Link: Online learning metaconversation
I’ve been thinking a lot over the last few weeks about how to help students transition more effectively to online learning. Obviously this is a topic on the ...
All posts tagged with teaching
Broadening participation in research beyond research jobs
The current issue of American Anthropologist has a series of short essays by biological anthropologists, featured as a “Vital Topics Forum” in the journal. T...
Link: Anatomical models
The Age has an article describing the work of two anatomists who want to bring new high-fidelity plastic models into medical anatomy training: “Buster, the p...
Why are biology classes ignoring insects?
A new content analysis of college biology textbooks finds that they have changed over the years to focus less and less on insects: A “College Textbooks Large...
Link: ‘Myths of Human Genetics’
As the semester is getting rolling, and I am teaching Mendelian genetics in two courses this week, I want to link again to the invaluable “Myths of Human Gen...
Are lab exercises worthless? If they try to reinforce concepts, maybe so.
An essay by Natasha Holmes and Carl Wieman in Physics Today recounts their experiences designing introductory physics labs: “Introductory physics labs: We ca...
The surprising connectedness of human genealogies over centuries
A new article by Adam Rutherford in Nautilus may be a good one for students in my genetics course this upcoming semester: “You’re Descended from Royalty and ...
MOOCs after five years
Five years ago, I was just starting to prepare a massive open online course (MOOC). That course development would be an 18-month adventure for me.
Science Friday revisits Homo naledi with classroom resources
This is a neat feature from NPR’s Science Friday giving resources for teachers who want to include the SciFri episode on Homo naledi as part of their classro...
Link: Getting students to act like givers instead of takers
Interesting approach to getting students to collaborate in a course, from Adam Grant:
Link: Watch evolution of antibiotic resistance in action
This is awesome:
Link: Yes, we evolved from monkeys
I endorse this message from Holly Dunsworth:
Young adults in the U.S. increasingly accept evolution by natural processes
After many years of stasis, the acceptance of evolution has taken a noticeable uptick for American adults. Most of this increase comes from the change in you...
Link: Barbara King reviews the new book, Grandmother Fish
Barbara King on the NPR “Cosmos and Culture” blog reviews the children’s book about evolution, Grandmother Fish: a child’s first book of Evolution: “When Sho...
Link: ‘A textbook example of how to do science’
An interesting take from Steven Newton of NCSE on the Homo naledi context paper by Paul Dirks and our team: “The Cave of Homo naledi, or A Textbook Example o...
Link: 10 ways to boost writing
If you need the list, you need the list: “10 Ways to Boost Your Writing Productivity”. Good suggestions for writers.
Link: Prep for paleo cuisine
Kristina Killgrove describes a great exercise in which she has her students prepare a whole dinner using only stone tools: “Hominin Iron Chef”.
Behind the scenes of my MOOC
The alumni magazine of the University of Wisconsin-Madison has done a great article about my recent massive open online course (MOOC), written by the science...
The value of the pretest
Every semester for the past three years, I have begun my Anthropology 105 course with a “concept inventory” quiz, otherwise known as a pretest. My students a...
Seven things about evolution
What is evolution?
Link: Demolishing the magnum opus myth
Joli Jensen in ChronicleVitae: “It’s time to demolish the magnum opus myth”.
Archaeology is not boring!
Colleen Morgan has a new post at Middle Savagery that may serve as an intervention to those who claim that archaeology isn’t a romantic field: “Stop saying ‘...
The long war of the lumpers and splitters
This explains a lot. Nobody likes lumpers:
Seven things about evolution
What is evolution?
Rising Star: The view from a caver/scientist
Today’s post on the Rising Star Expedition blog is by one of our six advance scientists, Elen Feuerriegel: “The View From a Caver/Scientist”.
A perspective on MOOCs as experimentation
I’ve been meaning to comment on this piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education about MOOCs, by Kevin Werbach: “Dont Call Us Rock Stars”. Werbach has been te...
Wisconsin Catholic schools will no longer visit Wisconsin Institute for Discovery
A local story with some import for science education in Wisconsin: “Catholic Diocese prohibits field trips to Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery”.
Changing science education
As the new semester is getting underway, the New York Times asked a bunch of scientists and students what they would advocate to improve science education. T...
Pointers for students on reading scientific papers
I’m not in the classroom this semester, but when I teach science courses to upper-level undergraduates, I always find a high fraction of them need help findi...
Professing in the real world
Education professor Sam Wineburg has a provocative essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education espousing a public impact agenda: “Choosing Real-World Impact O...
How a MOOC can affect the classroom
Duke University evolutionary biologist Mohamed Noor reflects on the way that teaching a MOOC has changed his classroom teaching: “The classroom experience re...
Personal genomes may help students learn genetics
A new paper in PLoS ONE presents a small-scale study of the effects of personal genomics on learning genetics in the classroom Salari:2013: “Evidence That Pe...
How to use scientific names
Dave Hone has a short explainer with persnicketyness about the proper use of taxonomic names for species: “What’s in a name? Why scientific names are importa...
Quote: Donald Kagan on liberal arts education
Yale University classicist and historian Donald Kagan has just retired from a long and distinguished career. He has an essay in the current New Criterion, re...
MOOCs and disabilities
The Coursera blog today relates a remarkable story: “Not Impossible: The Story of Daniel, a 17 Year Old with Severe Autism & His 6 Completed Coursera Cou...
"Can you help me with my report?"
Lately, I’ve been getting an increasing number of e-mail requests from middle school and high school students, whose teachers have assigned them projects tha...
Moving beyond science communication toward engagement
PLoS Biology recently published an essay by Brooke Smith and colleagues, focused on “Navigating the rules of scientific engagement” Smith:COMPASS:2013. The a...
"I Believe in Gene Flow"
Mindy Pitre forwarded me a video done by her undergraduate students at St. Lawrence University, and I just had to share it. It is about as adorable as cavema...
The game theory exam story
UCLA animal behavior professor Peter Nonacs describes his experiment in learning by doing: “Cheating to Learn: How a UCLA professor gamed a game theory midte...
Student attention spans are variable
There is much discussion in online education about the “15-minute rule”: that content longer than 15 minutes will lose students’ attention. Part of this is b...
Mailbag: Student attention spans
Re: “Student attention spans are variable”:
Paths through MOOCs
I’ve been doing a lot of tracking of massive open online courses, including enrolling in several of them, as research for my upcoming course, “Human Evolutio...
Are MOOCs technical or practical?
All the NY Times columnists will be writing about MOOCs before long, I suspect. Today it was David Brooks’ turn: “The Practical University”. His argument is ...
Math for biology
Edward O. Wilson, in the Wall Street Journal writes: “Great Scientist ? Good at Math”.
Announcing my MOOC, Human Evolution Past and Future
Note: This post is archived from 2014. The course went great, with more than 40,000 students enrolled from around the world! You can still watch many of the ...
Tribulations of online course approvals
John Thelin writes in Inside Higher Ed about the process of developing online courses: “Professors and Online Learning”.
California's online imposition
This is big education news, from the California legislature: “Measure Seeks Campus Credit For Web Study”.
Binge learning
From Eli Dourado at The mlaut: “Binge Learning is Online Educations Killer App”.
Who does worse in online courses, students or professors?
The Raw Story reports on a new study of 40,000 community college students in Washington state, which concludes that online courses are not as effective as cl...
"Average is over"
Today’s Thomas Friedman column notes the growing craze at major universities for massively open online courses, or MOOCs: “The Professors Big Stage”.
Fieldwork survey for current and former student anthropologists
Kate Clancy directs readers’ attention to a new research project examining the conditions under which students have field experiences in biological anthropol...
MOOC conversations
An article on the way MOOCs are (or may be) changing university priorities: “What MOOCs Will, Wont, and Might Do”.
Notes from the learning revolution
My University of Wisconsin colleague Kris Olds has been writing about the international dimensions of massively open online courses (MOOCs). A recent entry (...
Assignment by algorithm
Another teaching-related post today, this one pointing to a post by Marc Bousquet: “Robots are grading your papers!” It’s about the sterile repetition of the...
The importance of rare variants
I was reading an article on massive open online courses (MOOCs) (“MOOCs Assessed, Modestly”), and struck by the final quote:
Twitter higher-ed pointer
Many professors and instructors are starting semesters in the next week or two, me among them. As I’m preparing materials for my spring course, I’ll post a f...
Scott on science literacy
Eugenie Scott, of the National Center for Science Education, has an editorial in the current Frontiers in Genetics. The title effectively conveys the piece’s...
Getting students into communicating anthropology
From Kristina Killgrove, a syllabus for a graduate course in Presenting Anthropology:
Building a virtual skeletal collection
From The Independent (UK), a teaser about a 3-d virtual skeletal collection: “Forensic scientists need skeletons to train but theyre down to bare bones”.
Against onanistic essays
Claire Potter at the Chronicle’s “Tenured Radical” blog, has an interesting essay pondering why we assign students essays that nobody wants to read: “Grading...
Lemonade in the lecture
I teach a large lecture class every semester, and this past fall I taught or supervised three of them. So I’m always looking for ways to innovate. One of the...
Shirky essay on online courses
Clay Shirky reflects on the nature of college education and the potential disruptive nature of online courses: “Napster, Udacity and the Academy”. For those ...
Online education: beyond MOOCs
I’ve been doing a lot of reading about online and distance education lately. I’ll be writing about this topic recurrently during the next few weeks, so I wil...
A teaching tool on evolution misconceptions
An article in The American Biology Teacher last month by Norman Johnson and colleagues provides useful answers for teachers to the question, “Why are chimps ...
Fearfully genetic
Holly Dunsworth comments on an NPR report on personal genomics: “Be afraid of fear, not personal genomics”.
Teeth and teaching
Razib Khan has a short but worthwhile post about dental health and heritability: “The moral measure of bad teeth”.
Attitudes about online course materials versus online research publication
Steve Kolowich reports on a survey of faculty attitudes about the use of online and electronic resources: “Digital Faculty: Professors and Technology, 2012”.
Outsourcing research
Richard F. Wintle describes his job coordinating grant-seeking and laboratory work in a Canadian research institute: “The unsung heroes behind those big geno...
Human evolution links for teachers
As the new school year ramps up, if you are teaching human evolution as part of your courses, Caitlin Schrein has been tweeting some helpful resource links. ...
Entrepreneurship versus scholarship
Zen Faulkes: “Does a Ph.D. train you to head a lab?”
Students and technology in the classroom
Another school year is about to start for those of us who teach college courses. More and more, students are coming to classrooms and actively using technolo...
Making universities compete
David Glance discusses the online course frenzy, giving a boosterist perspective: “Will free online courseware from the US mean the end of (most) universitie...
A little more on online learning
Following up on my post from this weekend (“My foray into online learning”), I wanted to share more widely part of a conversation. Larry Moran is a biochemis...
Anthropological Theory and Ethnography
Welcome to the homepage for Anthropology 300, Anthropological Theory and Ethnography
My foray into online education
I pass along for consideration this essay by Robert Tracinski “Bigger than Facebook”.
Learning by app
From the Boston Globe: “Study suggests online courses as good as classroom”.
Better posters
Every so often I remind readers about Zen Faulkes’ “Better Posters” site. This is a good time for the reminder because this week the site features Kristina K...
Quote: Hunter Rawlings on undergraduate education
Hunter R. Rawlings, in Inside HIgher Ed: “Why Research Universities Must Change”.
Hamsters in the wood shavings
Karen Kelsky gives more advice on how to navigate graduate school to get the job you want: “Graduate school is a means to a job”.
No exams, learning-based outcomes
I no longer teach any courses with exams. The last one was my introductory course, Principles of Biological Anthropology, which has now gone to weekly quizze...
The open textbook niche
A sobering Sunday read about how elementary and secondary school textbooks are put together today: “Afraid of your child’s math textbook? You should be.”
Genotyping the intro class
Holly Dunsworth, at the University of Rhode Island, is undertaking a unique project with her undergraduate course this semester, providing 23andMe genotyping...
My appointment as HHMI Fellow
The University of Wisconsin has a news article out on my new position as HHMI Faculty Fellow: “Forest and Hawks named 2012 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Fa...
Mailbag: Watching lectures
Re: “Anthropology 105, lecture 3: Legs”
Job marketing yourself
Some job interview advice from Karen Kelsky: “The ‘Be Yourself’ Myth”.
Session notes from our ScienceOnline2012 classroom blogging session
Andrea Novicki has published some of her notes on the session that I organized with Jason Goldman at ScienceOnline2012: “Blogging in the undergraduate classr...
Into the belly of the whale
Carl Zimmer profiles anatomist Joy Reidenberg, who has scored a coup for public communication of science on the BBC show, Inside Nature’s Giants: “From Insid...
#IamScience trending
I want to point to this powerful personal story by marine biologist and friend Kevin Zelnio: “#IamScience: Embracing Personal Experience on Our Rise Through ...
Best practices and tips for Twitter in the higher-ed classroom
Photo credit: Rosaura Ochoa, on Flickr, Creative Commons CC BY 2.0
In the lab of Shakhashiri
Nature this week profiles Hoffman:Shakhashiri:2012 my University of Wisconsin-Madison colleague Bassam Shakhashiri, now president of the American Chemical So...
Mailbag: The value of humanities research
Re: “Is humanistic research a waste of time?”
Is humanistic research a waste of time?
Academic work in the humanities is a giant waste of time, claims Mark Bauerlein in the Chronicle of Higher Education (“The research bust”). Few read, and nob...
Quote: Marshall Sahlins on relevance
Marshall Sahlins writing in the pamphlet, Waiting for Foucault, p. 18:
Blogs rank high in online education
This morning I read a notice from our Division of Continuing Studies, pointing to how their online resource library had received more than one million visits...
Mailbag: Jury regression
Re: Jury science
Medieval methods
Psychologist Alison Gopnik, in MacLeans “In conversation: Alison Gopnik”.
Determining sex from the cranium
The cranium has a very distinctive shape, which varies between people to some extent. Some features that vary between individuals in their size or shape are...
A reason for practical genomic education
Photo credit: Graham Stanley on Flickr, creative commons.
Paying for advice on the job market
Must read: former anthropologist Karen Kelsky’s article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (To Professors; Re: Your Advisees). Kelsky chucked her career in...
Eye pigmentation and allele frequencies
Eye pigmentation in humans varies along a spectrum of colors from dark brown, through lighter brown, hazel, and green, to light blue. These differences are c...
The effectiveness of drawing
From Tom Benthin, Graphic Facilitator: “Rough and Hand-drawn: Alive and Inviting”.
Meet Australopithecus robustus
The region just north of Johannesburg, South Africa, is a formation of ancient limestone in which groundwater has formed numerous caves and sinkholes. Some o...
Syllabus crafting
Barbara Fister, “The syllabus as TOS”.
Mailbag: Textbook costs
Re: “Textbooks leaving students behind”
Textbooks leaving students behind
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on a survey of nearly 2000 undergraduate students on 13 varied college campuses:
Teeth
Goals:
Incisors
The incisors are the front teeth. They are basically flat and have a blade-like occlusal surface. Each quadrant has two incisors.
Bones of the cranium from the front
The cranium includes all the bones of the head. Altogether, there are 26 cranial bones plus the mandible. Except for the mandible, these bones mostly are fus...
Bones of the cranium from below
TemporalThe lower sides (left and right) of the vault, including the ear opening, or external acoustic porus. OccipitalThe rear and base of the skull, inclu...
Biological anthropology laboratory manual
These pages are the exercises for a laboratory in introductory biological anthropology.
Ramping up
Many of us are preparing for classes to start in the next few weeks. Kate Clancy’s post today, “Non-science students in a science class”, had me nodding in r...
The cost of a premier faculty
The Guardian has an article titled, “Richard Dawkins heads line-up at private 18,000-a-year university”.
My turn as a science fair judge in Italy
Yesterday I had the distinctive experience as a judge of a scientific poster session, featuring the work of Italian high school students. The session was in ...
Finals season
This is the time of year when hapless students all over the world turn to my blog to answer their exam questions.
Engaging with the public
Alice Bell raises an essential question: “Whats this public engagement with science thing then?”
E-mail etiquette guide
This etiquette guide from Nature Education is enormously useful for students: “How to send a professional e-mail to a professor”.
Science Pub, day of creationism
I had a wonderful afternoon Sunday at the Madison Science Pub. The featured guest was Ron Numbers, the historian of science at UW-Madison whose research has ...
Making scientific minds
Lena Groeger begins a stint blogging at Rationally Speaking with this entry, “So, what’s science good for?”. She briefly discusses the usual rationales for “...
Everyone should know
Tom Holtz’ guest post at SV-POW gives a list of “What everyone should know about paleontology.” Good list, and it makes me want to copy the idea for paleoant...
Falling in love with your research
Matt Wedel of SV-POW gives advice on “How to find problems to work on”.
High school genomics
Ronald Bailey writes in the January Reason about his experiences with personal genomics (“Ill Show You My Genome. Will You Show Me Yours?”). He’s a booster, ...
Doodling during class
Nothing makes quite as good a time-waster as the comment threads to posts where professors complain about students. Especially students using computers.
Book futures
An article about the future bookless libraries, which may already be springing up at a campus near you:
STEM plunk
Natalie Angier, who knows something about how to introduce science to the masses, blows off some steam about STEM in this week’s Science Times:
Genetic bike path
Eva Amsen describes her trip down the BRCA2 cycle path, near the Sanger Institute in the UK. She also points to Jennifer Rohn’s description of the path last...
Greeks bearing gifts
A reader writes: “A good argument to require introductory anthropology”:
iPad textbooks march forward
A California pilot study is going to give students iPads with e-textbooks for algebra.
Plagiarism in science
Yuehong Zhang reports in brief in NatureZhang:plagiarism:2010 the extent of plagiarism in scientific papers submitted to one journal in China:
Blogging and teaching
If you’re an instructor curious about how to introduce blogs in your courses, you may want to read this post by Daniel Lende at the new Neuroanthropology. He...
Social media in education
Krystal D’Costa (Anthropology in Practice) links to a mini-documentary about the role of social media in the education of “Gen-Y”: “Decade 2: Encouraging Edu...
Careers in anthropology
The Guardian has a helpful entry in its series on careers: “What to do with a degree in anthropology.”
Professors who reject technology
From the Chronicle of Higher Education, an article by Jeffrey Young: “College 2.0: Teachers Without Technology Strike Back.”
Plagiarism season
It’s that time of year again, when newspapers start reminding us that cheating and plagiarism happen.
Mailbag: Remembering the books
Regarding “Bubbling through college”:
Bubbling through college
Bill Gates says college will be obsolete in 5 years:
"Just-so stories" driving me crazy
NPR has been doing a special series of reports during their “Morning Edition” program called “The Human Edge”, all about various aspects of human evolution. ...
Tenure denial
If you need something to heat up your July, you can check out the NY Times forum, “What if College Tenure Dies?”.
Graphic biology teacher survey results
Several people (e.g., P. Z. Myers, Jerry Coyne) have passed along a poster representation of some statistics on evolution, creationism, and other stuff in se...
Berkeley DNA comments
Marie-Claire Shanahan has written on A Blog Around the Clock an essay discussing the Berkeley genetic test:
Berkeley DNA tests revisited
I wrote about the UC Berkeley genetic testing of incoming freshmen earlier this spring. The summer is halfway over and the saliva kits have been sent. Now Sc...
"STEM blows"
The Science Insider listens to actor Tim Daly, advocating for science education, who thinks the officially sanctioned ed-school terminology is bad marketing.
Conference blues
Michael E. Smith has some suggestions after going to the SAA meetings:
New Smithsonian human origins hall
Thanks to all those readers who sent me links to the new human origins hall at the National Museum of Natural History, in Washington D.C. The NY Times’ Edwar...
Museums decentering the human
A very interesting essay by Edward Rothstein in the NY Times special museum section: “The thrill of science, tamed by agendas”.
Professors banning computers
Washington Post: “Wide Web of diversions gets laptops evicted from lecture halls”:
Lateness
Jeffrey Zeldman: advice for business that works just as well in academics: “Show up early”
Science journalism approaches terminal velocity
Regarding the sad state of science journalism, or the public perception thereof:
Website review: Learn.Genetics
This week’s Science is featuring an essay by the first winners of the “SPORE” competition, the team behind the Learn.Genetics and Teach.Genetics websites. Ev...
Feeling deflated about grade inflation?
I tell my students almost every semester that I can’t give them all high grades because the university demands its pound of flesh. Well, now I find out that ...
Don't get a Ph.D.
This deserves to be read widely, especially this time of year:
Neandertals for kids
There’s not really an exciting story to go with the headline, but after it dropped into my news feed, I had to link it:
A view of global creationism
Kenneth Chang reports on a recent conference that gathered academics to discuss creationism in a global context: “Creationism, Minus a Young Earth, Emerges i...
Colloquia and opera
Have department colloquia lost their relevance to academic life?
Kansas creationism survey
According to a Fort Hays State University poll, Kansas may be headed for another crisis in science education:
Dawkins and Hewitt
I want to point to an interview between conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt and Richard Dawkins, on the subject of Dawkins’ new book, The Greatest Show on Ea...
Schoolective statistics
Bill Gates is spending a lot of money to make schools better. And for some reason it’s not working. Gates says it’s bad teachers:
Who's your favorite hominin now?
A couple of weeks ago I gave some Google Trends statistics on search terms for fossil hominins. The winner then was “erectus”, with “Neanderthal” coming in a...
Vooks
The coming trend in e-books: video.
Data mining
IBM and Google want students to ditch their laptops and pick up some big iron:
Who's your favorite hominin?
Yes, I know, hominin is driving me crazy, too. It’s a taxonomic diktat of breathtaking doofery, but I think we’re stuck with it. So I’ve been writing it to ...
Mailbag: More advice for freshmen
Regarding advice for new college students:
Crow and Kimura back in print
A new printing of a classic population genetics text has been issued this year: An Introduction to Population Genetics Theory, by James Crow and Motoo Kimura.
Write with a knife
It’s that time of year again, when students all over the country are facing their first writing assignment. I always encourage a bloggy style – concise, jour...
Billable hours for professors
Yesterday’s post on MIT OpenCourseware touched on some of the difficulties of independent study using online tools. Three barriers stand in the way – one pra...
What can you learn for free
I’m all in favor of self-educating – most of my genetics I learned on my own. So I was interested to see what you can really learn from free online sources l...
Creation/Evolution free online
Possibly of interest:
Fantasy genome
Olivia Judson:
Oh, for a muse of fire…
Science last week had an “Education Forum” feature, written by European education researchers, titled, “Introducing modern science into schools.” The piece d...
Writing upward
Since I’ve already contributed to bellyaching about student writing assignments, it’s only fair to point to a Wired article that says students are getting b...
Teaching writing
College classes are starting around the country, but writing assignments haven’t been submitted yet. Time to brace yourself – Stanley Fish blogs about what c...
"Creationists made me do it"
In last week’s Science, a letter from biologist Patrick Keeling that’s almost too good to be true:
The end of four-field anthropology at Harvard
The Harvard University Gazette reports cheeringly on the breakup of the anthropology department.
Science journalism, blogging, and the web
Nature (open access) discusses the decline of science journalism and the rise of blogs. The article profiles John Timmer, whose stuff at Nobel Intent I read ...
I don't understand "Understanding Science"
Now I have to warn you in advance. This is the kind of post that makes you wonder if I’m some kind of grumpy old cranky-pants.
Sharing your work with the world: a workshop
I’m writing this post live from the Kaleidoscope program here at UW. My part of today’s program is a workshop on sharing your work with the world, using blog...
Knapping a handaxe
Science magazine’s “Origins” blog is running a little feature by archaeology student Steven Goldstein on how to knap a handaxe.
Summer school at Singularity University?
Ray Kurzweil, Larry Page, and Peter Diamantis are teaming up with NASA to bring us the next step in graduate and postgraduate education:
BBC Darwin site
The BBC has a website dedicated to their Darwin programming, which has a number of things that may be useful for students (via Gene Expression).
Gearing up for teaching human evolution?
I had an e-mail from a long-time reader today, asking what readings I assign for my course in human evolution. As some of you know, this is a constant issue ...
Evidence-based lecturing?
This week’s Science includes a paper by M. K. Smith and colleagues, which assesses undergraduate learning in an introductory genetics course that uses “click...
Science from television drama
Wired has a story about the trend toward more television dramas with science content. Some may disagree that a show like CSI is especially science-related; n...
Testing students with advertising
As you ramp up for finals, you may want to keep your options open:
Kids these days… with their gaming, and their Google
A long AP story today is subtitled, “Expert: Intense use of wired world may weaken fundamental social skills”.
The tuition Singularity
The Singularity is a future time when, in theory, the pace of technological change becomes so great that we cannot predict the course of future developments ...
Biology of Mind: The Blog
I am doing a unique experiment with my course this semester, “Biology of Mind.” The course has a history of collaborative peer review on writing assignments,...
Some genetic drift graphs with Mathematica
The first thing to come up in my lectures is genetic drift. Pretty much everyone who lectures about drift needs a figure showing the results of simple Monte ...
Florida evolution education: a Mickey Mouse subject?
There’s a long article by Amy Harmon about Florida biology educator David Campbell and his struggle to get better evolution standards in Florida. It’s a good...
Obsolete thinking discarded, life goes on
In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Russell Jacoby bemoans progress (paywall). He thinks that colleges aren’t teaching people to revere the right nineteent...
Carl Wieman on science education
Carl Wieman is a scientist at the University of British Columbia. He shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work creating the first Bose-Einstein con...
The value of a practical education
A few weeks ago, I was reading Jerry Pournelle’s thoughts on debt and higher education. The comments were prompted by Joseph Rago’s Wall Street Journal edito...
Notes in practical evolution
A lot of academic-oriented bloggers write about what they do in their classes. I don’t often blog about my teaching. Mainly, I like to keep my class activiti...
Don't ask the experts if they can't agree on the question
John Timmer was at the World Science Fest’s panel on What It Means To Be Human, and gives a partial blow-by-blow. Usually these kinds of panels don’t bother ...
The value of a practical education
A couple of weeks ago, I was reading Jerry Pournelle's thoughts on debt and higher education. The comments were prompted by Joseph Rago's Wall Street Journa...
Why students should write
Isn't it obvious that graduate advisors should expect their students to publish research papers, and write often? T. Ryan Gregory (now on the blogroll) writ...
"The sage on the stage"
An interview with physicist Eric Mazur in the NY Times hits some interesting points on teaching methods in science:
It's a rainbow of flavors
I ran across the DNA Rainbow project today. A couple of guys compiled images based on the human genome sequence, where each pixel is a base and the differen...
Looking for some allometry teaching aids?
If you're looking for something fun for students to read about allometry, then try "The Biology of B-Movie Monsters by Michael LaBarbera. It begins with the...
A few words on teaching discussions
Now that the school year is starting, a lot of us are thinking a lot about teaching. Savage Minds pointed me to this essay by James Renfield, titled "On the...
Meerkat teaching
It's all meerkats all over the place today. Here's an AP article by Randolph Schmid:
Evidence-based medicine and education
I've been reading the very interesting Brainethics blog. Yesterday they pointed to an article in Nature Reviews Neuroscience by Usha Goswami about interact...
"Confusion…has increased considerably."
PLoS Biology is running an essay by Liza Gross titled, "Scientific illiteracy and the partisan takeover of biology" (by way of GNXP).
Lab teaching in anthropology
The AP reports that high school science labs are poor. The story comes out of a study by the National Research Council.