from you, dear listener, so be sure to keep those coming.

Kevin Patton:
Sometime in the next decade I will probably run out of ideas and experiences to share and possibly run out of stories to tell. No, no, that could never happen. I’ll never run out of stories to tell because I always forget what stories I’ve told so I can always tell them over again thinking that they’re new to you. Anyway, I don’t want to test those limits because it’s more fun and more helpful if we get a mix of ideas, even if it’s a challenge to something I’ve said. So please call in.

Kevin Patton:
Looking back over the last year at these 40-something plus segments on ideas, tips, and stories about teaching, what kinds of things come up? Well, first of all, during the summer, I brought back some ideas from earlier episodes, even from the first year, and grouped them by theme into special one-topic episodes. So what were they?

Kevin Patton:
Episode 48 was the storytelling special where I pulled in classic segment about teaching as a form of storytelling. Then, episode 49 was the silent teacher special where I had classic segments about the humanity of human body donors and even reproductions made from them. I had some related book recommendations. We had a couple of different conversations with Aaron Fried who really focuses on these aspects of his course. Then in episode 50, we brought together classic segments about supporting students in distance and hybrid courses in order to improve student retention and to improve student success. That was called the Connecting in the Distance Course Special. So those were the special episodes.

Kevin Patton:
But doing a quick survey here, and I know this can get a little old when I just start listing things, but I’m doing it for the purpose, sort of a roll call type thing, to kind of stimulate our brains a little bit and recall for us the kinds of things that were going on and maybe give you some hints as to what you want to go back and listen to again or maybe for the first time.

Kevin Patton:
So in episode 37, I talk about this idea of there being a last best story in any of the concepts that we are talking about or exploring in our A&P course. So I’ll say to students, “Okay, we’re going to talk about how the kidney works, but what I’m going to tell you today is the last best story.” What that means is that next year that story may have changed, but this is the best story we have so far. It’s the last best story. I also talked about how emphasizing that not only helps them adapt to the changing landscape of the human body where they’re going to get into a different course and find out that things have changed and like, “Well, which one’s right?” Well, if they’ve already been primed to know that things … how we understand things, how accurately we understand thing changes over time, then that helps prepare them cognitively for that. Also, it really kind of underscores how science works, that we’re always trying to get better, right? So last best story.

Kevin Patton:
Also in episode 37 we brought back a previous topic of giving feedback on online tests and how best to do that. Then, we talked about the anatomical compass and the anatomical rosette. So that’s like on a map where you see that little rosette in the corner that has north, south, east, west. Well, here we have anterior, posterior, superior, inferior. And we can use that sort of like a little training device to get our students used to orienting themselves in the various diagrams and photographs and so on that they’re using in the course. Hopefully by the time they’re done with A&P they can stop using it. But it’s a good thing that we can either use in the resources that we’re creating for them or we can have students to it is sort of a practice on their own when they’re making sketches from their dissections or their explorations of models and different things and they can draw in those little anatomic rosettes, and that helps them really reinforce those anatomical directions.

Kevin Patton:
In episode 38, we talked about surveying our students and doing debriefing in the middle of the course, not just at the end of the course but in the middle of the course. Because if we wait until the end of the course, then it’s too late. And in episode 39, we talked about the literal meaning of muscle names and how that can be a mnemonic aid for students. And that is one of the most downloaded episodes of all of last year. So if you haven’t listened to it, you might want to go back and listen to it because I think that’s a pretty popular one.

Kevin Patton:
Then in episode 40 we talked about what is an eponym, what do we do with eponyms in modern usage, what are some problems with eponyms. We talked about some different strategies that we can use to deal with eponyms in our course. There are lots of choices there, and I talked about the kinds of choices I make and why I make them, but that’s just to get us thinking about why that might be.

Kevin Patton:
Then we talked about eponyms again in the following episode, episode 41, when listener Mike Pascoe called in and had something to say about that. So we kept that conversation going. And I will tell you that that is going to come up again in this upcoming season because I’ve had some feedback on it that I think warrant us to dive deeper into some other aspects of using eponyms and looking at some additional ways of looking at eponyms.

Kevin Patton:
Also in episode 41 we talked about some ways to find media that we can use in our teaching, things like videos, and images, and so on that we can use in teaching A&P. We also talked about what we call our students, being careful about addressing them appropriately, that is using their names, for example, pronouncing their names correctly. Then, episode 43 we talked about the fabella bone in the knee. That was part of a whole episode on anatomic variation where we also had a segment on situs inversus and we had a segment on levocardia.

Kevin Patton:
Then in episode 44, we talked about an easy way to sort student papers for grading and recording. I mentioned that earlier because there’s also a bonus video that goes along with that. In episode 44, we also talked about using stickers as far as feedback on tests and so on and how that’s sort of gamifying or adding a level of gamification to our course that might help motivate students a little bit, surprisingly so, actually. Then, episode 44 we also talked about how students address faculty. Do you want to be addressed as Dr. Whomever, or Mr., or Mrs., or Ms whomever, or do you want to be addressed by your first name, or just your last name, or what? So we discussed that in episode 44.

Kevin Patton:
In episode 45, I gave you one of the models that I use in discussing homeostasis called the fishbowl model. We also talked about a poll that I took about how different professors like to be addressed. That was a follow-up from the previous episode. In episode 45, I also mentioned that I have that concept list seminar available as a video in the free TAPP app, and I’ve already talked about that in this review episode.

Kevin Patton:
Then in episode 46, I talked about another model of homeostasis that I used, which I call the Wallenda model, but it’s the model of a high wire artist walking across a wire and how that can illustrate some important principles of homeostasis for us.

Kevin Patton:
Then moving on to episode 47, I talked about how teachers, human teachers, are going to be important even in the age of artificial intelligence, which is already starting in education. And we might worry that, oh my gosh, robots are going to take over, that computers are going to take over and they’re going to be the teachers and we won’t have human teachers anymore. I talked about how that will probably never be true and what is it that we can do and what skills do we have that we can reinforce so that we’re ready for this age of artificial intelligence and that we can leverage our humanness to make us valuable to students as a teacher. We also talked in episode 47 about teaching the human microbiome, which I usually call the human microbial system.

Kevin Patton:
Then episode 51, we talked about transparency in our courses and why we should let students know why we do the things we do and why we have the course policies we have rather than it just being dictated to them with no explanation. Then in episode 52, we talked about the use of case studies in teaching A&P, some different aspects of that. Also in the same episode I gave some tips for answering frustrating student questions.

Kevin Patton:
Then in episode 53, I talked about some very powerful ways that we can amplify learning in our courses. In episode 54, I talked about the release of an updated set of A&P learning outcomes from the Human Anatomy & Physiology Society and kind of highlighted what some of the changes are in that document. Then episode 55, I asked the question, is spelling important? And I answered that question by saying yes, yes it is, and why. I explained why I believe spelling is important. I talked about alternate spellings, and I even talked about using proper case, that is capitalization is important in professional communication.

Kevin Patton:
That kind of led to a discussion of professionalism as a course objective. My students often say, “Well, this isn’t a spelling course. This isn’t an English course. Why are you demanding that I use proper spelling? This is an anatomy course.” And my position is, well, professional communication is part of anatomy and physiology. And yes, that is an objective in our course. And maybe it’s about time that we listed that in our course objectives or something like it.

Kevin Patton:
Then in episode 56, I clarified why I have such a hard line on misspelling and also clarified that I do it as part of a formative testing regimen. So it’s not something that they just get hit with once and they fail or they don’t. They get hit with it multiple times in a formative process so that they eventually learn correct spelling. Then also in episode 56 we talked about some ways that we can put labels on models that we use in our lab practicals without damaging those models. Because let’s face it, over time, even a little bit of damage can add up and cause significant damage to pieces of equipment that are very, very expensive as you well know.

Kevin Patton:
Then in episode 57, we talked about different things I put into my syllabus. I put in some warnings. I put in some safety tips. So you can go back to episode 57 and see what I mean by that and see if it sparks some ideas for maybe tweaking the kinds of things that you have in your own syllabus. Or maybe you might decide this is just the silliest thing in the world. I’m not going to do anything like it. But that’s okay. You’ll learn something from it.

Kevin Patton:
Then episode 58 … Well, actually, 58, 59, and 60, it was a whole series on flashcards and not just the basics. There’s lots of things that a lot of us don’t think about that we can leverage flashcards in ways that really bring us down to very deep levels of learning. So episodes 58, 59, and 60.

Kevin Patton:
Then episode 61, the last episode of the second year of The A&P Professor podcast, was involving issues and questions surrounding required prerequisites for the A&P course. I’ve been getting a lot of interesting and positive feedback from listeners about that. So if you haven’t heard that episode yet, you might want to go back soon and listen to it.

Kevin Patton:
So we had lots of different topics about teaching, right? A lot of different applications in teaching anatomy and physiology. And if you have some questions, some ideas and so on for future topics and future episodes or questions about what I was talking about in previous episodes, or you want to challenge something and say, “No, here’s a better way to do it,” or “Here’s some problems with the way you’re recommending that we do it,” please, please, please let me know about that and we’ll make that part of the conversation here on the podcast.

Kevin Patton:
It’s a good time for reflection, so I’m asking you for about five minutes of your time to fill out a survey. It’s put together by a team of podcast analysts at Podtrac to see who is listening and to help figure out what’s working and what’s not. I’m asking you now to please take just a few minutes of your time to respond to the anonymous survey because it’s your experience as an individual listener That’s important to me. Just go to theAPprofessor.org/survey. Thanks for your support.

Kevin Patton:
Okay, no more lists of things. I promise. Not in this episode at least. No more list. But I do want to talk a little bit about the future. And part of the future is what I just recently mentioned, and that is you. I really would love to see more feedback. And thank you for the feedback I’ve gotten so far, but I’d love to see some more feedback. Call in or write in with your questions or with suggestions. Or if any of you want to a segment on your own or maybe we can do a conversation, interview-style conversation where we talk to one another, bring that up. Maybe you have an article that you have written that you want to talk about the ideas in that article or a book that you’ve written. You want to talk about the ideas in that book. Any of that stuff. So I’m inviting you to really be even more of a participant than you’ve been and this podcast going forward.

Kevin Patton:
Along those lines, someone whose name has come up already in this episode before, but several times throughout the past couple of years, and that is our friend Krista Rompolski. Some of you may know her from HAPS or from her activity within the American Association for Anatomy and the different writing projects that she’s involved in. But, Krista’s been a longtime listener, given us a lot of feedback and insights in the podcast, and we’re going to make that a regular part of the podcast this year. Starting in late spring and on a regular basis, what Krista is going to do is come in with some ideas that she’s gotten from her ongoing review of the literature of teaching and learning, especially as it applies to human anatomy and physiology. So that’s going to become a regular segment going forward.

Kevin Patton:
There are a few guests that I’ve been talking with about coming on for interviews, some whose name you’ve heard here before, others that aren’t even in the A&P world but have some things to offer us. So I’m looking forward to having them on as well. So I have some ideas for things to do in the future, but, as always, I’m very willing to listen to your ideas about ways that we can make this podcast better and more useful for you going forward.

Kevin Patton:
Hey, don’t forget that I always put links in the show notes and at the episode page at theAPprofessor.org in case you want to further explore any of the ideas mentioned in this podcast or if you want to visit our sponsors. And you’re always encouraged to call in with your questions, comments, and ideas at the podcast hotline. That’s 1-833-LION-DEN or 1-833-546-6336. Or send a recording or written message to podcast@theAPprofessor.org. I’ll see you down the road.

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

Kevin Patton:
The content of this episode is 97% recycled waste and is therefore unsafe for drinking.

Kevin Patton:
Support for this episode comes from the American Association for Anatomy, the Human Anatomy & Physiology Society, and the Master of Science in Human Anatomy & Physiology Instruction.