A Tool to Advance Inclusive Teaching Efforts: The "Who's in Class?" Form.

We developed the "Who's in Class?" form with the major goals of increasing instructors': (1) awareness of their learners' diverse attributes and identities, and (2) implementation of inclusive teaching practices. This article provides an overview of the tool in addition to feedback from instructors who used the form, and their students' perspectives. Instructors taught a variety of courses at the undergraduate and master's levels. They implemented the form during the COVID-19 pandemic for either in-person courses that abruptly switched to remote, fully online courses (synchronous or asynchronous), or hybrid flexible courses. After reviewing students' responses on the form, instructors mostly focused on improving their classroom climates in addition to modifying their teaching practices. Both instructors and students reported benefits from the usage of the tool.

Faculty Development for Fostering Clinical Reasoning Skills in Early Medical Students Using a Modified Bayesian Approach.

PROBLEM: Clinical reasoning is a necessary skill for medical students to acquire in the course of their education, and there is evidence that they can start this process at the undergraduate level. However, physician educators who are experts in their given fields may have difficulty conveying their complex thought processes to students. Providing faculty development that equips educators with tools to teach clinical reasoning may support skill development in early medical students. INTERVENTION: We provided faculty development on a modified Bayesian method of teaching clinical reasoning to clinician educators who facilitated small-group, case-based workshops with 2nd-year medical students. We interviewed them before and after the module regarding their perceptions on teaching clinical reasoning. We solicited feedback from the students about the effectiveness of the method in developing their clinical reasoning skills. CONTEXT: We carried out this project during an institutional curriculum rebuild where clinical reasoning was a defined goal. At the time of the intervention, there was also increased involvement of the Teaching and Learning Center in elevating the status of teaching and learning. OUTCOME: There was high overall satisfaction with the faculty development program. Both the faculty and the students described the modified Bayesian approach as effective in fostering the development of clinical reasoning skills. LESSONS LEARNED: Through this work, we learned how to form a beneficial partnership between a clinician educator and Teaching and Learning Center to promote faculty development on a clinical reasoning teaching method for early medical students. We uncovered challenges faced by both faculty and early learners in this study. We observed that our faculty chose to utilize the method of teaching clinical reasoning in a variety of manners in the classroom. Despite obstacles and differing approaches utilized, we believe that this model can be emulated at other institutions to foster the development of clinical reasoning skills in preclerkship students.

Tum/RacGAP50C provides a critical link between anaphase microtubules and the assembly of the contractile ring in Drosophila melanogaster.

A central question in understanding cytokinesis is how the cleavage plane is positioned. Although the positioning signal is likely to be transmitted via the anaphase microtubule array to the cell cortex, exactly how the microtubule array determines the site of contractile ring formation remains unresolved. By analysing tum/RacGAP50C mutant Drosophila embryos we show that cells lacking Tum do not form furrows and fail to localise the key cytokinetic components Pebble (a RhoGEF), Aurora B kinase, Diaphanous, Pav-KLP and Anillin. The GAP activity of Tum is required for cytokinesis: in its absence cytokinesis fails early even though Tum is present on microtubules at the cell equator where the furrow should form. Disruption of the Pebble-interacting domain leaves Tum localised to the cell equator on cortically associated microtubules, again with no evidence of furrowing. These data support a model in which Tum/RacGAP, via its interaction with Pbl, provides a critical link between the anaphase microtubule spindle and cytokinetic furrow formation in Drosophila cells.

Mutations in eukaryotic release factors 1 and 3 act as general nonsense suppressors in Drosophila.

In a screen for suppressors of the Drosophila wingless(PE4) nonsense allele, we isolated mutations in the two components that form eukaryotic release factor. eRF1 and eRF3 comprise the translation termination complex that recognizes stop codons and catalyzes the release of nascent polypeptide chains from ribosomes. Mutations disrupting the Drosophila eRF1 and eRF3 show a strong maternal-effect nonsense suppression due to readthrough of stop codons and are zygotically lethal during larval stages. We tested nonsense mutations in wg and in other embryonically acting genes and found that different stop codons can be suppressed but only a subset of nonsense alleles are subject to suppression. We suspect that the context of the stop codon is significant: nonsense alleles sensitive to suppression by eRF1 and eRF3 encode stop codons that are immediately followed by a cytidine. Such suppressible alleles appear to be intrinsically weak, with a low level of readthrough that is enhanced when translation termination is disrupted. Thus the eRF1 and eRF3 mutations provide a tool for identifying nonsense alleles that are leaky. Our findings have important implications for assigning null mutant phenotypes and for selecting appropriate alleles to use in suppressor screens.