Implementing Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) in Undergraduate Biomechanics: Lessons Learned by a Novice

Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) uses specially designed activities and cooperative learning to teach content and to actively engage students in inquiry, analytical thinking and teamwork. It has been used extensively in Chemistry education, but the use of POGIL is not well documented in other physical and biological sciences. This is a descriptive account of the initial implementation of POGIL in a university biomechanics course and includes the benefits, challenges and recommendations for teachers interested in using this effective instructional strategy. Introduction Undergraduate biomechanics courses are designed to help students develop an understanding of the mechanical and anatomical principles that govern human movement and be able to connect human anatomy to mechanical function (see Table 1). Instructors of undergraduate biomechanics face two significant challenges to engaging students in meaningful learning experiences: 1) students often find that the volume and depth of information in biomechanics is daunting and, as a sub-discipline of physics, can be challenging, and 2) biomechanics students often come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds and lack common academic preparation. Biomechanics is traditionally taught via a lecture-lab format. When lecture was used as the primary instructional method by the first author, student engagement and interest appeared to be much lower than for the experiential learning of the accompanying laboratory. Students also did not seem to tie the passive learning of lecture to the active experiential strategies used in lab. In addition, the lecture portion of the course did not seem to be doing much to help students develop non-content area skills needed in the workforce (i.e. interpersonal/teamwork, analytical thinking, flexibility/adaptability, ability to work independently) (NACE, 2011). Moreover, significant portions of the enrolled students were studying to be educators themselves, and the lecture course was not serving those with an interest in having multiple teaching strategies modeled. These perceptions were confirmed by student course evaluations that indicated the lecture was not as engaging as students would have liked and lecture did not enhance their learning as much as the students and instructor had hoped. In response to these observations and student feedback, a different pedagogical approach to the course, Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL), was adopted. The POGIL approach uses specially designed activities and cooperative learning to simultaneously introduce material and actively engage students in key processes, such as analytical thinking and working productively in a team. Inquiry and cooperative learning strategies improve student achievement and problem-solving abilities more than the lecture format Table 1. KINES 370 Biomechanics course objectives: It is expected that upon completion of KINES 370 that students will be able to: 1. Demonstrate awareness of the scope and practice of biomechanics 2. Describe human movement with appropriate mechanical and anatomical terminology 3. Find and utilize biomechanical literature and reference resources; 4. Understand and integrate kinetics and kinematics 5. Understand, recall, and utilize the qualitative and quantitative relationships between angular and linear motion 6. Apply biomechanical principles to evaluate new/novel information 7. Understand and associate musculoskeletal tissue structure and biomechanical function to the generation of movement 8. Analyze human movement and provide appropriate corrective feedback; and 9. Employ mechanical concepts to optimize movement performance and outcomes