Professor Donald Barron's scientific interests and achievements extend over a remarkably broad range of subjects. As a scholar and investigator he, however, did not relegate teaching to a secondary position. We hope that this modest communication will serve in a small way to remind us of the simple and lucid laboratory demonstrations that Professor Barron used so effectively and memorably in hi...

Teaching Ca21 and phosphate homeostasis in a physiology survey course for medical or graduate students is done very effectively with an integrated approach. The material can be taught in the endocrine section of the course, where the renal and gastrointestinal (GI) handling of Ca21 and phosphate and bone remodeling can be linked under the umbrella of teaching parathyroid hormone (PTH), vitamin ...

Changes have occurred recently in the teaching syllabus in medical schools across the United Kingdom. These changes have taken the format of modular teaching with group participation and the grouping of topics such as anatomy, physiology and clinical medicine being combined. A short study was designed to assess if students of the new curriculum were competent at answering clinical questions tha...

BEGINNING IN THE 1980S, the Brazilian government introduced strategies to promote universal access to primary education, which coincided with an increase in the number of 6-yr-old children entering the educational system and the expansion of the public high school system (10). More recently, recognition of the importance of access to education at different life stages (4) and the building of co...

Calls for reforms in the ways we teach science at all levels, and in all disciplines, are wide spread. The effectiveness of the changes being called for, employment of student-centered, active learning pedagogy, is now well supported by evidence. The relevant data have come from a number of different disciplines that include the learning sciences, cognitive psychology, and educational psycholog...

Ultrasound imaging is a widely used diagnostic technique, whose integration in medical education is constantly growing. The aim of this study was to evaluate chest ultrasound usefulness in teaching respiratory system physiology, students' perception of chest ultrasound integration into a traditional lecture in human physiology, and short-term concept retention. A lecture about respiratory physi...

Recent evidence has demonstrated that inquiry-based physiology laboratories improve students' critical- and analytical-thinking skills. We implemented inquiry-based learning into three physiology courses: Comparative Vertebrate Physiology (majors), Human Physiology (majors), and Human Anatomy and Physiology (nonmajors). The aims of our curricular modifications were to improve the teaching of ph...

New methods in molecular biology and genetics have made possible many of the dramatic advances in physiological research that have occurred in recent years. For those of us who spend most of our time in the research laboratory, it si sometimes difficult to avoid a research-oriented, reductionist mind-set when discussing physiology with students. This article illustrates, with a few examples, th...

When I arrived at the University of Oregon as a freshman in 2012, I was a biochemistry major with medical school in my sights. During the week of orientation, I met freshman with similar professional goals—doctor, nurse, physical therapist— who were human physiology (HPHY) majors. I researched the HPHY program just enough to know I liked it more than biochemistry, and I somewhat hastily switche...