INTRODUCTION
My primary teaching responsibility is in the Lyman Briggs School of Science (LBS) at Michigan State University, where I teach both lecture and lab sections in an Introductory Organismal Biology course (LBS 144). In LBS, I also teach a senior seminar on Nature/Nurture issues (LBS 492). In the fall of odd-numbered years, I teach a graduate course in Molecular Evolution (ZOL 855).
In my teaching, I strive to continuously improve my courses, focussing on several major themes. Among these are:
Writing in the classroom. I firmly believe that students retain very little by merely looking at books or computer screens, without actually physically engaging the subject matter. They need to talk, they need to write, they need to manipulate things. I have worked very hard to decrease the number of points in my courses that can be obtained by filling in circles on bubble sheets.
The Broader Context. I feel that it is important to place the knowledge that we gain in a broader context. For example, in the Intro Bio course, I have stressed the historical context and tentative nature of our biological knowledge, and the idea that the things we learn in class are being discovered today in research laboratories and in the field.
Active and Group Learning. As much as possible I have tried to incorporate active and cooperative group exercises into both my undergraduate and graduate courses. Making sure that students are engaged participants in class sessions, instead of passive "sponges", is a primary goal. My motto, however, remains "Homework is active learning".
Inquiry-Based Labs. In 2002, we changed the LBS144 labs to an inquiry-based format. This change resulted from a desire to create a laboratory experience that is "inquiry-based", where students learn how to "do biology" instead of just watching it! The conceptual change resulted from the adaptation and implementation of the "Teams and Streams" concept developed by Dr. Doug Luckie, Dr. Joe Maleszewski, and Dr. John Wilterding for LBS145.
Use of Technology. We use technology in several ways in our courses. We use the web to post and distribute course syllabi, the Angel course management system to distribute class notes and study objectives, and maintain an electronic gradebook. We use LON-CAPA for interactive web-based homework and Personal Response Systems (Clickers) in class to increase student participation. Finally, in the LBS144 laboratories, we do a lot of our work using personal computers, from making bar and line graphs in Excel, to taking digital photomicrographs of organisms at different developmental stages and building web pages to display them online.
Using My Research to Inform My Teaching. My research on the evolution of flies in the genus Rhagoletis lends itself very well to incorporation into both my undergraduate and graduate course offerings. The flies provide a hands-on system to introduce incoming freshmen to biology, and I use the flies to illustrate life history traits, how adaptive adaptive radiations can result from utilization of ecologically diverse habitats, and mechanisms of speciation.
The links below lead to sites containing more information about my teaching.
Last updated August 23, 2006