Engagement works

As I have said elsewhere, I teach biology at a small state college.  Our school uses “Blackboard,” the online system for courses, and we are encouraged to use it even in our classes that meet regularly in class (that is, ones that are not just web-based). I am running all my quizzes and having students submit [...]

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Education in the Internet Age

Lots of universities have gone somewhat “online” in recent years, bringing some portion of their classes that was formerly only available in person, to the online world. At the institution where I have just started teaching, the faculty are encouraged to get students to start using “Blackboard,” which is an online instructional system. Using Blackboard [...]

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Bleh… plagiarism

A little over a week ago, students in my embryology class handed in their term papers. The first one I read was by a student who had a history of doing “whatever it took” to get a better grade, including being caught trying to cheat on a make-up exam in a different class. However, despite [...]

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Cool new trends in education

There are lots of problems in the educational system, and as an educator and scientist I will certainly have cause to discuss them from time to time. Today, however, I would like to discuss a very cool new trend in education, particularly in the area of college textbooks.
Ordinarily, I think of textbook companies as the [...]

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When even experts don’t understand their own ideas…

Although my specialties are behavioral ecology and marine biology, one of my interests, or hobbies, is evolution. I mean not evolutionary biology in the hardcore, research-paper sense, but more the philosophy of evolution, the history of evolutionary thought — as well as evolution as a political hot potato. One problem with the whole debate about [...]

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