Week 15 — Capture, Then Convert: A Special-Senses Key Report

Assignment 14 of the term — count the special-senses key, put the light path and the ossicles in order, choose the right structure for three puzzling moments, and explain to someone new why food tastes flat during a cold.

This adaptive assignment uses a coaching dialogue to help you turn a first attempt into a clear, evidence-based report. You stay the author: the coach asks questions, checks the reasoning you show, and waits for you to revise before it writes its report. Week 6 showed that the skin senses touch, surface temperature, and pain, and Week 13 placed vision in the occipital lobe and hearing in the temporal lobe; this week you follow light, sound, head motion, and chemicals into the sense organs that capture and convert them. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and A&P Lab & Inquiry work the same ideas from other angles; this assignment is where you put them together.

The task

This week's shared dataset is the special-senses key: canonical structures, orders, and counts, with no measured data. There are 5 receptor classes (chemoreceptor, mechanoreceptor, photoreceptor, thermoreceptor, nociceptor); light passes 4 structures (cornea → pupil → lens → retina); sound passes 6 structures from the eardrum (tympanic membrane → malleus → incus → stapes → oval window → cochlea); each ear holds 3 ossicles; and taste buds respond to 5 basic tastes (sweet, salty, sour, bitter, umami).

Work these four problems, showing your arithmetic:

1. Light passes 4 structures on its path through the eye, and the last one converts it into a nerve signal. How many structures come before the conversion?
2. From the eardrum, sound passes 1 tympanic membrane, 3 ossicles, 1 oval window, and 1 cochlea. How many structures does it pass in all?
3. The skin carries 3 receptor classes for touch, temperature, and pain, and the special senses add 2 more classes, one for light and one for chemicals. How many receptor classes is that in all?
4. The special-senses key counts 5 receptor classes, 4 light-path structures, 6 sound-path structures, 3 ossicles in each ear, and 5 basic tastes. How many items does the key hold in all?

Beside each answer, add one brief interpretation:

• Problem 1: list the light path in order, and say which two structures share the focusing and which one changes shape for near and far objects.
• Problem 2: name the ossicles in order from the eardrum, and say where the vibration becomes a nerve signal and which receptor class does that work.
• Problem 3: name the skin's three receptor classes with the stimulus each one detects, and name the two classes the special senses add with one sense that uses each.
• Problem 4 (choose the tool): this is the last assignment of the term, so it asks you to choose among methods you already know. For each of three made-up moments — a dark room where a red shirt and a blue shirt look the same gray, a room that keeps spinning after an office chair stops, and a dot that vanishes on the dot-and-cross card — choose which of this week's tools explains it (rods versus cones, the cochlea versus the semicircular canals, or the optic disc and the blind spot), justify the choice from the moment itself, and say why one plausible alternative fits less well.

Explain it to a non-expert

A relative says, "Every time I catch a cold, my food tastes like cardboard. Is my tongue broken?" Write a 3–5 sentence message that explains, in everyday words, that the taste buds still respond to the five basic tastes, that a blocked nose keeps a food's aroma from reaching the smell receptors high in the nose, and that flavor is mostly smell. Name one limit, for example that this message is about how the senses work and is not a diagnosis of anyone. Put any technical term in everyday words. More than one good message is possible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a cousin who asks why hot sauce is not on the list of basic tastes. Model answer: "Your tongue has taste buds that report five basic tastes: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami, which is the savory one. The burn from hot sauce comes through a different kind of signal, one for pain and temperature, so it is not one of those five tastes. This is a simplified classroom picture, and it does not explain why some people enjoy the burn more than others."

Use that pattern for the message to your relative, with your own wording and evidence.

Looking ahead to the final

This is the last assignment before Week 16, which holds the cumulative final exam and no new material. The finals-week module carries a study guide, a practice exam, and an exam-prep tutorial. The choose-the-tool habit you practise in Problem 4 is the same move those materials ask for across the whole course: read the situation, name the structure or process it points to, and rule out the tempting alternative.

Part 1 — Student instructions

1. Draft all four answers, the four brief interpretations, and your message to your relative before you open a chatbot.
2. Open any course-approved chatbot. Copy the entire Coach Prompt box, including its first and last marker lines, and paste it as one message. The coach asks for your draft and then works one question at a time.
3. Answer in your own words. Show calculations when asked. Use the coach's feedback to revise at least one calculation or explanation, even if your first attempt was correct.
4. Keep going until the prompt's exit condition is met.
5. Save the chat's share link and copy the final report exactly as the coach gives it.

The chatbot is a coach, not a ghostwriter. It draws out your reasoning; it does not write the report for you.

Coach Prompt

COPY EVERYTHING BELOW THIS LINE
ROLE: You are a careful learning coach for a first-semester anatomy and physiology course. Draw out and challenge MY thinking about the special senses. Do not write my assignment for me and do not invent work I never did. Never invent a measurement, a study, a distance, or a statistic, and never offer medical advice or comment on anyone's eyesight, hearing, or health.

ASSIGNMENT: Work through these four problems in order, one at a time. Do not invent, replace, or reorder a problem. The data: the special-senses key (5 receptor classes: chemoreceptor, mechanoreceptor, photoreceptor, thermoreceptor, nociceptor; light path cornea -> pupil -> lens -> retina; sound path tympanic membrane -> malleus -> incus -> stapes -> oval window -> cochlea; 3 ossicles in each ear; 5 basic tastes: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, umami). The cornea and the lens focus light together, and the lens changes shape for near and far objects. Rods work in low light and detect no color; cones work in bright light and detect color. The optic disc has no photoreceptors and forms the blind spot. Hair cells of the cochlea, which are mechanoreceptors, convert vibration for hearing; the semicircular canals sense the head turning and the vestibule senses head position. Flavor is mostly smell, and spicy is a pain-and-temperature signal, not a taste.
PROBLEM P1: Light passes 4 structures on its path through the eye, and the last one converts it into a nerve signal. How many structures come before the conversion?
PROBLEM P2: From the eardrum, sound passes 1 tympanic membrane, 3 ossicles, 1 oval window, and 1 cochlea. How many structures does it pass in all?
PROBLEM P3: The skin carries 3 receptor classes for touch, temperature, and pain, and the special senses add 2 more classes, one for light and one for chemicals. How many receptor classes is that in all?
PROBLEM P4: The special-senses key counts 5 receptor classes, 4 light-path structures, 6 sound-path structures, 3 ossicles in each ear, and 5 basic tastes. How many items does the key hold in all?
After the four answers, I must briefly interpret each one: for P1, list the light path in order and say which two structures share the focusing and which one changes shape; for P2, name the ossicles in order from the eardrum and say where the vibration becomes a nerve signal and which receptor class does that work; for P3, name the skin's three receptor classes with their stimuli and the two classes the special senses add with one sense each; for P4, choose the tool for three moments (a dark room where two shirts look the same gray, a room that keeps spinning after a chair stops, a dot that vanishes on the card), justify each choice, and say why one plausible alternative fits less well. I must then write a 3-5 sentence message to a relative explaining that the taste buds still work during a cold, that the aroma is blocked, that flavor is mostly smell, and one limit. I must explain technical terms in everyday words.

SCORING CRITERIA: Score only evidence I supply: correct computations (40 points), sense-organ reasoning (32 points), clarity for a non-expert reader (16 points), and showing work so it can be checked (12 points). For each of P1-P4, give 2, 1, or 0 evidence units per criterion; one unit is worth 5 computation points, 4 reasoning points, 2 clarity points, or 1.5 showing-work points. Sum the four problems within each criterion. Count my relative message only with P4, for reasoning and for clarity.
COMPUTATION UNITS: A correct count in any equivalent notation = 2; the right numbers and operation with one arithmetic slip = 1; a missing count or a wrong operation = 0.
REASONING UNITS: For each problem, an interpretation that covers both named parts = 2; one accurate part = 1; none = 0. Swapping rods and cones, scrambling the light path or the ossicles, giving balance to the cochlea, or calling spicy a taste is not accurate. An arithmetic slip alone is not a reasoning error.
CLARITY UNITS: For each problem, labeled evidence a newcomer can follow, with terms in everyday words = 2; evidence that needs a reread because of an unclear label or unexplained term = 1; no readable evidence = 0. Include my relative message with P4. Missing reasoning alone does not lower clarity for otherwise clear work.
SHOWING-WORK UNITS: For each problem, numbers and steps that let a reader rebuild the count = 2; one relevant but incomplete number or step = 1; a bare result or no method = 0. A visible method stays checkable despite an arithmetic slip.

Do NOT invent grading rules.

DIALOGUE RULES: Ask exactly one question per message and wait for my answer. Start by asking for my complete first attempt. Build each next question from my exact words. Probe an unsupported claim and ask me what supports it. Keep the conversation on questions, not on finished work.

ENGAGEMENT GUARDS: A greeting, a copied prompt, a yes/no reply, or a one-word answer is not a substantive exchange. Do not flatter or treat agreement as evidence. Praise only a concrete move I made. If evidence is missing, say what is missing and ask for it. Require a real revision plus a short reflection on why the revision is better. Never score evidence I did not supply, and do not issue the report early.

EXIT CONDITION: Continue until at least five substantive exchanges have occurred AND I have supplied all four answers and their brief interpretations AND written my message to my relative AND revised at least one calculation or explanation AND reflected on the revision. Stop only after whichever requirement happens last.

REPORT: After the exit condition is satisfied, output exactly these labelled lines in this order. Replace X with the exact earned score; it may end in .5 and must not be rounded. Base every line only on evidence in this chat; write "Not supplied" for missing evidence and never raise the score for polished chatbot prose.
STUDENT'S SCORE: X/100
EVIDENCE FOR THE SCORE: [specific evidence from my counts and reasoning]
REVISION MADE: [what I changed and why]
STRENGTH: [one earned strength]
NEXT STEP: [one concrete improvement]
Then tell me to submit this report, my revised Week 15 special-senses report, and the share link.
COPY EVERYTHING ABOVE THIS LINE

Deliverables

Submit these three items in the assignment entry:

• your revised Week 15 special-senses report with all four answers, their brief interpretations, and your message to your relative — written, or recorded as audio or video with a transcript, or as a labeled sketch of the eye and the ear with the light and sound paths marked and a short note; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria;
• the coach's five-line report; and
• the conversation share link.

Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

This route assesses the same Week 15 skills — counting the special-senses key, putting the light path and the ossicles in order, matching the skin's receptor classes to their stimuli, choosing the right structure for a puzzling moment, and explaining flavor in plain words — for comparable time and effort, about 60 to 90 minutes, the same as the coached route. Complete the same four problems, the four brief interpretations, and the message to your relative. Then audit your own first draft against the attached scoring criteria, one criterion at a time, and write a second draft. Add a 150–200 word revision memo that names one count or explanation you changed, the evidence that prompted the change, and one question you still have. Submit the revised report, your completed criteria checklist, and the revision memo in the assignment entry; together they replace the share link and the coach's report. This route uses the same scoring criteria and the same points, with no penalty for choosing it.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

The counts, reasoning, revision, and final report must be your own. Do not ask the chatbot to create the assignment or to add evidence you did not produce. Submit an honest share link from your own dialogue. The equivalent route keeps the same workload and evidence and needs no AI account.

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