67 - Factors Affecting Student Success in an Introductory Human Anatomy & Physiology Course

Poster Board Number: 67
There are separate poster presentation times for odd and even posters.
Odd poster #s – first hour
Even poster #s – second hour

Abstract Body : Introduction and Objective. Despite increasing recruitment of under-represented minority (URM) groups into STEM undergraduate academic programs and courses, URM student retention in STEM is considerably less than that of non-URM peers. A systemic evaluation at the programmatic level to investigate specific barriers, opportunities, and challenges that limit URM success and retention is essential for developing STEM intervention programs designed to impact retention and persistence of URM in STEM. At the University of Hawai‘i - West O‘ahu (UHWO), roughly 90% of students identify as URM and 30% as Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI). Anatomy and Physiology (A&P) courses offered at UHWO are lower division foundational courses, taught sequentially at the beginning of several undergraduate STEM degrees. Success in gateway courses such as A&P is linked to persistence in STEM degrees. The aim of the study was to investigate factors that influence student success in an introductory level, Human Anatomy and Physiology I course.

Materials and Methods: 117 subjects (26 male and 91 female) were recruited for this study from four sections of an introductory level A&P I course. Averaged student final course grades were used to determine student success in achieving learning outcomes. Subjects were disaggregated by specific demographic information and a Chi-Square Test was performed to examine the relationship between gender, geographic location, ethnicity, and student success in A&P I.

Results: Of the total students enrolled over four semesters, 74.4% passed the course with a grade of C or higher. Chi-Square analysis found a significant association between the URM and NHPI student groups (p < 0.05) and student success, as represented by the final course grade. URM students (Pearson X2 (1, n=115) = 0.0036) and NHPI students (Pearson X2 (1, n=115) = 0.011) were more likely to fail the course than their peers.

Conclusion: Results indicated that NHPI students and URM students, the majority of the student population at both the university and within the course, are not achieving success at meeting the course learning outcomes at the same rate as other groups.

Significance/Implication: Failure to successfully pass A&P I limits students’ progression within STEM, pre-Health Professions, and/or Health Science degrees, as this course serves as a gateway course for those programs. Results from this study can help to identify factors influencing academic success, and thus retention, of under-represented groups in STEM. Future analysis will include additional academic and socioeconomic factors that may inhibit student success. Identifying factors that present obstacles to successful student completion can provide evidence for determining the factors that affect URM student successes and persistence, allowing for the development of pedagogical interventions and strategies to increase URM student retention in STEM. (Sponsored by National Science Foundation Award No. 1855379.)