Engaging Students Equitably in Biological Systems Modeling

It has been my goal as an educator to engage students in meaningful and innovative assessments that are hands-on, engage their creativity and improve their interdisciplinary understanding. At the same time, the engagement need to be equitable as well, to recognize each student for their individuality and creativity. To this end, I created my Pathophysiology course with the objective of teaching students how to model biological systems. The course is a one semester course that is based on homeostasis maintenance in the body and how homeostatic disruptions result in symptoms of pathologies. Students are required to understand how homeostasis is maintained in individual organ systems and encouraged to model their understanding of homeostatic disruptions in ways other than biology, such as computer science and mathematics. This gives them an opportunity to use their creativity as well as apply their learning in other disciplines to create an interdisciplinary model of a biological system. Students have indicated that they appreciate being able to use their creative talents and non-biological skills to model biological systems. Being able to use their non-biological skills in a biology elective both encourages their problem solving skills and gives them confidence. Student learning is assessed through pre and post assessments and shows significant improvement in student understanding