A Cross-Disciplinary Assignment to Foster Critical Thinking and Enhance Understanding in a Physiology Master’s Program

Critical thinking and the ability to apply concepts across disciplines are essential skills for graduate students in physiology, particularly those pursuing careers in medicine and research. We designed an assignment that required students to integrate knowledge of concepts in one class to another topic of study in a concurrent class to encourage cross-discipline application of theories. Eleven students completing an MS in Physiology enrolled in both a graduate introductory pharmacology and an introductory neurophysiology class were required to complete the “Make the Connection” presentation that bridged concepts covered in two classes. We hypothesized that requiring students to make the connection between concepts learned in two classes and requiring interdisciplinary thought would deepen students’ understanding of the material in both classes. The assignment was an individual presentation that contributed towards the final grade of the introduction to pharmacology course. Students were allowed to choose the topic within the parameters stipulated and were graded according to a detailed rubric. Following the assignment, students completed a Likert-scale survey to record their experiences with the assignment. In the results of the survey, 91% of the students agreed that the assignment was a valuable part of the course and 82% believed it increased their understanding of material in both classes. As many as 36% of students reported that making a connection between material covered in both classes did make the assignment more challenging. In addition, 82% of Students reported that the assignment made them feel more confident in their presentation skills and some students reported the assignment provided an opportunity to focus on the cross-talk of scientific concepts between disciplines. We have just had a single cohort of students complete this assignment and students reported wanting more feedback on their presentations and clarity on grading. We intend to continue to use this assignment in future iterations of the course with minor changes to improve the quality of feedback and clarity of grading. We intend to further explore the impact of the assignment on learning. In summary, we present some initial positive outcomes from using an assignment to assess understanding of core material, while also requiring students to apply knowledge and ideas gained in other disciplines encourages critical thinking that is potentially beneficial in future clinicians and research scientists. 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.