Honorable Mention
Download the Complete Paper as a PDF file
Developed by:
Stacy S. Klein
University School of Nashville
Nashville, TN
Learning Objectives:
This curriculum unit addresses many national standards set forth by AAAS, National Science Teachers Association, and the National Research Council?s National Science Education Standards.
- Students will be able to identify the critical characteristics of an ECG (also known as EKG from the German Electrokardiogram) trace and describe how these relate to the cycle of a beating heart.
- Students will be able to explain how the heart generates electrical signals.
- Students will learn about electric dipoles and electric fields in a unique and interesting context.
- Students will be able to relate the parameters of a cardiac disease to its effect on the ECG.
 Necessary Materials:
While no particular activity is essential to the success of this module, given the ideal conditions a classroom would require the following materials:
- an ECG machine or a set of TI graphing calculators with the Vernier ChemBio program, a set of Texas Instruments CBLs (Calculator Based Laboratories), and Vernier ECG sensors (strongly recommended)
- Interactive Physiology Software's cardiac module (entirely optional)
- Three-dimensional heart model (recommended)
- Galvanometer (0 to 25mV), 2 forty-cm strips of copper wire, 400mL beaker, 3M sodium chloride solution, 22-cm strip of dialysis tubing, 3M potassium chloride solution, rubber band for the "Constructing a Model of Nerve Cell Transmission" experiment published by Evan P. Silberstein in the January 1981 issue of The Science Teacher (recommended)
- Conductive paper, conductive ink pen, conductive tacks, corkboard, voltmeter or calculator, CBL, and voltage sensor for the electric field lab (recommended)
Project Phases:
The grand challenge introduces the curriculum unit. This grand challenge is then followed by three challenge questions that guide students to answer the grand challenge question. Each challenge question follows the Legacy Cycle (Schwartz, D. L., Lin, X., Brophy, S., & Bransford, J. D. (1999) Toward the development of flexibly adaptive instructional designs. In Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional Design Theories and Models: Volume II. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.).
 The Legacy Cycle is composed of six different phases of learning, beginning with the aforementioned challenge question. The next stage is to "generate ideas" where students talk about what they already know about the challenge question. "Multiple perspectives" are introduced, allowing experts to point out ideas that students may not have considered and to guide their initial learning. The stage "Research and Revise" allows students to pursue the areas in which they identified as useful and relevant. This stage usually consists of teacher lectures, laboratories, demonstrations, homework, etc. "Test Your Mettle" is the stage where students begin to state their newly discovered information in a way that receives feedback from the instructor. Students may return to "Research and Revise" after testing their mettle. Finally, students "Go Public" with their final answer to the challenge question.
It is important to note that this curriculum is specifically designed to be flexible. A teacher may decide to omit particular activities if the learning objectives of that particular activity do not meet the learning objectives of the class or if the material is too difficult.
The full project PDF file describes the learning cycles for this curriculum unit in more detail, includes a general timeline for implementation follows the legacy cycles, as well as assessment criteria and expectations.
 Alignment with National Standards:
Learning objectives 1 and 4 are particularly relevant to the AAAS's Benchmark for Physical Health: "Students should relate their knowledge of normal body functioning to situations, both hereditary and environmental, in which functioning is impaired. As they come across medical news in the media, students can identify new ways of detection, diagnosis, treatment, prevention, or monitoring. They should routinely try to find explanations for various disease conditions in physiological, molecular, or systems terms."
Learning objectives 1-4 are relevant to the NSTA's Content Core in that the topics of matter, energy, electricity and magnetism, properties of matter, nature of chemical change, and the properties of living things are addressed in the module.
 Lastly, many of the National Science Education Standards are met through the learning objectives. Specifically, Content Standards A-G are met; Teaching Standards A-E are met; and Assessment Standards A &C are met. Particular highlights include the adaptivity of the curriculum to suit the students, the inquiry based learning, the self-assessment of learning that the students go through, the extended length of the investigations and the perseverance that students developed, as well as the authentic assessments.
Resources:
Contact Information:
Stacy S. Klein, Ph.D.
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Box 351631, Station B
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN 37235
E-mail: stacy.s.klein@vanderbilt.edu
Stacy S. Klein
Math, Physics, and Biomedical Physics Teacher
University School of Nashville
2000 Edgehill Avenue
Nashville, TN 37212
E-mail: sklein@usn.org |
