Read this before your Week 2 live session. Come in ready to work the case as a team. You will not be asked to solve Morgan's situation alone, and you do not need to submit answers before the session.
In critical care, the first thing you do with an unstable patient is stop whatever is actively making things worse. Not everything gets fixed in the first intervention. You stabilize first. The same is true for academic recovery. Morgan's case is about identifying what is actively making things worse and stopping it before anything else.
Morgan is a 22-year-old pre-nursing student at a community college. They are in their second semester of Anatomy and Physiology, having passed A&P 1 with a C last semester. The current semester started in September and it is now early October. Four weeks in, Morgan has taken two of the five unit exams.
Morgan's current grade in A&P 2 is 58%. The first exam was 56. The second was 38. Three more unit exams, three more lab practicals, and the cumulative final are still to come.
Morgan's facilitator asked them to describe their study approach and how things are going. This is what Morgan wrote.
"I do not understand what is happening. I study harder than anyone I know. I put in at least 15 hours a week on A&P, sometimes more. My notes are beautiful. I color-code them by system. I reread the chapters before lectures and again before exams. I use Quizlet almost every day. I watch the YouTube videos my professor recommends, sometimes twice."
"But when I sit down for the exam, my mind goes blank. I stare at the questions and everything I studied is just gone. I leave the exam feeling like I did not know half of what was asked. Then I get the grade back and I was right."
"I am starting to wonder if I am just not smart enough for nursing. My parents do not know about the second exam score yet. I have been avoiding my professor's office hours because I feel like I should know this stuff by now."
Morgan spends roughly 15 to 18 hours per week on A&P outside of class. Here is what that time actually looks like.
The teaching point of Morgan's case
Morgan is not lazy. Morgan is not unintelligent. Morgan is studying 15 to 18 hours a week on this course. The problem is not effort. The problem is that the methods Morgan is using feel productive but do not produce the kind of learning that transfers to an exam. This is the most common pattern in failing A&P students. It is almost certainly a pattern you will recognize in yourself, in part.
You do not need to solve Morgan's case before the session. The whole point of the Observe phase is that your team works through it together, with your facilitator guiding. What you do need to do is read the case carefully and think about it.
What you will do in the session
Your team will work through three questions together, guided by your facilitator. What do we think is happening for Morgan. What should Morgan stop doing. What should Morgan start doing. You will reason through it as a team, not as individuals. After the session, you will write your own decision plan, which applies what the team surfaced to your own situation.