Posted 16 Jul 2014 / 0
Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America “Keys to a Successful Student-Centered Classroom: Three Recommendations“ This is a really nice guide for anyone who wants to do a large-scale course conversion to a student-centered learning approach. These recommendations are sound and valuable, although they may seem overly-obvious to anyone who has been practicing this kind Read More
A Minor Post, Assessment Methods, Ecological Society of America, Ecology Education, Higher Education, Teaching, Teaching Tools
Posted 02 Jul 2014 / 0
Great organization of a great conference I had a great Evolution 2014 conference, and that has a lot to do with how it was organized. Raleigh was a nice location for the conference: it has an intimate conference center, with enough food opportunities near that conference center. Although the transportation options getting to Raleigh are somewhat Read More
A Major Post, Conferences, Evolution Education, Professional Societies, Public Outreach, Science as a career, Society for the Study of Evolution
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
Patricia Hawley points out a great way that you can “teach both sides of the controversy” between evolution and intelligent design. In her Evolutionary Psychology course she has students deconstruct intelligent design propaganda, explaining where it makes erroneous arguments or misrepresents facts.
A Minor Post, Conferences, Creationism, Evolution Education, Higher Education, Lesson Ideas, 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 21 Jun 2014 / 0
The Evolution Film Festival was amazing! So many great films and such a wonderful, fun social atmosphere in which to enjoy them. The Evolution 2014 meeting would not be the same without these kinds of events.
A Minor Post, Art & Design, Conferences, Evolution Education, Film & Video, Public Outreach, Society for the Study of Evolution, Teaching Tools
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 20 Jun 2014 / 0
Susan Singer, who is part of the National Science Foundation’s Undergraduate Biology Education division, talked about funding opportunities for faculty who want to create pedagogical materials at small undergraduate institutions. She pointed out that the NSF‘s Research Coordination Networks program funds projects that are sited at multiple institutions, including those in undergraduate biology education (“RCN-UBE“). This kind of Read More
A Minor Post, Conferences, Grants & Funding, Society for the Study of Evolution, Teaching Tools
Posted 20 Jun 2014 / 0
Julie Noor’s classroom activity in Drosophila breeding points out a really great “best practice” for any data collection in undergraduate laboratory exercises: if you ask students to first interpret only the data they collected, then allow them to interpret the aggregated data of the whole class, you can allow them to see the importance of sample size. Read More
A Minor Post, Conferences, Evolution Education, Lesson Ideas, Natural Selection, Population Genetics, Society for the Study of Evolution, Teaching
