Publication Date
2015
Document Type
Thesis
Committee Members
Timothy Cope (Committee Member), Kathy Engisch (Committee Member), David Ladle (Advisor)
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Abstract
Anatomy provides scientists with a common vocabulary for discussing the human body, and is, therefore, an important aspect of science education. Literature shows that traditional teaching methods may be enhanced by the employment of mastery-based learning in an autonomy-supportive environment. The present study sought to determine the effects of these teaching strategies on the learning of neuroanatomy in a graduate neurobiology course.
These results show students learned and reportedly enjoyed learning a large amount of neuroanatomy. Experimentally taught students who completed the curriculum did well on the 30-item neuroanatomy quiz (mean score 81%), which was administered at the end of the 16-week semester. Administration of a modified Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI) revealed students felt relatively competent, interested, and unpressured (average rating of 5 out of 7) while studying neuroanatomy. They did not report high levels of perceived choice (3/7). We believe these teaching methods should be employed in more courses.
Page Count
70
Department or Program
Department of Neuroscience, Cell Biology & Physiology
Year Degree Awarded
2015
Copyright
Copyright 2015, some rights reserved. My ETD may be copied and distributed only for non-commercial purposes and may not be modified. All use must give me credit as the original author.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
