Life Sciences Commons^™

Exposing Problems Teaching Students Morphological Species Identification, Trevor Stamper, Lauren Weidner, Gregory Nigoghosian, Ludmila D. Nunes

IMPACT Presentations

When dealing with physical remains, morphological assessment for species is a traditional approach to entomological specimen identification. A dichotomous key guides the user through taxa determination for a specimen by providing a series of dual-choice nodes that center around morphological differences. Each nodal choice leads to either a new set of dichotomous choices or a taxa decision. We evaluated student’s ability to utilize a dichotomous key down to species for a limited set of taxa, by reviewing their nodal decisions along with their confidence level using a Likert scale (1-5).

Along with individual decision recording, students conducted a post-decision group …

Teaching Morphological Species Identification To Forensic Science Students: Advantages, Problems And Results, Gregory Nigoghosian, Lauren Weidner, Ludmila Nunes, Trevor Stamper

IMPACT Presentations

Poster presented at the 69th American Academy of Forensic Science Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, USA. The poster discusses findings of a study of how students identify morphological species.

Developing First-Year Students' Biological Information Literacy:Collaboration Between Libraries And Disciplinary Faculty In Impact Classrooms, Nancy Pelaez, Clarence Maybee, Maribeth Slebodnik

IMPACT Presentations

This project enabled students in an introductory biology course to learn biological information literacy. The section of the course described utilized a peer-led team learning (PLTL) model in which 50 students met twice a week. The students also divided into teams that met weekly for a workshop facilitated by a peer leader. The first time the course was taught in this way information literacy tasks were added to the weekly problem sets that the students worked on with their teams each week. By examining recorded footage of team meetings, it was determined that the students did not always see the …

Innovative Approach To Active Learning, John G. Graveel, George E. Van Scoyoc

IMPACT Presentations

Presentation on a course redesign and project plan given at the American Society of Agronomy Annual Meeting, Cincinnati, OH.