8 R2 5GM129212-03
In medicine, a STEMI (ST-elevation myocardial infarction) brings with it a sense of urgency and a need to apply the highest level of professional competency. Our STEMI project, funded by a SEPA award from the National Institutes of General Medical Sciences, applies those same attributes to teaching Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics subjects in our high schools. Our STEMI acronym denotes Science Teaching Excites Medical Interest and represents a collaboration among faculty and graduate students at the University of Mississippi Medical Center with high school teachers to enhance health literacy and an understanding of the social determinants of health as they inform our communities of the devastating effects of cardiovascular disease and obesity in our state. This partnership treats high school teachers as full colleagues in the creation of media productions and advances the use of such products in the teaching paradigm referred to as "flipped learning" or the "flipped classroom". Extended summer workshops and supportive interactions during the school year are used to develop the materials and lesson plans. Follow-up interactions evaluate the effectiveness of the teaching materials and paradigms in the classroom in terms of high school graduation rates and entry into higher education pathways. We intend to create expectations and resources that will exert a positive impact on the health of our citizens through improved education.
Rob Rockhold
Deputy Chief Academic Officer
STEMI brings together a community of innovative, forward-thinking educators who strive for improving the health of all Mississippians through improving STEM education and health literacy. Please join us and become part of that initiative.
Jeanne Century
DIrector of Research & Evaluation and Research Associate Professor
Hi Rob -
Fun video to watch! I'm interested to know more about the summer workshops and supportive interactions teachers experience during the academic year. How long are the workshops and how many teachers participate in them? Also interested to know who is facilitating the workshops and who is providing the support during the academic year.
Thanks!
Jeanne
Rob Rockhold
Deputy Chief Academic Officer
Jeanne
Thank you for the kind words. The workshops are 4 weeks in length held here on the UMMC campus. The number of participants grows progressively and we anticipate over two dozen will attend this summer. The training is organized and led by the five investigators on the NIGMS grant that supports the training, along with associated faculty from UMMC and the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss), UMMC and UM graduate students, and a number of guest speakers/trainers. The primary focus is on the flipped classroom pedagogy model but also touches on health literacy and the social determinants of health. All participants receive training as Community Health Advocates. During the academic year, the STEMI investigators provide the support, which includes monthly WebEx meetings, travel to statewide education and scientific meetings, and association with the Mississippi INBRE program from the University of Southern Mississippi (Mississippi is an NIH IDeA state).
Jeanne Century
DIrector of Research & Evaluation and Research Associate Professor
Thanks for the additional information. It's helpful. It sounds like such a great support for teachers - I'm wondering which parts of your work might be able to be disseminated so that others could take advantage of/learn from what you are doing?
Rob Rockhold
Deputy Chief Academic Officer
Jeanne
Thank you. We will present elements of this project May 31-June at the SciEd 2018 meeting sponsored by the SEPA program at NIGMS in Washington, DC. We have begun an analysis of the competencies required for a teacher to demonstrate proficiency in use of the flipped classroom in STEM and health education using a technique called the "radar graph" which has been employed in determining competencies for independent practice among medical residents (eg., Keister DM et al., J. Grad. Med. Educ. June, 2012, 220-226. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4300/JGME-D-11-00163.1. We also maintain a group on the AAAS Trellis.com site (STEMI; https://www.trelliscience.com/#/group-home/1010) that is open to the public upon request (public/closed).
Rob
Dawnavyn James
What a great way to bring real world application into the classroom. Students definitely benefit from exploring and learning about issues that effect their communities and homes. This kind of teaching and real world application can be modified to be taught in middle and elementary school programs.
Levi Patrick
Assistant Executive Director
It sounds really interesting. How many teachers signed up and what were their experiences? Did they implement the curriculum and have an impact on student achievement?
Rob Rockhold
Deputy Chief Academic Officer
Thank you, Levi.
We are limited by funding to a maximum of eight new participants/year and by teacher issues such as retirement and changing schools. It can be a particularly fluid population with which to work. However, at present we have 18 active teachers in the actual protocol and have initiated a corollative aspect to the program that has attracted another 10-12 teachers.
Some have begun to use flipped lessons but as we are only tracking graduation rates, we do not yet have an answer to the achievement question.
Sincerely,
Rob
Rob Rockhold
Deputy Chief Academic Officer
Thank you, Dawnavyn.
Our current NIGMS SEPA funding focuses us on high school STEM teachers, but we are very aware of and sensitive to the opportunities to extend the concepts and practice to educators of younger students. We are finding ways to be more inclusive of those educators.
Sincerely,
Rob
Pablo Bendiksen
Research Assistant
Thank you for your informative presentation on your budding intervention to educate high school students over health literacy and the major health factors that plague Mississippi, Rob.
I see that of central importance to changing these health-related statistics is the "flipping" of classrooms by means of pre-class engagement such that students enter the classroom with a "firm grasp of essential concepts".
Out of curiosity, what guidelines inform this pre-class engagement (I use the word guidelines as I am sure the form of pre-class engagement may vary by content area)? And are teachers gauging student learning of relevant essential concepts prior to students entering the classroom?
Rob Rockhold
Deputy Chief Academic Officer
Pablo
Thank you for these comments. We have not attempted to establish specific guidelines for pre-class work, except to work with our teachers to encourage incorporation/structuring of the pre-class work to stimulate interest in the subject by the students. In effect, to use the pre-class work as a "hook" with which to engage the interest of the students. We often use the example of the University of Arizona Q3 SEPA-funded project on ignorance, curiosity and questioning as a guide to create such an orientation to their pre-work (http://ignorance.medicine.arizona.edu/results/t... Of course, for the flipped approach to be fully implemented, content knowledge needs also to be addressed in the pre-work. Maintaining balance between the "hook" and the content is a delicate dance.
Our teachers brought to our attention the need for a differentiated classroom approach once students come into the in-class component. Assessment of pre-learning is explicit in the flipped model. The challenge is often how to manage those students who have not performed as expected. So, yes. Our teachers do gauge the extent to which students come prepared to take their learning to the next level in-class.
Susan Bender
My name is Susan Bender and I am one of the master teachers associated with this program. In my classes, ( Biomedical Research, Biology II, Microbiology, Genetics), I use short pre-readings with associated questions, content questions using Kahoot, content research with foldables, or YouTube videos with embedded questions using playposit. Students submit this work either electronically prior to class or on paper as they enter the class.
Sarah Dean
What portion of the class time dedicated to science is going to be used to teach students about obesity, diabetes, and nutrition? Is this replacing other content?
Rob Rockhold
Deputy Chief Academic Officer
Sarah:
Thank you for your interest. I am following up on the reply from Susan Bender, who actually manages the content delivered in her classroom. Biomedical Research is an elective that was approved by the state Board of Education and which allows schools to deliver advanced science content that is not necessarily provided by any other class. It has been used to allow high school students to receive training in laboratory-based biomedical research in an academic health science center. It has also been used to allow teachers additional flexibility in format and delivery of STEM content that is not always available in high school curricula. This course has been very useful to us in the STEMI program. Other of our STEMI-trained teachers have incorporated the health-related content in regular curriculum courses, such as Biology 1 and 2. In these latter cases, the focus is less on providing additional/new content, but rather on showing associations between existing curriculum requirements and relationships to health issues. Often the strategy is to use health issues as a "hook"with which to stimulate student interest and engagement. Some teachers, like Ms. Bender, have incorporated case studies from the primary health literature to frame discussions around existing curriculum requirements. You can Google "Community Health Advocates - University of Mississippi Medical Center " to learn more about that program.
Sincerely,
Rob
Susan Bender
We have a class called Biomedical Research. As a part of this class the students are trained as community health advocates. As a part of this training spend 6-7 weeks (94 minutes every other day) on health literacy including nutrition, diabetes, heart disease, obesity.
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