HAPS Exam Program Committee

The Exam Program is not a traditional committee; rather, it is a closed program
managed by three Program Leads (Anatomy, Physiology, Anatomy and Physiology)
charged with developing, maintaining, securing, and managing the HAPS standardized
exams. The intended purpose of all HAPS Exams is to provide a means for schools to
compare their students’ collective performance with normalized data accumulated from
the results of all students who have taken the same exam. Information about using and
purchasing the exams can be found at: https://www.hapsweb.org/page/Exam_FAQ

mission & vision

Our Focus on Anatomy & Physiology

Due to the secure nature of the exams, membership in this program is limited and by application only when the Exam Program puts out a call to apply to be on one of our Panels of Experts (in Anatomy, Physiology, or A&P).

Exam development is the responsibility of HAPS members with appropriate expertise in
the discipline. Periodically, the Exam Program puts out a call to apply for our Panels of
Experts.Â We have Expert Panels in Anatomy, A&P, and Physiology. Each Panel of
Experts works with the Program Leads in creating exam questions, mapping questions
to specific HAPS Learning Outcomes, and determining the Blooms level (e.g., lower or
higher order) of each exam question.

In addition to the A&P exams, the HAPS exam program also developed the HAPS
Anatomy-only learning outcomes and developed multiple versions of an Anatomy-only
exam.Â This exam is designed to assess learning in one-semester introductory level
Human Anatomy university courses, and is also administered online via a secure
lockdown browser. For more information about all exams, please see https://www.hapsweb.org/page/Exam_FAQ

More recently an expert panel of HAPS volunteers completed a set of Physiology
Learning Outcomes (PLO) that are based around core concepts in physiology. The PLO
and accompanying documents are now published open access on the HAPS website.
Peer-reviewed articles about the PLO have been published in the HAPS Educator
(https://doi.org/10.21692/haps.2023.010)Â and in Advances in Physiology Education
(https://doi.org/10.1152/advan.00129.2023).

Exam Leads

Janet Casagrand: A&P Exam Program Lead, jcasagrand@hapsconnect.org
Dee Silverthorn: Physiology Exam Program Lead, dsilver@hapsconnect.org
Valerie O’Loughlin: Anatomy Exam Program Lead, voloughl@hapsconnect.org