For years now I have been guiding my students through a variety of concept mapping activities. Almost every one of my classes involves at least one concept mapping assignment, and I now require that proposals for a variety of term papers and projects be presented in concept map form. I also created this guide to Read More
A Major Post, Concept Mapping, Information Design, Lesson Ideas, Teaching ToolsOne nice thing that organizers of the Evolution 2014 conference did was to offer the opportunity for presenters to have their talk recorded and archived. These recorded talks now have their own Evolution 2014 YouTube Channel, and my talk is included in this collection: This was an experiment for this conference, and I think that it came Read More
A Major Post, Conferences, Cooperation, Easy Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, Evolution Education, Evolutionary Games Infographics, Game Theory, Information Design, My publications, Science in Art & Design, Society for the Study of Evolution, Talks & Seminars, Teaching ToolsBulletin 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 ToolsRoss 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 ToolsThe 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 ToolsI 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 ToolsSusan 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 ToolsI love Moodle. It is an amazing tool for delivering course content, assessments, and feedback to students. But if you are a power Moodle user, you know that it can take some instructor massaging to make it as user-friendly as your students prefer. One of the things about Moodle that frustrates and confuses students is the way that different “sections” (usually Read More
A Major Post, Moodle, Teaching ToolsFor the past couple of years I have been playing around with a really cool tool called EnviroAtlas, a project of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This past semester I created two classroom activities that use EnviroAtlas, implementing them for the first time in my Ecology for Architects course. The EnviroAtlas tool was in beta-testing Read More
A Minor Post, Biodiversity Loss, Biomes, Bogs & Wetlands, Citizen Science, Computer Science, Conservation Biology, Data Limitation, Deserts, Ecosystem Services, Education, Educational Software and Apps, Environmental Justice, Eutrophication, Grasslands, Habitat Destruction, Invasive Species, Long Term Ecological Research, Macroecology, Pollution, Ponds & Lakes, Population Pressure, Public Policy, Quantitative Analysis, Rivers & Streams, Sustainability, Teaching, Teaching Tools, Temperate Forest, Temperate Rainforest, Urban Ecology, Water Supply, WebI have corresponded with Cath Dennis of the University of Aberdeen, as we both share an interest in how to bring some of the foundational work exploring cooperation into our classrooms. She has just published one of her classroom activities — an “analog” version of Robert Axelrod’s iPD tournaments — in the Journal of Biological Education.
A Minor Post, Articles, Cooperation, Evolution Education, Evolutionary Modeling, Game Theory, Reciprocity, Teaching Tools