Teaching Neuroimmunology to Undergraduate Students: Resource for Full Course or Modular Implementation

Abstract

This paper describes a course I designed to teach neuroimmunology to undergraduate students. In this course I incorporated many active learning strategies to help make it a student-centered class, where they developed communication skills, while reading and analyzing primary literature articles. As the field of neuroimmunology is relatively new, most textbooks in the field approached the subject from the perspective of neurology and autoimmune diseases. Therefore, I used reading, analysis, and student-led presentation of primary papers in the classroom to not only develop critical thinking and application of the scientific method, but also oral communication skills. Other activities such as writing New York Times-style articles and literature review papers were employed to develop written communications skills. The goal of this article is to provide a reference tool for instructors trained in neuroscience to deploy an entire course on neuroimmunology or select a module or a single paper to incorporate into their existing course to offer students a taste for neuroimmunology.

Keywords: critical thinking; neuroimmunology; oral and written communication; primary literature.

Figure 1

Concept map of the immune system. The students started the concept map of the immune system after the first lecture during class, and after each lecture they added more information. This was drawn on the whiteboard during the review session at the end of module 1 and represents the culmination of all the concepts learned. Solid lines with arrow heads represent development of cells or effect of molecules. Dotted lines with arrow heads represent movement of cells. Asterisks represent activation. (DC = dendritic cells, NØ = neutrophils, MØ = macrophages, NK = natural killer cells, C3 = complement component 3, MAC = membrane attack complex, B = B cells, T = T cells, FDC = follicular dendritic cells, SP = single positive, DP = double positive, CTL = cytotoxic T lymphocyte, TCR = T cell receptor, MHC = major histocompatibility complex).