Community Outreach
Inquiry-Based Curriculum Enhancement
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| Materials for L111: Ecology & Evolution | ||
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| A Walk in the Woods In this activity, students learn to ask questions about nature by making observations. The major inquiry component is developing experimental designs, although other portions of the activity involve inquiry. |
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| Evolutionary Factors Students explore population genetics using simulation results in this activity. The major inquiry lesson is generating and evaluating predictions. |
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Exploring Organisms This activity is designed to teach the process of science and emphasize the importance of asking questions at the beginning of a semester through the use of animal replicas. |
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| Global Warming Students evaluate multiple lines of data as they explore the effects of global warming on physiology, phenology, species distributions, and community interactions. They also gain considerable practice in interpreting figures. |
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| Historical Thinking This activity is designed to introduce the method of historical thinking in evolutionary biology by analogy to detective work through the use of archeological and paleontological examples. |
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| Mosaic Evolution In this activity, students compare hominoid skulls in order to assess evolutionary change over time. The major inquiry lesson is organizing and representing data. This activity requires cranial casts of hominoids (could be adapted to any available skulls). |
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| Natural Selection This activity is designed to introduce the concept of natural selection via a concrete example and provide numerical values for using population genetics equations to track allele frequency changes and calculate relative fitness. |
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| Plant Phylogeny This activity is designed to introduce students to phylogenetic reconstruction using morphological characters. Using a set of organisms (photographs provided) students develop a hypothesis of the relationship among these organisms. |
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| Population Dynamics Students practice using mathematics to solve ecological problems in this activity. The content of the activity is centered on understanding and differentiating exponential and logistic growth of populations. |
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| Sexual Selection This activity is designed to introduce students to basic concepts in the theory of sexual selection by contrasting it with natural selection in the context of formulating hypotheses, making predictions, and considering different outcomes with respect to the explanation of sexually dimorphic size and coloration. |
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| Species Interactions This activity is designed to reinforce an understanding of basic concepts in ecology as well as the use of basic equations of population growth. It also serves as a bridge to the role of scientific study in issues of biodiversity and conservation. |
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