Physiology Questions
The goal of our multi-institution NSF-funded project is to help students at all academic levels develop the ability to reason using the principles of flux and mass balance.
Principle-based Reasoning in Physiology
A major goal of the undergraduate physiology curriculum is for students to learn to reason like physiologists. That is, to learn to reason using the unifying principles of physiology. Two of these principles are flux and mass balance.
Flux
Passive movement of matter down gradients is proportional to gradient over resistance.

Mass Balance
Change in amount of a substance in a compartment is determined by the relative magnitudes of the rates in and out.

It is a major challenge for students to use principles to reason across all physiological systems, in both plants and animals.
Students tend to focus on and memorize the superficial features of each process rather than recognize that the same principle (e.g., gradient over resistance) governs them all.
Our Project
Our our multi-institution NSF-funded project is developing resources to help faculty address this issue for all students. Including:
We have developed a large number of questions across a wide range of topics that are available for instructors to use to determine where their students are in their development of principle-based reasoning.
We have also developed a reasoning framework that describes how students’ ideas increase in sophistication as they move along the path to mastery of principle-based reasoning.
Open-ended questions best allow students to express their ideas, but they are time-consuming to evaluate. Therefore, we are developing computer scoring models to automatically score students’ answers according to the reasoning framework. This will help instructors determine where students are in their development of principle-based reasoning. Click here to read more about this work.
By participating in this project, your students’ answers will contribute to improving our reasoning framework and computer scoring models to ensure they accurately represent the ideas of diverse populations of students.
Are you interested in learning more about how your students reason about physiology?
We are recruiting faculty to use our physiology questions in the 2019-2020 school year. How does it work? There are three easy steps!
Step One
Choose which of the following set of questions you would like to give your students. Indicate your choice in the sign up form (click on the “Sign up!” tab above).
This year we have eight question sets to choose from.
Neuromuscular Physiology A
Neuromuscular Physiology B
Cardiovascular Physiology
Respiratory Physiology
Renal Physiology
Plant Physiology A
Plant Physiology B
Multiple systems
Step Two
We send you a link to a web survey with the questions.
Your students answer the questions.
Have questions about how to administer the Physiology Questions? Click on the “Phys Questions FAQs” tab above.
Do you have a question not answered on the FAQ? Please email us!
Step Three
We send you your students’ answers and a link to an interactive scoring report for some of the questions.
You explore your students’ answers and gain valuable insight into their reasoning. See an example interactive report here.
We have a scoring report ready for at least one question for each set with more added every month.
Do you want to know more about our project? Please click on the “About Project” tab above.
Do you have a question not answered on the FAQ? Please email us!

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1661263, 1660643. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.