Given my role as primary convenor of the Neuroscience Fundamentals (NEUR2001) course in 2021, I took the opportunity to enhance course design further. For example, as the co-convenor in 2020 I realised that some of the Psychology students especially struggled with elements of the content as evidenced from the myExperience survey that year: ‘I’m studying psychology…I’m fascinated by neuronal activity … I felt that I was at disadvantage because I did not have an anatomy background…’.

Recognising that 10-15% of learners in this course have no prior knowledge of basic neurophysiology, anatomy and cell biology, I therefore introduced several learning activities in 2021 specifically to address student diversity and cater for different levels of knowledge. One of these learning activities was a 20-minute pre-recorded video that addressed cellular diversity, basic cellular anatomy and core concepts in molecular biology.

The myExperience survey showed overall more positive feedback from Psychology students as evidenced from the following comment: ‘…I am a psych major…loved every minute of it…The course content was challenging but achievable and it helped motivate me to keep working throughout lockdown and putting in the effort…’. Despite students feeling better equipped, data showed that there was no significant difference in marks in the fortnightly progress assessments or final course grades between Psychology students and science students in 2020 compared to 2021-2023. Thus, student perception is that the extra resources aid their understanding, but this is not reflected in the assessment outcomes.