Selected Teaching Artifacts
BIO 1101: INTRODUCTORY BIOLOGY FOR NON-MAJORS
Course Overview:
Basic principles of biology; topics include the nature of science, organismal diversity, evolution, ecology, genetics, reproduction, and cellular structure and function. Not intended students majoring in one of the biological sciences.
Field Experience/Lab:
What can we learn about arthropod diversity from local, urban environments?
Rationale:
As a part of my master’s work, I sought to address the need for more authentic experiences for students to engage with the natural world around them. I developed this exercise along with an assessment instrument to determine how students recognition of urban biodiversity changes after exposure through hands-on experiences in the field.
Materials:
- View the Student Version of the Arthropod Diversity Exercise
- View the TA Version of the Arthropod Diversity Exercise
EEOB 2210: OHIO PLANTS
Course Overview:
A lecture and field course in identifying common Ohio plants; emphasis on taxonomic principles, use of keys and manuals, and field recognition of plants.
Multimedia Assignment:
How can we notice and practice identifying plants around us?
Rationale:
Students often do not get enough hands-on experiences with practicing the identification skills that they learn in the course outside of the classroom. We designed the blog assignment to allow students to create blog entries for students to share “new” (to them) plants that they found around campus, their home, etc.
Materials:
- View the Ohio Plants Blog Exercise
Multimedia Assignment:
What can we learn about Ohio Plant families by creating an iBook?
Rationale
While there were some good reference books for identifying plants, we found that no book existed to really complement the Ohio Plants course. In order to help solve this problem and to reduce student textbook cost, we created a course iBook assignment. Students would document the local flora of Ohio can contribute to an ever-growing, applicable course e-book through iBooks author.
Materials:
- View the Ohio Plants iBook Project
- Access the Ohio Plants iBook available on iTunes.
EEOB 3310: EVOLUTION
Course Overview:
Basic conceptual issues and processes in evolution with an emphasis on the ecological basis of adaptation and consequences of natural selection.
Recitation Activity on Speciation
Rationale:
I developed this activity for Dr. Erin Lindstedt to address a need for an exercise covering speciation-being a difficult concept for students to understand. With this activity, I utilized the jigsaw method in which students all first read a general reading on speciation followed by an assigned speciation type such that all four types of speciation were represented at a 4-person lab table. I gave multiple examples of speciation and then students had to match the examples to their speciation type.
Materials:
EEOB 3320: ORGANISMAL DIVERSITY
Course Overview:
A survey of organismal diversity and the evolutionary relationships between and within major groups of organisms.
Field Experience:
Angiosperm Field Experience
Rationale:
We redesigned the overall course into a studio course over the Summer 2012 term. With the redesign, we wanted students to have more hands-on experiences with biology–particularly in the field. Upon the request of the course instructor, Kevin Lumney, I designed a field experience for students to survey the diversity of angiosperms and how their diversification is tied to the evolution of arthropods.
Materials:
- View the Angiosperm Field Experience Activity
Multimedia Assignment:
What can we learn about Organismal Diversity by creating an iBook?
Rationale:
While we have used some zoology and botany books in the past to help supplement this course, they were expensive for students and, ultimately, rather underutilized. Therefore, we decided to take the assignment for Ohio Plants and scale it to something larger for Organismal Diversity. Students, in groups of four, created chapters for their assigned phylum. When creating their chapters, we tasked them with creating multimedia components with their iPads to fill a student-generated course textbook.
Materials:
- View the Organismal Diversity iBook Project
Studio Guiding Questions:
Plant Investigations Guiding Questions
Rationale:
I developed these guiding questions for Dr. Erin Lindstedt to use during her time teaching the plant taxa in Organismal Diversity. I wrote guiding questions for students to answer during their investigations of the mosses, ferns, gymnosperms, and angiosperms. These questions served to guide students in constructing hypotheses regarding the evolutionary history of plants.
Materials:
- View the Plant Guiding Questions