Designing formative assessments to improve anatomy exam performance.

Formative assessments are primarily used as a tool to gauge learning throughout an anatomy course. They have also been demonstrated to improve student mastery and exam performance, although the precise nature of this relationship is poorly understood. In this study, it is hypothesized that formative assessment questions targeting higher cognitive levels, integrating topics from multiple lessons, and including visuospatial elements will increase student exam performance. Formative and summative questions provided to students during the Clinical Anatomy block at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix between 2015 and 2018 were assessed for cognitive level, integration of targeted learning objectives, and presence or absence of visuospatial elements. These variables were entered into a hierarchical linear model along with demographic variables for each cohort to assess the relationships between these variables and cohort performance on exam questions. The best predictor of exam performance was the inclusion of constituent learning objectives within the formative assessment. Additionally, students performed better on exam questions with visuospatial elements when the targeted learning objectives were also associated with visuospatial elements on the formative assessment. Surprisingly, the cognitive level of formative questions and the integration of learning objectives within them were not correlated with student exam performance. This study demonstrates the importance of including a broad range of topics in formative assessments and highlights a potential benefit of adopting consistent question formats for formative assessments and exams.

Bioarchaeology of Neolithic Çatalhöyük reveals fundamental transitions in health, mobility, and lifestyle in early farmers.

The transition from a human diet based exclusively on wild plants and animals to one involving dependence on domesticated plants and animals beginning 10,000 to 11,000 y ago in Southwest Asia set into motion a series of profound health, lifestyle, social, and economic changes affecting human populations throughout most of the world. However, the social, cultural, behavioral, and other factors surrounding health and lifestyle associated with the foraging-to-farming transition are vague, owing to an incomplete or poorly understood contextual archaeological record of living conditions. Bioarchaeological investigation of the extraordinary record of human remains and their context from Neolithic Çatalhöyük (7100-5950 cal BCE), a massive archaeological site in south-central Anatolia (Turkey), provides important perspectives on population dynamics, health outcomes, behavioral adaptations, interpersonal conflict, and a record of community resilience over the life of this single early farming settlement having the attributes of a protocity. Study of Çatalhöyük human biology reveals increasing costs to members of the settlement, including elevated exposure to disease and labor demands in response to community dependence on and production of domesticated plant carbohydrates, growing population size and density fueled by elevated fertility, and increasing stresses due to heightened workload and greater mobility required for caprine herding and other resource acquisition activities over the nearly 12 centuries of settlement occupation. These changes in life conditions foreshadow developments that would take place worldwide over the millennia following the abandonment of Neolithic Çatalhöyük, including health challenges, adaptive patterns, physical activity, and emerging social behaviors involving interpersonal violence.

Anemia or scurvy: A pilot study on differential diagnosis of porous and hyperostotic lesions using differential cranial vault thickness in subadult humans.

Metabolic disorders, such as scurvy, manifested in human skeletal remains provide insight into health, nutrition, and environmental quality in past populations. Porous cranial vault lesions are often used to diagnose metabolic conditions in subadult remains, but overlapping gross lesion expressions have led to over-diagnosis of anemia and under-diagnosis of scurvy. Studies by Ortner and colleagues have suggested that specific porous cranial lesions are pathognomonic of scurvy, but additional diagnostic tools are necessary. In this technical report, we offer a preliminary assessment of cranial vault thickness (CVT) at the site of porous lesions (sensu lato porotic hyperostosis, cribra orbitalia) as a method for distinguishing between scurvy and anemia in subadult crania. Computed Tomography (CT) was used to measure CVT at various landmarks associated with porotic hyperostosis and cribra orbitalia, complemented by lesion scores, from scorbutic (N=11), anemic (N=3), and non-pathological (N=28) subadult crania used as a control group. Results indicate that CVT consistently distinguishes scorbutic from non-pathological individuals, while anemic individuals overlap with both - likely a function of small sample size in this study. Despite current limitations, CVT has the potential to be an objective diagnostic tool for distinguishing scurvy and expanding reconstructions of nutritional adequacy over the life course in past populations.

Student laboratory presentations as a learning tool in anatomy education.

Previous studies have shown that anatomy students who complete oral laboratory presentations believe they understand the material better and retain it longer than they otherwise would if they only took examinations on the material; however, we have found no studies that empirically test such outcomes. The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of oral presentations through comparisons with other methods of assessment, most notably, examination performance. Specifically, we tested whether students (n = 256) performed better on examination questions on topics covered by their oral presentations than on other topics. Each student completed two graded, 12-minute laboratory presentations on two different assigned topics during the course and took three examinations, each of which covered a third of the course material. Examination questions were characterized by type (memorization, pathway, analytical, spatial). A two-way repeated measures analysis of variance revealed that students performed better on topics covered by their presentations than on topics not covered by their presentations (P < 0.005), regardless of presentation grade (P > 0.05) and question type (P > 0.05). These results demonstrate empirically that oral presentations are an effective learning tool.