Project Info
Characterizing image diversity in anatomy and physiology textbooks
Justin Shaffer
jshaffer@mines.edu
Anatomy and physiology textbooks for both undergraduate and medical courses use drawings or photographs of people to illustrate anatomical and physiological principles. However, analysis of images from medical textbooks has shown that they predominantly show white, male, and healthy individuals, which is not reflective of the overall population who are using these textbooks for their education nor of the population that these students may treat as future healthcare professionals. The goal of this project is to further characterize undergraduate anatomy and physiology textbooks to examine if this trend holds as these textbooks are much more widely used than medical textbooks.
More Information:
Grand Challenge: Not applicable
See this link for a sample study on this topic:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28343109/
Primary Contacts:
Justin Shaffer
Student Preparation
Qualifications
-Proficiency with excel
-Basic understanding of statistics
-Willingness to explore social science and education research
-Self-starter, motivated, and curious
TIME COMMITMENT (HRS/WK)
3
SKILLS/TECHNIQUES GAINED
Students will learn how to:
– design educational research studies
– search for and interpret educational literature
– enter data and store data appropriately
– analyze data with excel and R
– summarize and present results both orally and in writing
MENTORING PLAN
At the start of the project, the student and Dr. Shaffer will share expectations for what each of them want out of the mentoring relationship. There will be weekly meetings, at which time research-course-life balance will be discussed, in addition to the progress on the research project. More formal mid-term and end-of-semester discussions will take place to ensure that goals and expectations are being met and that all is going well with the research experience.
PREFERRED STUDENT STATUS
Junior
Senior