The design and evaluation of a master of science program in anatomical sciences at Queen's University Canada

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to describe the design and evolution of a unique and successful Master of Science program in anatomical sciences at one Canadian post-secondary institution and to evaluate its long-term impact on student learning. This program prepares students to teach anatomy and design curricula in the anatomical sciences and is structured around three pillars of competency-content (disciplinary knowledge and transferable skills), pedagogy, and inquiry. Graduates of the program from the last ten years were surveyed, to better understand the knowledge, skills, and habits of mind they have adopted and implemented since completion. Interest was taken in identifying aspects of the program that students found particularly beneficial and areas that needed to be further developed. Based on the findings, this program has been a highly valuable experience for the graduates especially in helping them develop transferable skills, and grow as individuals. The hope is that other institutions that have similar programs in place or are considering developing them would benefit from this description of the program design and the sharing of the lessons learned.

An analysis of anatomy education before and during Covid‐19: August–December 2020

“…The programs that experienced the smallest decrease in allocated time to cadaver‐based modalities were anatomy graduate, dental, physician assistant, nursing, and graduate health. Most of these programs typically have a lower enrollment (i.e., less than 100 students on average) (Brokaw & O’Loughlin, 2015; Kolomitro et al, 2018; PAEA, 2019; CODA, 2020) than medical schools and undergraduate programs as a whole (Schutte, 2016; Attardi et al, 2018; AAMC, 2020), allowing for proper physical distancing, which may explain why the decrease in cadaver‐based modalities was not as extreme.…”

“…Anatomy educators may also have been eager to return to in-person cadaver-based laboratories due to their long-standing beliefs that learning is facilitated by hands-on experiences, and that working with body donors fosters humanistic personal growth (Harmon et al, 2021) and the formation of professional identity (Barash et al, 2021). Concurrently, with the increase of cadaveric modalities during August-December compared to during May-August (Harmon et al, 2021), there was a decrease in the utilization of "other" modalities from 50.5% to 33.7%, but the use of plastic modalities was & O'Loughlin, 2015;Kolomitro et al, 2018;PAEA, 2019;CODA, 2020) than medical schools and undergraduate programs as a whole (Schutte, 2016;Attardi et al, 2018;AAMC, 2020), allowing for proper physical distancing, which may explain why the decrease in cadaver-based modalities was not as extreme.…”

Teachers Readiness in Facing Linear Learning in the Pandemic Covid-19 and the New Normal Era

“…(4) In the aspect of interaction, the findings were: ease of accessing online learning services, 12% stated that it was not good, the quality of giving comments by lecturers to academic discussion forums that had been carried out in online learning, it was found that 6% said it was not good. (5) In the evaluation aspect, the following findings were obtained: the clarity of the assessment rubric of the assignment given by the lecturer, it was obtained that 12% stated that it was unclear, the scoring service for the assignment that had been given by the lecturer to students through online was 6% less well [10].…”

“…There is a view that explains that the teacher is a great, meritorious figure, even a hero who is often called an unsung hero. With this predicate, the teacher is a great figure who will never lose his instinct, his adrenaline to educate and raise education [5].…”

Graduate and Undergraduate Students’ Perceptions of the Spine Muscles Study Methods

“…Total answers (n = 123) 16,23 . The strategies to teach anatomy focusing on "how to approach" are based on the pedagogical process, which helps to identify study strategies that challenge and recognize weaknesses, as well as take advantage of strengths 17,24,25 . G2 was the main group to state in Q7 that the seven strata method is "didactic" and "comprehensible".…”