Relating human physiology content to COVID-19: A strategy to keep students in touch with physiology in times of social distance due pandemic

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Introduction: Due to the context of social distancing imposed as a result of COVID-19 pandemic, universities are looking for emergency remote education alternatives. Objective: Objective:To propose and evaluate the students' perception of a teaching-learning model using online platforms to review physiology contents relating them to COVID-19 physiopathology and consequences. Methods: Methods: We organized a web course entitled “Special Topics in Human Physiology”, which aimed to review relevant physiology topics and relate them to COVID-19 with undergraduate students at the Federal University of Pampa. The course was held in May / 2020. The activities were carried out through synchronous meetings that took place through the Zoom platform twice a week, and asynchronous activities, using articles, case studies and online tools for active learning. After making the materials on the interaction between COVID-19 and physiological systems available, the most important points were discussed and the students' doubts were resolved in synchronous meetings. It was also proposed that students use their creativity to create flyers, schemes and drawings for publication on their social networks such as Instagram and or / Facebook in order to contribute to the dissemination of information about COVID-19 and to avoid the divulgation of “fake news”. This proposal was approved by the Institutional Education Committee (Research Ethics Committee No. 10,069. 20). Results: Results: 37 students that participated in the course answered our evaluation questionnaire (a response rate of 74%), students were asked if they ever had thought about the relationship of the different systems studied in Human Physiology course with the COVID-19 previously, 75.7% said “no”. Besides, 94.6% of the students affirmed that they shared information related to COVID-19 with their social group (family, friends, co-workers, etc.), yet, 97.3% said that the information discussed in the course helped them to select better sources of News and all the participants consider that establishing this relationship contributed and will impact their academic formation. Still, 86.5% said that their concern about the seriousness of the pandemic had increased after the course, 97.3%of students affirmed that studying the interactions of Sars-CoV-2 with the different body systems helped to understand better the CoViD-19. In addition, 75.7% of students considered that they learned “much” with this strategy of making relationships between physiology and COVID-19. We also asked if the course contributed to making the participants able to identify fake news about COVID-19 easily;94.6% said that contributed a lot. Besides, 81.1% of the participants thought that studying the action mechanisms of soap and hand sanitizer helped them much to understand the importance of hygiene care. Regarding the way in which the physiology topics related to CoVID-19 were worked, 59.5% considered it excellent, and 40.5% good. Conclusions and Support Conclusion: We conclude that contextualizing physiological content with daily life situations, such as COVID-19, has a significant impact on the students' learning, and this type of method can be adopted in the web teaching, using online platforms. Additionally, this practice has an impact in the daily life of students, influencing their decisions and practices.