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Course syllabus

Human Anatomy and Physiology I — Syllabus

Human Anatomy and Physiology I Free sample edition

Human Anatomy and Physiology I is a 4-unit, lower-division undergraduate course offered at [Institution] in [Term]. The 4 units are 3 of lecture and 1 of lab. The class meets in person twice a week for about 75 minutes each time: [Meeting days/times]. The fourth unit is the weekly A&P Lab & Inquiry, a hands-on lab of about two hours that you run on a free virtual anatomy atlas, a virtual microscope, a free physiology simulation, or a simple at-home measurement.

This syllabus is the governing document for the course. It tells you what the course is, how your grade is built, what happens each week, and the policies you can count on. Weeks are numbered from Week 1 to Week 16; your instructor's course site gives the due date for each item.

Instructor and Contact

Instructor: [Instructor name]
Contact: [Contact info]
Office hours: [Office hours]

Bring a specific question to office hours, such as a pair of terms that keep trading places in your head or a process whose steps will not stay in order, and reach out early: a question asked in the week it comes up is far easier to answer than one saved for exam week. Check the course announcements at the start of each week.

Course Description

This is the first semester of the standard two-semester anatomy and physiology sequence, the gateway course that nearly every nursing and allied-health program requires. It assumes high-school biology and chemistry as background. It teaches the anatomist's and the physiologist's way of thinking: read every structure in a fixed order, structure, then function, then the clinical connection; read every directional term from the anatomical position; hold the order of a process as a fact, not a suggestion; and put a number on physiology's quantitative questions with every step shown and every value carrying its unit. Two lenses run through every week: structure determines function, and homeostasis keeps the inside of the body steady while the outside changes.

The course climbs the levels of organization: the language and the chemistry before the cell, the cell before the tissue, and the tissue before the systems. It opens with the language of the body, its levels of organization, and homeostasis as a feedback loop. It then turns to the chemistry of life, the cell and how substances cross its membrane, an overview of how a cell makes its energy and builds its proteins, the four tissue types, the skin as the first whole organ, and bone as a living tissue, with the midterm as a checkpoint in Week 8. The second half takes up the skeleton and its joints, muscle tissue and the physiology of contraction, the muscular system, nervous tissue and the action potential, the central nervous system, the peripheral and autonomic nervous system, and, as the synthesis, the special senses.

Two habits carry the whole course. Every time you meet a process, such as the steps of a muscle contraction, the phases of the action potential, the reflex arc, or the path light and sound take, you say its steps in order and name where each one happens, because in this course the order is a gradable fact. Every time you meet a number, you show each step of the arithmetic, keep its unit, and end with one plain sentence about what it means. The course's recurring quantitative questions are the tenfold pH step and the blood's buffered range, tonicity predicted from concentrations in mOsm/L, the membrane-potential values in mV, a heart rate in beats per minute, a reaction-time ruler drop in centimeters, a grip-fatigue count, and a lever ratio.

This is Anatomy and Physiology I, not Anatomy and Physiology II. The cardiovascular, lymphatic and immune, respiratory, digestive, urinary, endocrine, and reproductive systems belong to the second semester, and a hormone is named here only where a loop the course covers needs it. It is not a biochemistry course: cellular respiration and protein synthesis are taught as ordered overviews. The membrane potential is taught at the level of its values, phases, and ions, with no equilibrium-potential derivations, and the major bones, muscles, nerves, and brain regions the course names are the whole list, not the start of a longer catalog.

A note on clinical connections and your own measurements

Each structure you study ends with a clinical connection: one condition, named in plain, standard clinical terms, that shows what the structure or process does. The connection stops there. Nothing in this course is medical advice, and no material in it covers treatment, dosage, or screening. This course is an introduction to the science of the body; it does not train or certify any clinical skill.

Some labs ask you to measure your own body, such as a pulse count or a grip count. Any value you record is your own value, never a norm to meet, and the tables in the course are illustrative. Sex-based anatomical differences are described in standard, neutral anatomical terms, by structure.

Required Materials

You buy no textbook and pay nothing for course materials. Every reading and video is a link to an external resource, opened from the week's page so you always reach the version the course teaches from. Beyond a web browser, you need:

Free virtual labs and a spreadsheet: the weekly A&P Lab & Inquiry links the free tools it uses: a virtual anatomy atlas or 3D anatomy viewer, a virtual microscope for reading tissue slides, free physiology simulations from PhET, and a spreadsheet (Google Sheets or any free spreadsheet) for the data tables. A calculator, or pencil and paper, works for checking the arithmetic by hand.
A few everyday items for the at-home measurements: a phone or any clock with a seconds display for timing, a blank card for the blind-spot demonstration, and a small piece of a food you already eat for the taste test. Each lab page lists exactly what it needs.
A free account with one approved AI chatbot, from the list in the AI-Use Policy below. A free tier is enough for everything in this course, and every AI-based activity also has a route that needs no AI at all.

Measuring yourself at home

Several labs measure your own body: a grip-fatigue count, a pulse taken at rest and after a minute of brisk activity, a blind-spot test, and a taste test with your nose pinched. Stop at any pain or discomfort. You never have to measure yourself to complete a lab: each measurement lab prints an illustrative series or set of descriptions you can work from instead, for the same credit. The lab is graded on your method, your arithmetic, and your reasoning, never on your own value matching anyone else's.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course you will be able to:

Outcome A. Structure, function, and homeostasis — connect the structure of a cell, tissue, organ, or organ system to its physiological function, state a physiological process as an ordered sequence, and trace a feedback loop that returns a variable toward its set point.
Outcome B. Anatomical literacy and quantitative physiology — use anatomical terminology and the anatomical position correctly, identify structures and tissue types from their features, and work the course's quantitative pockets (the pH step, tonicity from concentrations, the membrane-potential values, a measured heart rate or reaction time) with every step shown and every value carrying its unit.

The eight course objectives below build toward those two outcomes. Each week's Start Here page turns the week's objective into a short checklist of what you should be able to do by the end of the week.

Use the language of the body correctly — the anatomical position, the directional-term pairs, the three body planes, and the body cavities and abdominal regions — distinguish anatomy from physiology, climb the levels of structural organization, list the functions and requirements of human life, and trace a homeostatic feedback loop through its receptor, control center, and effector, telling negative feedback from positive feedback.
Relate the chemistry of the body to its function — atoms and the three bond types, water's properties, the logarithmic pH scale with the blood's buffered range, and the four classes of organic compounds — and explain the cell's membrane, organelles, and transport (diffusion, osmosis and tonicity, active transport, and bulk transport), the overview of how a cell makes ATP, and how a gene is read into a protein.
Identify the four primary tissue types and their subtypes from their structural features, name an epithelium by its layers and cell shape, and describe the layers, accessory structures, and homeostatic functions of the integumentary system, including thermoregulation as a negative-feedback loop.
Describe bone as a living tissue — its functions, the gross and microscopic anatomy of a long bone, the four bone cells, ossification, growth, remodeling, and the calcium-homeostasis loop — and sort the skeleton into its axial and appendicular divisions by region while classifying joints by structure, function, and movement.
Explain skeletal-muscle structure from the whole muscle to the sarcomere, the sliding-filament model, and the ordered steps of excitation, contraction, and relaxation at the neuromuscular junction and inside the fiber, and describe the organization of the muscular system — origin and insertion, muscle teams, lever classes, and the major muscles by region and action.
Describe the structure of neurons and neuroglia and explain the physiology of the nerve impulse — the resting membrane potential, the ordered phases of the action potential with the ion that drives each, the all-or-none principle, saltatory conduction, and chemical transmission across a synapse.
Describe the organization of the nervous system — the brain's major regions and their functions, the spinal cord, the meninges, cerebrospinal fluid, and the reflex arc in the central nervous system; the cranial and spinal nerves, afferent and efferent traffic, and the somatic and autonomic divisions in the peripheral nervous system; and the opposing sympathetic and parasympathetic branches as a homeostatic pair.
Explain the special senses — vision, hearing and equilibrium, taste, and smell — by tracing each stimulus through the structures of its sense organ to the receptor that converts it into a nerve signal, and relate the structure of each organ to its function.

How this course works

Every module presents the same content in three ways — a chapter to read, a slide deck with speaker notes, and captioned videos — so you can choose how to take it in. Each module's lecture page carries the week's explanation as one spoken-style walk-through as well.

A typical week runs in this order:

Start Here. Open the week's module overview. It lists the week's items in order with time estimates and names the week's checkpoint, the one thing you should be able to do by the end of the week.
Chapter (about 30 to 55 minutes). The week's primary reading. Read it first.
Lecture page and slide deck (about 15 to 20 minutes for the lecture, plus time with the deck). The same ideas, explained aloud and in slides.
Readings and videos. An optional go-deeper menu; every video has captions.
Lecture tutorial (60 to 90 minutes). A one-on-one session with your chatbot that teaches, gives practice, and ends with a summary you submit.
Practice set (about 20 minutes). Ungraded practice with a coach, at your own pace.
A&P Lab & Inquiry (about 2 hours). The week's idea tested by hand: you write a hypothesis, follow a step-by-step procedure on a virtual atlas, a virtual microscope, a physiology simulation, or a simple at-home measurement, complete an identification table or a data table with the arithmetic shown, explain the result in words, and then catch and correct a slip your chatbot makes on the same table.
Discussion (about 45 minutes) and assignment (about 60 to 90 minutes). Where you put the week's ideas to work on a real question, such as why a typical IV fluid is isotonic or how a slow, deep breath nudges the body's calming branch.
Quiz. A short auto-graded check of what you now know, taken on your own.

Week 8 is lighter: the chapter, lecture, slides, readings, practice set, and discussion, then the study guide, exam-prep tutorial, practice exam, and midterm. Its one piece of new material is the three-step read: for any structure, name it, state its function, name the clinical connection in standard terms, and stop. Week 16 has no new module; it holds the final exam and its study guide, practice exam, and exam-prep tutorial.

Grading

Your course grade is the weighted average of the six groups below. The weights sum to 100%.

Grading weight by assessment group
Component	Weight
Tutorials & Practice	10%
Quizzes	10%
Workshops	20%
Assignments	25%
Discussions	15%
Exams	20%
Total	100%

What each group holds

Tutorials & Practice: the 14 weekly lecture tutorials, 5 points each. The practice sets sit beside them and are ungraded.
Quizzes: 14 weekly quizzes, 10 points each, in every module except Week 8.
Workshops: the 14 weekly A&P Lab & Inquiry labs, 50 points each, in every module except Week 8.
Assignments: 14 weekly assignments, 100 points each, in every module except Week 8.
Discussions: 15 weekly discussions, 10 points each, one in every module from Week 1 to Week 15.
Exams: the midterm in Week 8 (50 points) and the cumulative final in Week 16 (100 points).

Each week's discussion and assignment ship in two versions. The adaptive version is published and graded by default. A traditional version that uses no AI is also in the module, unpublished; your instructor may publish it instead. An unpublished version does not appear to you and does not count. A published traditional version takes the adaptive one's place in the same group, for the same points.

Letter grades follow the standard scheme:

Letter grade by final course percentage
Letter	Percentage range
A	90–100
B	80–89
C	70–79
D	60–69
F	below 60

Weekly Schedule

The course runs for sixteen weeks: fifteen weeks of modules and a finals week. Every module from Week 1 to Week 15 holds the same materials: the Start Here page, the chapter, the lecture page (titled "Lecture:" followed by the module's title), the slide deck, the readings and videos page, and the practice set. Every module also ships both an adaptive discussion and a traditional no-AI alternative, and every module except Week 8 ships both an adaptive assignment and a traditional no-AI alternative. The adaptive versions are graded and published; the traditional alternatives are unpublished by default and count only if your instructor publishes them instead.

Weekly focus, lecture page, published graded work, and unpublished traditional alternatives by week
Week	Focus	Lecture page	Graded and published	Traditional alternative (unpublished)
1	Body Organization, Homeostasis & Anatomical Terminology	Lecture: Body Organization, Homeostasis & Anatomical Terminology	Tutorial, A&P Lab & Inquiry, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
2	The Chemistry of Life	Lecture: The Chemistry of Life	Tutorial, A&P Lab & Inquiry, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
3	The Cell & Membrane Transport	Lecture: The Cell & Membrane Transport	Tutorial, A&P Lab & Inquiry, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
4	Cellular Energy & Protein Synthesis (overview)	Lecture: Cellular Energy & Protein Synthesis (overview)	Tutorial, A&P Lab & Inquiry, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
5	Tissues	Lecture: Tissues	Tutorial, A&P Lab & Inquiry, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
6	The Integumentary System	Lecture: The Integumentary System	Tutorial, A&P Lab & Inquiry, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
7	The Skeletal System: Bone Tissue & Structure	Lecture: The Skeletal System: Bone Tissue & Structure	Tutorial, A&P Lab & Inquiry, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
8	Midterm Review & Exam	Lecture: Midterm Review & Exam	Adaptive discussion, midterm exam	Discussion
9	The Skeleton & Joints	Lecture: The Skeleton & Joints	Tutorial, A&P Lab & Inquiry, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
10	Muscle Tissue & the Physiology of Contraction	Lecture: Muscle Tissue & the Physiology of Contraction	Tutorial, A&P Lab & Inquiry, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
11	The Muscular System	Lecture: The Muscular System	Tutorial, A&P Lab & Inquiry, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
12	Nervous Tissue, the Neuron & the Action Potential	Lecture: Nervous Tissue, the Neuron & the Action Potential	Tutorial, A&P Lab & Inquiry, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
13	The Central Nervous System	Lecture: The Central Nervous System	Tutorial, A&P Lab & Inquiry, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
14	The Peripheral & Autonomic Nervous System	Lecture: The Peripheral & Autonomic Nervous System	Tutorial, A&P Lab & Inquiry, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
15	The Special Senses	Lecture: The Special Senses	Tutorial, A&P Lab & Inquiry, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
16	Finals week (no module)	None	Final exam	None

The midterm in Week 8 covers Weeks 1 to 7, which is Objectives 1 to 4. The final in Week 16 is cumulative and draws on every course objective: the language of the body, its organization, and homeostasis (Objective 1), the chemistry of the body and the cell with its membrane, transport, energy, and protein synthesis (Objective 2), the tissues and the integumentary system (Objective 3), bone tissue, the skeleton, and joints (Objective 4), muscle structure, contraction, and the muscular system (Objective 5), neurons and the nerve impulse (Objective 6), the organization of the nervous system, central, peripheral, and autonomic (Objective 7), and the special senses (Objective 8). Both exams come with a study guide, a practice exam, and an exam-prep tutorial you work with your chatbot.

Attendance and Participation

This course meets in person twice a week, and the weekly lab adds about two hours of hands-on work. Come to class having opened the week's Start Here page and read the chapter, because class time builds on that reading with labeled figures, worked examples, and questions. Your participation also shows in your weekly work: the tutorial, the A&P Lab & Inquiry, the discussion, the assignment, and the quiz. Each week builds on the vocabulary and the processes of the weeks before it, so falling a week behind is the most common reason a grade slips; keep to the weekly rhythm and talk to your instructor the moment you feel lost. If you must miss class, follow the week's module from its Start Here page so you stay on pace.

Late Work

Late work loses 10% of the item's points for each day it is late. If something serious comes up, such as an illness or a family emergency, contact your instructor before the due date whenever you can so the two of you can agree on a fair plan. The penalty exists to keep the course moving, not to punish genuine hardship.

Academic Integrity

The work you submit must be your own, and you are bound by your institution's academic integrity standard. Do not copy another student's work, do not submit work you did not do, and do not misrepresent how a piece of work was produced. In a course built on evidence, integrity also means honest data: every number in a lab table must be one you measured, one the lab page supplied, or one you computed and showed, and every label must be one you checked. Three violations matter most in this course: presenting an invented measurement, study, or figure as real, including one a chatbot supplied; fabricating or doctoring a chatbot conversation or its share link; and using AI on the quizzes, the midterm, or the final. Violations are handled under your institution's academic integrity process and may result in no credit for the item.

Accessibility and Disability

This course is designed to reflect universal-design principles and offers multiple means of representation, engagement, and expression. If you have a disability and need an accommodation, contact your institution's disability services office to arrange it, and let your instructor know so it can be put in place promptly. If any material is hard to use with your assistive technology, tell your instructor and an equivalent version will be provided. Labeled figures, tissue slides, and traces are described in words as well as drawn. This course is not yet accessibility-certified, and your feedback helps improve it. The course page Accessibility & Inclusion in Module 0 explains how the course offers multiple modes, how to turn on captions, and how to request an accommodation.

AI-Use Policy

This course uses an AI chatbot as a study partner, and then asks you to check its work against the course's labels, orders, and numbers. Use any one of the approved chatbots: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, or Microsoft Copilot. Your instructor may edit this list. Free tiers are fine, and Copilot is often included with a campus Microsoft 365 account.

AI may be used on these activities:

Lecture tutorials (completed with a chatbot). Each week you work the tutorial in a conversation with an approved chatbot, then submit the conversation share link and your completion summary.
Practice sets (ungraded). You work the practice exercises with a chatbot coach.
Adaptive discussions (completed with a chatbot). You hold a real-time dialogue with an approved chatbot, then post the AI's summary with the conversation share link. This version does not require replies to classmates.
Adaptive assignments (AI-coached). You work the problems with a chatbot coach that scores your work against the assignment's rubric, then submit the self-scored report and the conversation share link.
A&P Lab & Inquiry (a required AI-critique step). After your own work, you paste your identification table or data table into your chatbot with the week's interpretation prompt, then catch, explain, and correct a slip in its answer by hand against the course's rules, such as a mislabeled structure, a function paired with the wrong structure, a miscomputed physiology value, the steps of contraction or the action potential out of order, a confused directional term or tissue type, or an invented figure.
Exam-prep tutorials and studying. Use AI freely to review, to check your understanding, and to prepare for the exams.

AI may not be used on the quizzes, the midterm, and the final. These are closed to AI and must be entirely your own work, because they confirm that you personally can name a structure and its function, order a process, and work a quantitative question.

A chatbot is not a source. It can explain a term or quiz you on a process, but it routinely calls the thumb medial, says pH 4 is three times more acidic than pH 7, shrinks a cell in a hypotonic bath, gives the resting potential a positive sign, reverses the meninges, or lets the parasympathetic branch speed the heart. Every label, order, and number you submit must trace to your own work, the course's pinned values, or a real source, checked by you.

If your instructor publishes a traditional alternative. A traditional discussion is your own post and your own replies to classmates; a traditional assignment is your own submitted work, graded by your instructor. AI may help you think, but you write and submit the work yourself.

Disclosure. The share link documents your AI use on the AI-based activities, so they need no separate note. For any other graded work where AI help is allowed, add one line naming the tool and how you used it.

Bring your own AI: access, cost, and privacy

Equity and a non-AI route. You never have to create an account with a chatbot company to complete this course or to reach any grade in it. Every AI-based activity in this course carries an Equivalent route (no AI required) on its own page. It assesses the same objectives, for the same points, against the same rubric. Take it whenever you like, for any reason or none; you do not have to ask permission, explain, or arrange it in advance.
Cost. A free tier of any approved chatbot covers everything in this course. No graded work depends on a paid subscription.
Privacy. Before you start, read what your chosen chatbot keeps of your conversations and how it uses them. Never paste personal information you would not want stored, including health details about yourself or your family, and remember that a share link lets anyone who has it read that conversation. If you would rather not share your own lab measurements with a chatbot, take the lab's equivalent route instead.

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