Histology Personal Trainer: Identifying Tissue Types Using Critical Thinking and Metacognition Prompts

Abstract

Metacognitive reflections embedded in course activities allow students to evaluate their learning immediately following the activities themselves, while providing instructors the opportunity to revise and optimize instruction to target misconceptions. This activity, “Histology Personal Trainer” helps students not only identify major tissue types, but reflect on how they identified them. This activity aims to improve student performance by exercising the students’ observation and comparative skills in combination with a self-reflection activity that helps to identify successful and unsuccessful identification strategies. By the end of the activity, students should be able to adapt their approach to obtain more accurate answers. This activity was used in an anatomy and physiology course, but could be modified for use in various STEM classes.