Development and Second Year Enhancements of a Case/Problem-Based and Teamwork-Focused Applied Physiology Course to Graduate Students Planning to Apply to Dental School

The Master of Science in Oral Health Sciences (OHS) at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine is designed for students who wish to improve their academic preparedness for dental school admission. Oral Health Sciences students take some courses, including the first-year Dental Physiology course, alongside dental students at Boston University Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine (GSDM). Since students in the OHS program often struggle in the largely lecture-based Dental Physiology course, we developed a case/problem-based and teamwork-focused Applied Physiology course. This course has run parallel to the Dental Physiology course the past two fall semesters. The primary goal of the Applied Physiology course is to provide additional instruction and academic support and to present course material in a team-based learning mode for the OHS students. We hypothesized that this approach to learning physiology would help to improve student mastery of physiology content critical to their future success. The objective of the current study was to assess the effectiveness of the new Applied Physiology course in enhancing OHS students' motivation and academic performance in the Dental Human Physiology course. We are evaluating the benefits of this course by comparing Dental Physiology final grades and individual exam grades between dental students and OHS students from 2018 to 2023. In addition, we are comparing course performance for OHS students from previous class years (2018 to 2022) who did not take the Applied Physiology course against students from the past two academic years who took the course. When we tested whether the difference in means between dental students and OHS students in 2023 was different than between groups prior to 2023, we found that dental students scored 5% higher on average than OHS students before 2023. In 2023, however, dental students only scored 1% higher than OHS students. We also tested whether the pattern of mean scores over time differed between dental and OHS students. Dental student scores remained relatively stable from 2018-2023, while OHS student scores decreased and increased over time. Analysis and comparisons for individual course exams for the dental and OHS students are ongoing. In addition, analysis of a validated survey containing Likert-style questions to quantify how the new course enhances motivation, engagement, and perceived benefits of student learning is underway. Based on feedback from students who took the course in the first year, faculty have modified the in-class sessions in the second year of the course slightly to include more practice exam questions. Our results indicate that additional team and case/problem-based support can improve academic performance for students hoping to gain admission to Dental School. Graduate Medical Sciences at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine This abstract was presented at the American Physiology Summit 2025 and is only available in HTML format. There is no downloadable file or PDF version. The Physiology editorial board was not involved in the peer review process.