Educators can engage students in bioscience topics by relating course content to careers and showing real-world applications. For example, anatomy and physiology classes could highlight the skills needed in the bioscience workforce and new career opportunities. Effective lessons introduce topics through activities, images, questions or technology that gain students' attention and focus them on the day's lesson.

1. “Do We Have to Tap Dance on a Desk to Get
Students’ Attention?”
Educators can use instructional design to
“hook” students by contextualizing
advancements in biotechnology, focusing on
Anatomy and Physiology Classes, for example,
in order to show the relevance of bioscience
workforce skills to highlight new career
opportunities.
NSF-ATE Grant #1304010 Bioscience Industry Fellowship Project
Tandeka Boko, MD

2. Heutagogy
(Kenyon & Hase, 2001)

3. Instructional Event: THE HOOK
• Cognitive research on effective
learning by Gagne’ and Briggs
• Activity, Image, Question,
Quote or Technology-based Tool
that gains the learner’s
attention
• Focuses learners on the lesson
topics of the day

5. Polymerase Chain Reaction Article
• Suppose you pick up a journal and read an article on
using polymerase chain reactions (PCR) and gel
electrophoresis to predict one’s bitter tasting ability.
• If the PCR product made from the gene coding for the
bitter taste receptor is assigned (T) for the taster allele
and (t) for the non-taster allele,
• What is the likely genotype of the person in the next
slide?

6. What Is Her Most Likely Genotype?
(Heredity Lab on Inheritance)

7. What two basic properties of positive and negative
charges did the developer of this model use, in
order to give this insulin molecule stability in its 3D
conformation (Aspart Insulin)?

8. Hint #1: Anion Exchange
Chromatography Columns

9. How do Positive and Negative Charges
Relate to Nanoscience Biomimicry?
Fruit Fly Foot (Joint School of
Nanoscience and Nanoengineering)
Geico Hairs on Foot (Joint School of
Nanoscience and Nanoengineering)

10. Immunology and Nanocones on Cicada
Wings (JSNN)

11. Concept of a Million Nephrons in the Kidney
Decellularized Kidney (WFIRM) Traditional Textbook Nephron (Wiley)

12. BIOSCIENCE
INDUSTRY
CAREERS

13. Take Aways
• 1. Consider Heutagogy (Kenyan and Hase, 2001) as an approach to
teaching and learning whereby one strategy is to use Differentiated
Instructional Design (Tomlinson, 2013) to facilitate interdependent
learning.
• 2. Present the “Hook” Often
• 3. Though one does not have to be immersed in biosciences to
present the “hook” in the classroom, becoming a Bioscience Industry
Project Fellow saves time, makes the hooks easier to collect and gives
one a story to tell.