Reimagining Electrophysiology Teaching for Neuroscience Undergraduates using a Design-Thinking Approach

Introduction 

Threshold concepts were first introduced by Meyer and Land, who described them as "akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something." These themes are united by five criteria: transformative, irreversible, integrative, bounded, and troublesome. They exist in all academic disciplines, and a widely accepted threshold concept of neuroscience is electrophysiology. Without effective teaching of this complex topic, neuroscience students are likely to hold misunderstandings that will inevitably impede their further learning, as the topic is so integral to a competency in neuroscience.

The design-thinking process is an approach taken by businesses when designing new products. It is divided into five steps: empathising with key stakeholders, defining needs and problems, ideating, prototyping, and testing the new product. Our research project aimed to target the first two to three of these stages. We planned to investigate the current teaching practices in the School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Leeds, as well as in the wider undergraduate environment. We hoped to identify areas of improvement in the teaching of electrophysiology and what changes could be made by educators, students, or institutions to facilitate enhanced learning. We conducted online research in addition to running interviews with students and lecturers to empathise with their feelings and experiences, and conceived a list of recommendations that can be utilised by educators. We began the ideation phase, brainstorming possible new learning resources, for continuation into prototyping and testing.

The Research

On the first day of the project, I was introduced to the two interns from the University of Alberta with whom I would be working closely, and after introductions, we outlined an overview of the project with the project supervisor, Dr Clare Tweedy. The first few days of the project entailed planning and laying the groundwork for the weeks to come. Setting rough deadlines for each part of the project helped us to stay on track to complete the research in the allotted six-week period.

The first step in the plan was to construct the framework for the resource database that we wanted to produce - a large collection of online and physical resources that are currently used to educate electrophysiology. The spreadsheet was divided into columns so that each resource could be input along with its link, a description, and which of the following criteria it fulfilled: audio, visual, kinaesthetic, reading/writing, group, individual, passive, active, experiential, tailored, feedback. This meant we could see what kind of resources are currently available and in which areas they might be lacking. We knew this would be a long task to be carried out in the background over the duration of the project, so it was best to be organised. We delegated each team member a few types of resources to focus on. I was responsible for any educational websites, while others focused on YouTube videos, datasets, published literature, etc. We eventually decided that rotating the type of resources we were looking into reduced burnout and kept us motivated.

Most of the rest of the week was taken up by reviewing the literature on teaching threshold concepts and neuroscience education, assessing how current modules teach electrophysiology, and brainstorming interview questions for the students and staff we planned to speak with. We wanted to glean an accurate understanding of their experiences with electrophysiology teaching, so it was important to properly consider what issues we thought they might be having (or had discovered in the literature) in order to produce insightful interview questions.

We had our first team meeting on the Monday of the second week. The four of us met to discuss what progress we had made and what we planned for the coming week. These Monday meetings would continue throughout the project to keep our supervisor in the loop and for her to give us assistance and direction as needed. We also had a meeting every Thursday, which was primarily a journal club, where each member of the team had a chance to present a research paper that they had read the previous week, followed by time for questions and ensuing discussion, considering how the aspects of the paper's methodology and findings could be applied to our own research. This was a very enjoyable part of the project and has helped me to improve the way I approach reading and extracting important information from research papers.

By the end of the second week, we had sent out an email to all students who had completed one or multiple neuroscience modules in the last two years. The email contained some information about the project and interviews, including about the incentive of a £10 gift voucher, and a short preliminary survey which they could use to register their interest in being interviewed. The survey showed us some basic information about the interviewees, such as which neuroscience modules they had taken and their confidence level with electrophysiology, allowing us to select a more representative sample of students. Unfortunately, by the time we had to close the survey, we had only received submissions from 11 students, somewhat short of our goal of 20. The slow response time and small number of responses was partially expected due to it being summer, so many students were unavailable or unwilling to participate in a 30-minute interview to discuss their learning. In hindsight, perhaps we could have used a more convincing incentive. We sent an additional email to five staff members who teach electrophysiology or related practical skills, inviting them to book an interview, too.

We conducted interviews over the third and fourth weeks. These were carried out virtually, via Teams, each student or staff member being interviewed individually by one member of the team. We began each student interview by checking that we had received their signed consent form and information sheet, then began to ask the questions, starting with some preliminary questions to ascertain their electrophysiology background, check which modules they had taken and how long ago. We would then move on to questions intended to help evaluate their learning, including questions relating to how difficult they found electrophysiology and why, whether a poorer understanding held them back from further learning, whether they found it helpful to have electrophysiology taught in a way that it was integrated into other topics/context, whether they tended to focus on memorising or extensively understanding the topic, and whether their understanding has developed and what they did to effect this. We continued with some module-specific questions for the students' neuroscience modules, asking students to rate the effectiveness of each of the resources provided for each module, as well as the teaching methods used. We then asked questions surrounding the resources and methods they use to learn outside of classes and what they find to be the most effective, and finished by asking for their suggestions for improving teaching, and recommendations for students learning electrophysiology. Staff interviews involved similar questions but centred around the perspective of a lecturer or practical class supervisor. The transcript for each interview was recorded and checked against a recording of the interview to ensure fidelity, to be later used for qualitative coding and thematic analysis.

This stage of the project came with an array of challenges, such as technical issues impeding interviews, or students cancelling or rescheduling at the last minute. For one of the interviews, a technical error meant that the interview was not recorded, and so the transcript was not generated. To remedy this, I noted down the interviewee’s responses from memory to the best of my ability, so that they could still be used for analysing themes, despite coding being impossible since the actual transcript was lost.

 After all student and staff interviews were completed and the transcripts were generated and checked, we began to analyse the data. We used qualitative coding to systematically categorise the raw transcripts, assigning a specific code to each piece of information, allowing development of the central themes, which were each compiled from a number of similar points. I found this process novel and interesting, but coding did become tedious after some time due to its repetitiveness. This was a hurdle that the team had to endure together, keeping one another motivated to complete the task to a high standard within the timeframe. It helped that we were in it together.

After analysing all the data, we had generated six central themes from the interviews: unfamiliarity with different subject areas, the importance of application of concepts to reinforce understanding, structured approach to learning, delivery of (abstract) concepts using multiple modes of explanation, psychological impediments to learning, and barriers to staff adaptability.

We used these themes in the final week of the project to assemble a list of recommendations for improvements that lecturers and universities could use to improve electrophysiology teaching. We made sure that each suggestion had a clear purpose that stemmed directly from one or more of the themes, to guarantee that all recommendations addressed the real problems expressed by students and staff. Some examples are as follows: offer drop in sessions for important chemistry, physics, and maths concepts, have more independent lab practical classes where students create their own methods, release a learning objectives 'roadmap' for the module and show the progress at the beginning of each class, make discussion boards anonymous and increase awareness of them, employ incentives (such as short assessments with deadlines) for students to better manage their time when completing pre-recorded lectures (to prevent workload building up).

My Development

This experience has afforded me many opportunities to practise and enhance my leadership skills. One thing I've learnt is the value of adaptability as a leader. Throughout the project, we were faced with a multitude of unforeseen hurdles, from errors with recoding interview transcripts to students cancelling moments before their scheduled interview. This made me realise that, regardless of how much you plan, there will always be unanticipated surprises, and an effective leader needs to be able to pivot and adjust in the midst of a project. This being said, I have learnt from my supervisor that strategically planning contingencies for potential mishaps is essential, as it is inevitable that things will not always go according to plan, and this preparedness helps a leader to remain calm under pressure, reducing stress for the whole team.

 A unique aspect of this endeavour was the multiculturality of the team. The two Canadian researchers offered me much interesting insight into culture and life in Canada, but also led to some unforeseen challenges, such as minor confusion caused by subtle differences in university language between the two nations. (For example, “module” and “course” have very different meanings in Canadian universities versus in the UK.) Overcoming this called for listening, empathy, and communication skills to translate between the dialects and avoid miscommunication. These skills were vital for interviews, too, as it was essential for us to fully understand the needs of students and staff and the problems that they face.

 The entire experience of conducting research, including producing a research poster, will be invaluable as I hope to conduct further research in the future, when I will benefit from the lessons of this project.

Looking Forward

 My skillset will continue to develop as I go on to disseminate the results of the research. I had a brief opportunity to do this at the learning innovation hub at the University of Leeds, presenting our work up to that point, to a group of lecturers and staff members who gather weekly to discuss how we can improve learning at the university. This was an opportune chance to practise my presentation skills, which is an area of focus for me, and I afterwards felt accomplished having presented our work to colleagues far my senior and answered their questions confidently.

 I will be attending the annual Laidlaw conference at Durham University in October, where my research poster will be on display and I will have another opportunity to present it, in a slightly different capacity, this time to my fellow Laidlaw scholars from various universities. This is also an exciting opportunity to meet my peers and discover the research that they have been undertaking over the summer. The research was presented by my supervisor, Dr Clare Tweedy, at a flash talk at the Bioscience Education Summit in September at the University of Leeds. A further chance to disseminate our work will come in January, when I plan to attend another conference at the University of Leeds with Dr Tweedy, where we will present the research again.

This six-week research period is only the beginning of a wider project to improve electrophysiology teaching for neuroscience undergraduates. I am planning to continue to work with the team to write and publish a research paper along with the list of recommendations, allowing educators and institutions to understand some of the issues and to perhaps implement our ideas to address them. Alongside this, my supervisor, Dr Clare Tweedy, will be working with a team to complete the ideation, prototyping, and testing phases of the design-thinking process, building on the beginnings of the resources that we envisioned to eventually generate real resources available to students and educators in the neuroscience education community. We hope that our work will contribute to the betterment of neuroscience teaching by helping more students to overcome the threshold of electrophysiology.