A Fish Eye View » Teaching

More experiments in course blogging

Mason Posner — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 03:15:50 +0000

You would think that no new posts in four months would mean that blogging was far from my mind. But oh how wrong you would be. I have written before about the blogs I started for my marine bio course and senior capstone course on science communication. The marine blog in particular was primarily student generated, and last spring I played around with guidelines that would encourage students to find interesting additional content that was relevant to the course. I was impressed with my students’ contributions, and really enjoyed some final posts about our field trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. But almost all of the posts about recent marine bio research came from stories on the Science Daily website. They were interesting, but I was hoping that students would draw from more diverse sources and some primary literature.

So this Fall semester I developed some new guidelines for students to use when writing for our latest course blog, Ashland Vertebrate Biology. Those guidelines were posted as a Google Doc if you would like to check them out (look for a future post about the many ways to use Google Docs in a class). They seemed to do the trick, encouraging students to draw from more diverse sources and even stimulated a good level of discussion in the comment threads. I have not yet seen my course evaluations for the semester to learn what students thought of the blogging, but will comment on them here soon.

Like any new teaching technology I have found that my approach to using blogs in my classes needs fine-tuning. But so far it has been an excellent way for students to bring their own content to the course and drive discussion.

Hacking my A&P course for Fall

Mason Posner — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:10:55 +0000

I have become an avid reader of the ProfHacker blog on the Chronicle website and recently came across some compendium posts loaded with advice for teachers dusting off those syllabi and planning for the start of the Fall semester. Actually, if you read ProfHacker regularly you would know that the best time to revise your syllabus and course materials is right after the semester ends when all is fresh in your head. Oh well, it’s three months too late for that. But it’s never too late to add some new ideas to those syllabi and your classes.

Not being entirely prepared for a complete syllabus redo, I opted for some measured changes. Here are the highlights:

No more static office hours. Students don’t drop by and many have classes at my scheduled times, so I wind up heading to my lab or go out for coffee. So this semester I will be doing office hours two different ways. First, students can make an appointment at a time that works best for them. OK, this is how I already meet with students. But the twist this year is that I now have a Tungle.me page, a website that knows when I am free and acts as the middleperson to set meeting times for me and my students. My Tungle.me page is linked to my Google calendar so that students can see times when I am free (but not the appointments that I have – those stay private), select times when they would like to meet with me, and when I accept, those appointments are entered automatically into my Google calendar. Pretty cool. We’ll see if students go for it, and if I can get faculty and administrators to use it to set meeting times with me. I have been using another free service called ScheduleOnce to set our department meeting times, but I plan to use Tungle.me this semester. The second option for students wanting to meet with me will be through Google Talk. I’ve tried IMing as a way to chat with students, and was never very happy with it. Very few students contacted me, so I dropped it. But this semester I plan to add a Google Talk widget to my course webpage, figuring that students may be on the course page anyway, and if they see a green available chat light they might be more likely to try it.

Some targeted use of our University Angel course management system. I have used Angel lightly, but much prefer posting materials on my own personal course webpages. But this semester I will be using our Angel site for paper submissions so that I can do all my grading electronically and not have to carry around stacks of assignments. I plan to require students to submit the day before class to avoid last minute, late night writing, and possibly return comments to them prior to class and our discussions. I am considering setting up my writing assignments, in which students read primary literature and review articles, like a quiz in Angel so that they can cut and paste each of their responses into a specific question field, allowing me to type comments and have them automatically post to each student’s Angel page. I also plan to run my quizzes the same way this semester, having the students take them online prior to class and then grading them through Angel.

A syllabus section summarizing class resources. In addition to Angel my course will be using a separate course webpage, a podcast, blog, textbook, and virtual cadaver CD. Will students know where to go to do what? This section of the syllabus tries to lay out what exactly these different resources are for, and where they can be found.

A new technology policy. Inspired by another ProfHacker post, this syllabus paragraph explains why having your e-dog eat your paper is not an excuse for late assignments. And it adds a plug for the amazing (and free) data backup site Dropbox (full disclosure – using this link to get a Dropbox account will add more memory to my account).

A lightening of my no-texting policy. Now that I often find myself tweeting from conference sessions I have become more immune to others on their phones during class. But I added a statement to my syllabus about not being rude with technology.

Too much at once? I don’t know. But you can see the final product – my latest Anatomy and Physiology syllabus – here.

Using a blog and wiki in my Marine Biology course

Mason Posner — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 02:18:13 +0000

Over the past couple of years I have played around with using blogs and wiki pages in my courses. This past semester I incorporated both into my Marine Biology course and feel good about the results. My reasons for using each type of web technology differed, so I will hit them separately:

The course blog

I have been assigning readings from science blogs over the past few years to reinforce material covered in class and engage students with outside, related content. This past semester I used a blog in my Anatomy and Physiology course to answer student questions that stumped me in class, or that I needed to research more fully. After class I would post an answer to the course blog with links to additional reading. But in my Marine Biology course almost all of the content was student generated. After adding a few of my own posts as examples, I told my students to add a post of their own once every other week. With ten students in the course this meant almost a post each day (although they often came in droves). The only guideline I gave them was that the information had to have some connection to marine science. You can read the results yourself, but I was impressed with the range of information that students added, and happy to see students commenting on each other’s posts. A Zoomerang survey given at the end of the semester showed that 8 of 10 students agreed or strongly agreed that the blog was a helpful part of the course (the other 2 were neutral). The one thing I would change next time is to urge students to use more diverse sources for their posts. Almost every post was a summary of a news story from Science Daily.

The course wiki

A few years back our University started running MediaWiki software on our internal servers so that we could host our own wiki pages. When I taught Marine Biology two years ago I had my students write information guides for species they saw during our end-of-semester field trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I then used this content to write wiki pages on each species. This year I assigned each of my ten students to write guides for two species each, and to add these to the wiki themselves. Their entries needed to include some personal comment about their interaction with the species. After some editing for style and format we now have the start of an online guide to Outer Banks coastal species that I plan to add to each year I teach the course. And many of the students used their own pictures of the species they encountered, adding some new online content for others to use.

Both the blog and wiki seemed to engage students in material beyond the official meeting times of the class. Students accepted both techniques quickly, and 80% found the blog valuable. I will be curious to see how these tools work in two years when I teach the course again, as students will be building on an already rich set of content.

A successful field trip to the Outer Banks

Mason Posner — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 01:01:53 +0000

I recently returned from my latest class field trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I am fortunate to teach an upper level marine bio course at Ashland University in Ohio. Yes, Ohio. My students can see live marine specimens in our saltwater aquarium, and lots of collected organisms from the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, but the highlight of the course is definitely our trip to North Carolina, where we stay at the Oregon Inlet campsite and make day trips up and down the coast. This is the third time I have taken my class to the OBX, and as usual we lucked out on weather. We avoided rain, had great temperatures, but did get blown out of our campsite the last night by high winds (a late night escape to my Mother’s house in Southern Shores got us some sleep before the 13 hour drive back home).

Here is a taste of our trip (thanks to my colleague Patty Saunders for serving as trip photographer). Still to come, some video and food highlights:

Our welcome to the beach after 15 hours on the road

Breaking camp the first morning

Kayaking out of Manteo harbor with the Queen Elizabeth II in the background

Official portrait on the Manteo dock

Lots of beachcombing, and a mini-study on how Oregon Inlet affects shell deposition on the beach

Beach seining yielded some small blue crabs, croaker (or spot), silverside and shrimp. The water was cold, but it was worth it.

Juvenile dolphins playing off the beach just south of Oregon Inlet

. . . and a large group of royal terns. You can see Bodie Light wrapped up in the distance while it gets a refurbished Fresnel lens (right side of picture).

Birding on Pea Island

At the top of Hatteras Light, after a great history lesson in the failures of beach stabilization by a Lighthouse volunteer

One of many beautiful sunsets over the dunes

We made it to the beach

Mason Posner — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 03:10:24 +0000

It took us almost 15 hours in our two vans to get from Ashland, Ohio to Oregon Inlet, but we had some great BBQ (Currituck BBQ) on the way and a quick stop at walmart for the camping gear we left behind. But we are here, tents are up, my students had their first trip through the dunes to the beach, and it looks like we may have fantastic weather. And with an almost new moon the stars are amazing.
More tomorrow. Must get sleep after all the driving. But I must say it is pretty cool to be posting from my iPhone in my tent next to the beach.

Marine Biology in the Outer Banks

Mason Posner — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 08:21:18 +0000

End of the semester teaching and a slew of chair duties have kept me away from the blog for a few weeks. But it is now 4:18 am and I am off with a colleague and 10 students for my semi-annual field trip to Oregon Inlet, North Carolina in the Outer Banks for my Marine Biology class. Look for frequent posts about our trip over the next few days.

Trying out the new Flip video on breakers at the beach

Mason Posner — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 04:03:48 +0000

I recently purchased two Flip video cameras for my Senior Capstone biology majors to use when shooting 60 second science videos later this semester. During this past week of spring break I took it on myself to give one a shakedown cruise to see if the built in editing software would do the trick for our class.

So I present my first Flip video, edited on Flip software and annotated on YouTube. The topic is the three types of breakers found on sandy beaches – something we are talking about in my marine bio class this coming Monday. Just to entice you, there are dolphins, and my daughter says something funny at the end. Helpful comments always appreciated.

Best student comment ever

Mason Posner — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:34:59 +0000

It speaks for itself:

Thanks to a colleague for tacking this up in their office.

A new look for A Fish Eye View

Mason Posner — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:17:41 +0000

I thought it was time liven up this space a bit.

But the changes are more than skin deep. I have added a list in the right sidebar of my favorite posts spanning some of the different topics that I write about. And lower down in the right sidebar I have a section for Ashland science blogs. These will include blogs by student authors from our science departments, most of whom started blogging as part of my senior capstone course on science communication.

I keep reading that bloggers need a niche, a focus that sets them apart from the many wonderful science blogs that are out there. As an integrative biologist my interests span from visual ecology, vertebrate evolution and systematics to protein biochemistry and lens development. But I am also deeply involved in mentoring undergraduate research, trying various technologies in my teaching (both new and old) and have developed an interest in exciting students about their ability to communicate science on the web through blogging. Does this all equal a niche? We will see.

I hope you keep reading.

Does good climate reporting make a difference?

Mason Posner — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:48:04 +0000

This week in my undergrad science communication course my students discussed whether it was possible to change an anti-science, denialist perspective with good communication techniques. There was a mix of perspectives, but one view was that people will believe what they want, and will disregard scientific evidence to the contrary.

I thought about this conversation while listening to an excellent NPR story by Christopher Joyce on why our current abundance of snow does not spell the death of global warming. Quite the contrary. Wonderful reporting, but does it make a difference?

In a recent Nature editorial, Dan Kahan of Yale Law School criticizes what he sees as the dominant form of science communication:

The prevailing approach is still simply to flood the public with as much sound data as possible on the assumption that the truth is bound, eventually, to drown out its competitors. If, however, the truth carries implications that threaten people’s cultural values, then holding their heads underwater is likely to harden their resistance and increase their willingness to support alternative arguments, no matter how lacking in evidence. This reaction is substantially reinforced when, as often happens, the message is put across by public communicators who are unmistakably associated with particular cultural outlooks or styles — the more so if such advocates indulge in partisan rhetoric, ridiculing opponents as corrupt or devoid of reason. This approach encourages citizens to experience scientific debates as contests between warring cultural factions — and to pick sides accordingly.

One of Kahan’s suggestions is that scientific information needs to be presented by diverse voices, so that individuals can get information from people with similar cultural backgrounds. This point was raised by one of my students as well, who argued that blogging has the potential to set up this type of communication. Young science bloggers in particular may have the opportunity to gain the ears of their friends, and help promote scientific thinking, through their social networks.

Your thoughts?