Posted 22 Jun 2014 / 0
About five years ago I developed my Evolution course, which is aimed at my non-majors art and design students. I have not taught this course in more than two years, and as it has sat on the shelf I have been able to get that critical distance necessary to make the course better. So coming Read More
A Major Post, Assessment Methods, Competition, Conferences, Cooperation, Cooperative Breeding, EvoDevo, Evolution Education, Higher Education, Mutualism, Niche Partitioning, Parasitism, Society for the Study of Evolution
Posted 22 Jun 2014 / 0
Ross Nehm talked about the EvoGrader resource, which uses machine learning to automatically score student assessments designed to look at student understanding of the evolutionary process.
A Minor Post, Assessment Methods, Conferences, Evolution Education, Higher Education, Society for the Study of Evolution, Teaching Tools
Posted 22 Jun 2014 / 0
Rebecca Price and Tessa Andrews have a clever way of assessing the understanding of students who harbor creationist beliefs in evolutionary biology courses. Rather than force them to state answers to questions that assert a factual claim about the way the actual world work, ask them to take the perspective of an evolutionary biologist. Questions can start Read More
A Minor Post, Assessment Methods, Conferences, Creationism, Evolution Education, Society for the Study of Evolution, Teaching
Posted 20 Jun 2014 / 0
I started off this year’s Evolution meeting early. The conference is — at its core — a four-day affair. But the days leading into the “official” start on Friday evening feature larger workshops aimed at building skills. I chose to attend the Experiencing Evolution workshop. Here’s what this session promised: Evolution is a key biological concept, Read More
A Major Post, Adaptation, Assessment Methods, Behavior, Coevolution, Competition, Conferences, Cooperation, Evolution, Evolution Education, Evolutionary Modeling, Genetics, Grants & Funding, Higher Education, Individual-based Models, Lesson Ideas, Multilevel Selection, Natural Selection, Phylogenetics, Population Genetics, Population Growth, Predation, Reproductive Fitness, Science in Art & Design, Sex and Reproduction, Society for the Study of Evolution, Talks & Seminars, Teaching, Teaching Tools
Posted 10 Jun 2014 / 2
When I was in graduate school working towards my doctorate, we were required to take “comprehensive exams” to stay in the program and qualify for candidacy. This made a lot of sense: I was lucky to be in a program whose required courses created a very strong background in my disciplines, and the comprehensive exams Read More
A Major Post, Assessment Methods, Conceptual Teaching Assessment Project, Higher Education, Teaching
Posted 26 Jul 2013 / 0
At the end of every semester there is an important ritual that I participate in. In my department, this ritual is initiated by Margaret, our indispensable Assistant to the Chair. She sends out a message requesting that all untenured professors schedule a ten-minute period during each of their classes during which course evaluations can be completed by Read More
A Major Post, Assessment Methods, Course Evaluations, Higher Education, Pratt Institute, Teaching
Posted 25 Jul 2013 / 0
Now that I have made the decision to seriously assess my conceptual teaching, it is time for me to take a look at what might produce student learning. As I described in my previous post, I plan to dramatically overhaul my The Evolution of Cooperation course to optimize the value of everything that makes up my teaching. Read More
A Major Post, Assessment Methods, Concept Mapping, Conceptual Teaching Assessment Project, Evolution Education, MSCI-463, The Evolution of Cooperation
Posted 24 Jul 2013 / 0
I pride myself on being a conceptual teacher: although you will likely learn a lot of interesting facts in my classes, the focus of my teaching is on ideas and concepts. I want my students to understand how things work and why things exist, and both of these pursuits are fundamentally conceptual in nature. Almost all of Read More
A Major Post, Assessment Methods, Concept Mapping, Conceptual Teaching Assessment Project, Cooperation, Course Readings, Evolution Education, Higher Education, MSCI-463, The Evolution of Cooperation, Teaching
Posted 26 Nov 2012 / 0
The Chronicle of Higher Education “Let’s Kill the Term Paper” I have been experimenting for several years with various forms of “Reading Response Questions” that challenge students to either summarize or pull the most important ideas out of what they read. I agree wholeheartedly with Professor Blank that this is a far more valuable means Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Assessment Methods, Student Writing, Teaching
