Week 15-16: The end

Well, we made it to the end of the semester. As I mentioned at the beginning, I thought teaching this class this second time around would be easier, little did I know I would be doing it in a pandemic with most of it being remote. I think there are some aspects that worked okay remotely and I think there are some things that benefit from in person instruction. I am impressed with what the students were able to accomplish this semester, conducting research from home. After summarizing what we did the last two weeks, I’ll highlight my impressions of pros and cons from the semester. I’m also going to be posting sample slides from the students final presentations to highlight what they did this semester in another post/on Twitter.

Week 15 was our last full week of class. I did not have much planned this week except for one on one meetings. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, there has been a lot of disparity in where students were with their research, so the individual meetings were a chance for me to try and get everyone on the same page. On Monday, we all met briefly then had individual meetings. Most of the meetings were dedicated to finalizing results. At this points students had their data files together so we could continue to work in R to get some results. Assignments due were a data upload to our OneDrive, something I hadn’t done before, but wanted to highlight data transparency, a progress report on Monday and their final VoiceThread presentations on Friday. That Friday our Department held the annual research symposium, virtually. Normally I have students present, this year it was an option, with one student opting in. On Wed. I held optional one-on-one meetings, no formal class time. this allowed students who were behind to catch up, while allowing students who were ahead not to have to worry about coming to class. Week 16 we only had our Monday class as finals stated on Tuesday. We all met and reflected on the class, then I had final individual meetings. Their final papers are due this coming Friday. And that’s it.

So, how did it go. Let’s start with the pros of the class. First,  I am really impressed with what the students accomplished this semester, as I was the first time I taught the class. They all did great. I emphasized to them that they ALL have research experience now. We went from nothing, to full project ideas, data collected, and results. Many of the students are in our Animal Behavior program that requires an internship. Most of those internships were (or are) cancelled, so this was a great opportunity for them to gain some experience. The advances in high-speed filming on everyday devices definitely made this class possible remotely. While I was worried about some students not having the capability and was prepared to offer solutions, they all did and used the technology. Without that, this would not have worked. Students again got to research something that interested them specifically, which is always a HUGE benefit. Many students took advantage of their surroundings, one student who was home at the Jersey Shore, researched sand crabs and was amazed at what they learned about creatures they have seen their entire life (like moving backwards). Others took inspiration from the insects around their porch lights or nearby woods. Those that came in (only 3-4 for a few weeks this semester) got over their “fear” of insects and mentioned that this class opened up a whole new area of research to them after working on katydids. So, the core goal of the class, for the students to get research experience, was still there. Lastly, drawing inspiration from our Zoom meetings and others to hold Scientist Spotlights with amazing researchers from around the country remains a highlight. And I know the students really enjoyed having other researchers join us. Again, thank you to those that came.

Cons of this semester, aside from the normal malaise associated with Zoom. There may be more, but it is from my perspective teaching it so I’ll summarize my main thoughts. First, it was still challenging to teach, mainly because of the remote content, disparity in student’s progress, and not being able to directly interact with students. By the end I realized that I was managing 9 (several students dropped) independent research projects that were not part of my lab’s research. This was a lot. But, if I ever have to do it again, I will go in planning for this. I did not force students to work in groups, and none decided to, so they all worked individually. I think this is a con. Students often benefit from their interactions and brainstorming. I think some of the disparity in progress was due to this. If I had to do it again, I’m not sure if I would force group work or not. It did make it easier as there was no peer evaluation, which I still haven’t quite figured out how to fix. While students did amazing on their own, it is better when we are together, especially for brainstorming project ideas and getting animals to cooperate. While they all got videos, none got the sample sizes we had in the first iteration. I think many spent more time refining their project and were switching up late into the semester. Being in person, we can move ideas and troubleshoot filming setups more easily. Lastly, analyses and R. I had trouble instructing students in R the first time around, but it happened at the beginning of the course to get kinematics using some code I have for the course. This time, we had trouble at the end with analyses. As I mentioned in previous posts, I had multiple sessions to work through analyses, and still wound up doing most of it with them in personal meetings. Still not sure how to get around this.

So, this is the end. Hopefully next time I teach the class we’ll be back to in person (and in a new science building as we are preparing to move into it now!). Again, the students amazed me and they did great given their constraints. I wouldn’t recommend doing a course like this remotely, but with this specific topic of quantifying animal movement with high-speed cameras, it did work remotely thanks to advances in technology. I did have a few researchers offer their high-speed videos to analyze (thank you for the offers), but students really wanted to collect the videos themselves. I’m just waiting for them to submit their final papers, but this was an interesting semester. At least I’m on sabbatical in the Spring. Good luck to the rest of you!

And I thought it would be easier…..

In this ever changing world, I will be teaching the Organismal Form and Function CURE this coming Fall 2020. Our semester does not start until August 24th, so I have a little over a month to get ready. As Dante from Clerk’s once said, “I’m not even supposed to be here today.” Initially, I was scheduled for sabbatical Fall 2020, but decided to postpone until Spring 2021 to accommodate international travel plans. I thought Spring might be more likely for me to travel, we will see. Since schedules were already made, I added the CURE last minute, advertised and have a full class. Back in March there were hopes we would be in person. Things have been changing quickly.

In an effort to once again document what I do in the course, I will be posting through the rest of the summer and semester. The course will change, as it will not all be in person. Teaching a lecture remotely is not too difficult. Trying to engage students in research remotely is a different story. I have some ideas and plans in the works, so we will see what happens.

The first time I taught the course it was stressful not knowing if student’s could come up with questions, if we could collect anything, or if animals would perform. It all worked (Oufiero 2019). I couldn’t wait to teach the course again as I thought it would be easier. Little did I know a global pandemic would be happening. So, once again I’m a bit stressed about how all of this will go. I am currently surveying students to obtain an idea of what they might prefer, including:

  • Face to face opportunity in class to film animals in limited student capacity
  • Film animals at home with their own device and nets, enclosures provided
  • Not to film and only digitize and analyze prerecorded high speed videos
  • Not to film, but come to campus to conduct a project on morphological variation based on museum specimens

If anyone in the scientific community is reading this and has videos they are willing to share to help with option 3 above, please contact me (coufiero -at- towson.edu). I would be happy to reciprocate and even develop a network of videos students can work with. I will also be reaching out via social media, including a post on more details. Five and a half weeks to go, stay tuned. I will be updating information on this website, including course material, archiving old material, as I go.

Final Thoughts

Well, final papers are graded and final grades are in. Overall, the class was a success. I’ve been reflecting back on the beginning of the semester the past week or so, and am impressed with how far everyone has come. Some things worked well, some were okay, and some things I’ll be revising the next time I teach the course. My goal, was to give more students authentic research experiences in organismal biology, focusing on form, function, and performance. At the end of the class, I think I succeeded with that. We had four unique projects, some on topics that have not been investigated before. Students learned to use high-speed cameras, digitized animals to get kinematics and performance, present research, and write up their research. They all had hypotheses that they tested.

There are several things I think worked really well. The first, is having dedicated time in a classroom setting for research. Students have lots of other priorities (e.g., work, other classes, family commitments, etc.) and I have found it hard for them to have time for research. Having everyone in the class at the same time allowed me to move everyone through at a similar pace. Some groups were more ahead then others, but all relatively on the same page. Another thing that worked well was having students come up with questions related to animal form, function, and performance. I was worried about this at the start, everything, including the organisms, was a complete unknown. But, everyone got the hang of filming animals and motivating them to perform well (special thanks to the wooden dowels for motivation!). Field collecting was also a highlight. Many of these students have never been outside for a Biology class, and they really woke up when we went collecting. Many of their hypotheses came from catching and observing animals in nature. Weather was not on our side this semester, but the two days we did go out were beautiful and everyone seemed to have a great time. Lastly, having assignments related to students finding related articles from the primary literature seemed effective at getting them to look at other studies and refine their hypotheses.

Several things did not work well this semester. The first, as I just mentioned, was weather. I did have a contingency day build in, and we needed it. But we got rained out a lot. Group work was also challenging. We had a professional development on group work and peer evaluation, which I had not even thought about prior to the class. I implemented a peer evaluation system and had groups of 2, 3 and 4, but I need to revise it for the next class. The other major hurdle was varying operating systems and student computer literacy. I didn’t anticipate having a full 4 hour class to trouble shoot R, but I did because of weather and I will keep that in for future iterations. I tried working in the computer lab, where everyone was on the same operating system, but that was also challenging. So, in the future, I will probably spend more time working through computer programs (we used ImageJ, some students used Tracker, and R). Lastly, the final papers seemed a bit rushed, so I will likely emphasize them earlier in the class (note: all rubrics were posted to blackboard at the start of the class, so they did know there was a paper), potentially including a draft as an assignment so I can provide feedback.

At the beginning of the semester I was 50% excited, 50% terrified. There were a lot of unknowns. Could we get animals, could we film them, could students come up with hypotheses? About half way through when we were in the thick of collecting videos, I realized the class was actually working. Grasshoppers jumped, water striders strided?, crayfish escaped, and stinkbugs flew.  I was also concerned about not having enough to do later in the class, but just having them time for them to work on research seemed effective. This class set a high bar for what I will expect next time. I also learned a lot about different animals I never really thought about before. So, win/win.

Next planned class is for Fall 2020, see you then….

And just because I really enjoyed their research abstracts as movie trailers, here they are again:

 

Week 13-14 Recap

Almost done with the semester. Student’s have finished collecting their videos, are finishing up their digitizing, and some groups have moved on to data analysis. We finished our student presentations on a paper from the primary literature. I learned a lot from these this semester on al the various organisms and performances we are studying. Some students spent some time with Aaron in Dr. LaPolla’s lab taking automontage images of their organisms, including water strider legs and grasshopper hind legs. Some groups are becoming more experienced in R, learning to use mixed models to analyze their data, and are getting good at plotting and visualizing their data in R. The only assignments that are left are a poster presentation Friday Dec. 7th, in the the Department of Biological Sciences and their final paper. So, almost done. I’ve been reflecting on the class, and can’t believe how far we’ve all come. To think I was worried we wouldn’t have any projects to do, and we are now getting some interesting results from student driven questions, most of which I had never even thought about. Stay tuned as we wrap up the semester. Below are some photos from our university photographer.

Week 7-8 recap

Well, we are more than half way through the semester and the class has been moving along well. Week 7 started off with another nice day and trip to Oregon Ridge, the focus was to get grasshoppers and crickets, but we also got some more water striders and crayfish. We also caught some praying mantises, as they were pretty abundant in the field. We managed to get more grasshoppers, mostly short winged, and some crickets.

Wed. we had our only exam, a midterm to ensure we all understood the content. The class did well, 13 short answers and a B average.

Week 8 started with a tank of dead crayfish (miscommunication, overfeeding, and a build up of ammonia). We sent the crayfish team out to catch some more with Aaron, while the rest stayed behind and began working on collecting data. They set up their high-speed cameras and tanks to capture the performance they were interested in. By the end of the day, each group had gotten their filming setup figured out, and started collecting data. Water striders were gliding on calm water, invasive stink bugs were flying towards the light, and grasshoppers were jumping in the air. On Wed. we continued filming and the crayfish team got up and running after being a bit behind. The groups had an assignment due with a video from their research, a digitized point, and resulting kinematics. We are still working on it, as I am going to work with groups this week to finalize their kinematic code to get the data they need. But, we have animals, we have projects, and now we have some data. My concerns at the beginning of the semester of whether this whole thing will work, (what will there questions be, can we get animals, can we get them to perform) have disappeared. Some concern with the stink bugs, but once we realized that they are phototaxis, and we need the light for the camera anyway, they were off and flying.

 

Week 3-4 recap

A quarter of the way through the semester. Weather has not been on our side. For week 3 we spent our time in lab practicing to film using some of the crayfish we had. Everyone got some crayfish escapes. We then moved to the computer lab to learn digitizing using the MTrackJ plugin for ImageJ. We used one of the praying mantis videos I had, and after we worked through the protocol, students started clicking (and clicking and clicking and clicking). They had an assignment due at the start of the next lab day tracking one point from one of the crayfish videos. Digitized points were graded based on this rubric. In lecture on week three we had a crash course in muscle physiology and energetics based off of Biewener and Patek Ch. 2. This lecture was way too long, almost two hours with no breaks. In the future I plan to break it up. Most students had muscle physiology in A&P or Animal Physiology, but not all.

Week 4 started with a cancelled field trip to the field station. So, we tried to collect in the Glen Arboretum behind our building, but within a minute it started to pour! Luckily there was some shelter from the rain. As we stood there, we talked about project ideas, what would they do with all the money and resources in the world. How long can a dragonfly fly for? Once the rain died down, we went back in and filmed some crickets jumping to again practice our filming techniques. We then headed to the computer lab to take our digitized points and start getting some basic kinematics and performance traits in R. They had an assignment due at the beginning of the next week using their tracked points to get maximum displacement, velocity, acceleration with plots (based off of code I provided), but also figure out how to obtain mean values. While things worked okay in the computer lab, they did not on their personal computers. Stay tuned for the next update to find out what we did next. Lecture week 4 focused on terrestrial locomotion, using Biewener and Patek Ch. 4 as a guide. We then discussed Full and Tullis 1990 on cockroach running and energetics at different inclines.

Its interesting to teach this material over an extended period of time. Usually I do a truncated version of form and cuntion in one lab period. Having the time to spend learning to film, digitize, and use R has been nice. Discussing papers has helped think about research ideas and practicing filming on different animals has helped them see how to think about filming and analyzing different animals and performance.