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The past two weeks have seen our class mostly focusing on collecting and practicing filming, with some lectures on our shorter Wed.

Week 3 began with some collecting the Glen Arboretum as the weather was great. We got some damselflies (see video below), butterflies, grasshoppers, and more. Not much of any one particular organism, but a lot of variety. We then brought them back into the labs to practice filming, getting used to the equipment and how to capture the behaviors we are interested in. We also discussed the process of tracking from the videos. We are using Tracker this year, and as usual there have been some troubleshooting. We are still working on it, but the weather has been so nice during our class days, I’ve been trying to focus on collecting for projects. They also had another annotated bibliography due. Doing these weekly is very helpful to me to see where students thoughts and interests are. Wed. of week 3 saw us troubleshooting tracking a bit, then a lecture on muscle physiology, which I have narrowed down since previous iteration.

Week 4 started off with us embracing the weather again on Monday and heading out to Irvine Nature Center to collect. As students are starting to focus in on projects we were a bit more targeted getting several individuals of several species (mantises, grasshoppers, and smaller butterflies. The park staff has been very accommodating to our class and the students had a great time exploring the meadows and collecting specimens. We brought the animals in to our vivarium room to hopefully work on. On Wed. we finished our lecture on muscle physiology and discussed terrestrial locomotion. I’ve been trying to have small discussions of project ideas to see if there is overlap to form groups and get an idea of what animals we might need. In class I borrowed some marine invertebrates from another lab at TU to practice time-lapse. We had some anemones, snails and jellyfish (see below).

This class always poses challenges each semester I’ve taught it. It is a bit easier this third time around, but I’ve encountered new challenges. Some, being in a new building. No space in the classroom to store equipment, but we have space in a nearby storage room. Animals being kept farther away in the vivarium. Keeping an eye on weather and troubleshooting digitizing and kinematics. The first time, we did that earlier because weather prevented us from going out and collecting. This time, the weather has been great, so I’ve been trying to focus on that now. The tricky thing is having due dates for assignments, but not time in class to troubleshoot. I try to be as transparent as possible, but also express the flexibility of the schedule. It is always tricky not knowing what students are working on, do we need to collect more, do we have enough, should we start really filming. We still have about a month of potential good weather, but you never know.

Four weeks in and its going okay. I’m excited by the enthusiasm in the class and potential projects. Part of it is me wanting to get to the research. But, we will.

First two weeks down. This iteration of the course is interesting. Many say the third time you teach a course is when you really have it down, but with two iterations I sometimes feel like I’m starting over. However, I’m not, so lessons I’ve learned in the past help.

Week 1 saw us get the cameras out on day 1 and learn how to use them Having the tutorials and MK from the lab as a TA were a big help. Having the Living Windows insect room next door separated by a prep room was also a big help as I could just go in and grab some living organisms, isopods, hissing cockroaches and a mantis. Students did great and it was great to see them learning to film animals at the start. During Wed. lecture portion of the class, I decided to do a similar activity, but with our time lapse cameras. Since I hadn’t used these in previous iterations and time lapse requires…well time, we set them up at the beginning to film two species of roaches eating some flake food. I let the students adjust the composition and filming rate, then we let it run while I lectured. This turned out really well too and they got some great videos. So, first week and we got started learning how to use the equipment and film animals to get data.

Week 2 was a shorter week due to the Labor Day holiday, so we just had lecture on Wed. I try to not lecture the full two hours. Students had two small assignments due, their observations from nature, which I’ve done in the past and their first entry of an annotated bibliography. I’m trying a different approach with the annotated bibliography based on a research student in the lab. Instead of it being due once, with 8 or so citations, it is due once a week. After my lecture I used the remaining time to discuss what they observed and read. Both activities generated discussion on potential projects. One thing I learned from the first iteration, that was lacking in the second, was this group discussion of projects. I do it to discuss hypotheses, feasibility and potential experimental design. When in person in a group, students usually jump in with their ideas. Having those two assignments started the discussion so we could start brainstorming project ideas.

So far, so good in class.

Next week we’ll go collect in the Glen (weather permitting) and try to film in the lab, then learn to digitize videos. Wed. will see us discussing terrestrial locomotion.

We are just a few days out for the start of our semester and mostly ready to go. I have been updating the syllabus to incorporate some things from both previous iterations as well as new things, such as weekly annotated bibliographies. I have not purchased any animals as we have a great Living Windows collection next door to us that we can utilize as well as praying mantises in the lab. They say the third iteration of the course it becomes easier, we’ll see if that’s the case here. Some new things, we will only be doing a poster presentation at the end (as opposed to a poster, presentation and paper). I am keeping the progress reports and going back to the research movie trailers. I figured with AI and newer software it might offer some new creativity. I’m trying to not change much as this semester is more going back to the beginning with some slight changes to get us back on track to how the course should be taught in person. I will continue to try and update.

We are less than a month out from the start of the semester and our third iteration of the OFF Lab. I’ve started modifying the syllabus, which has been interesting as I was reminded of ALL the things we did in Fall 2020 when we were partially remote. I have decided to go back to the beginning for the most part and plan to run the course similar to Fall 2018, with some changes that worked well in Fall 2020, such as progress reports. Due to time and classroom technology, as we are now also in a new/different building, I am not planning on Scientist Spotlights. Those were great, especially during the pandemic. But, I want to just run the course to see where we are.

In addition to updating the syllabus, we’ve been going through and checking equipment. These things are never as easy as I hope, cameras need updating, computers need updating, making sure we can get videos and track them, etc. Plus, the research lab has moved to 3D filming and we will be focusing on 2D in the class, so reminding myself about 2D filming. We’ve also moved to track using a combination of DeepLabCut and DLTdv8, but for simplicity we plan to use Tracker for the course. Small, but important things to get in order.

So, we are getting there. Most of the cameras seem to be up and running. The syllabus seems to be mostly finalized. We’re hoping to get some animals in for practice and there are some other decisions to make about field collecting, but we are on our way.

At this point in the course, students are suppose to have the basic content of the course under their belt and their projects firmly established. despite us being mostly remote, for the most part we are where we should be. We have learned a lot from our scientists that joined us. We all have experience filming. We have worked through filming setups, animals not doing what we want, and the students have projects they are working. It is pretty impressive what the students are doing this semester at home with their iPhones, some basic supplies, and invertebrates. I’m planning on sharing at the end of the semester what they have all been doing. The focus of the course shifts at this point from scaffolding to student-driven inquiry. My role is to be a mentor to them as they conduct research, it’s a bit tougher remotely, but it is working. The projects this semester may not be publishable, may not have the sample sizes, or be ideal, but again, I’m impressed with what the students are accomplishing.

Week 9 had us focusing on collecting videos and starting to digitize. There was an assignment at the start of week 9 where students had to submit an example video, the digitized point, and the resulting performance/kinematics. Aside from some glitches in Tracker that we figured out, the videos, tracked points and resulting performances look good. This is one of the checkpoints I have in the class to ensure we can get the data we hope to, which has become more important working remotely. On Monday, I gave a short lecture on presentation skills using some slides from Amy Cheu. Thank you Amy for posting those, as I am not artistic and her presentation is really helpful. This short presentation was in preparation for the students presenting during the rest of the semester. Wed. of  Week 9  saw our first set of live, virtual student presentations where they summarized a paper from the primary literature. These went well given the virtual environment.

Week 10 started with a small lecture on what an annotated bibliography is as that will be our next large assignment. There was a Research Proposal VoiceThread presentation due at the start of class Monday. This is one thing I changed due to the nature of the class. Normally there are only 4 or so presentations as students are working in groups. Since everyone is working independently, we would have 10 presentations. Instead of doing it synchronously, having more Zoom time, I turned it into a VoiceThread assignment. Students uploaded their presentations to VoiceThread and commented over their slides for their presentation. This worked well, aside from some formatting issues with VoiceThread. They can do the presentations at their own pace without having to sit online more. Students continued to collect videos and worked on projects, at home for most. The students coming in continued to collect videos of their animals. Wed. saw our second set of student presentations, summarizing articles from the primary literature.

A fairly uneventful two weeks, which is perfectly fine. The class is building up to larger projects, so I want to make sure they have the time (in class or at home) to complete those. As most students are finishing up data collection, we’ll turn our focus to data presentation and analysis.

 

Well the class has been in data collection mode. I am there for support, but the student’s are busy finishing collecting videos and digitizing. We learned about data analysis and presentation these past weeks.

This week I had the students create and submit a movie trailer for their research. I wanted to give the students a creative assignment, highlight their videos, and advertise their research. Since I am a big fan of movies (and love when new trailers come out), I thought I would try this as an assignment. I created a rubric to ensure that the student’s were aware their research needed to be the focus, but that it should be creative and fun. They needed to clearly state their hypothesis, show some methods, and have fun with it. Every group submitted theirs and on the Monday before Thanksgiving, I made some popcorn and we all previewed them. I wasn’t aware that iMovie actually had movie trailer templates, so several groups used those, which helped with editing, creativity, and creative commons music (which we discussed). They were a bit skeptical of the assignment, not sure of what I was looking for, and asked if I had ever done one, which I had not. But, since we had an unexpected snow day the Thursday before, I decided to try my hand at it and created one for them. This was a really fun assignment, every group did a great job at showcasing their research and creativity. As a bonus, I will be sharing their videos with the faculty and staff here as advertisements for each group’s poster coming up at our Dept.’s annual fall poster day. The group that gets the most faculty to visit (they’ll have sign in sheets) based on their trailers will get some bonus points. I’ve also considered giving a bonus to the group that has the most views on social media as they are posted on youtube and twitter. Below are the trailers, get some popcorn and enjoy!

 

 

First up, my trailer for the assignment. I’m not a horror movie fan, but felt it was appropriate:

 

Second, team water strider takes a sci-fi suspense approach, can these scientists save mankind from the invading water striders?

 

Next, team stink bug examines the “super” flight abilities of invasive marmorated stink bugs.

 

Team crayfish introduced the world to the crayfish olympics.

 

And last, but certainly not least, team jump draws inspiration from the Hunger Games to examine the Jumping Games:

 

 

Well, the class is really up and running now and we are in the midst of data collection. During week 9 we spent Monday collecting videos. Everyone has been working really well and are getting some great videos. On Wed. of week 9, we had our first set of presentations by students summarizing a paper relevant to their research project. I used this rubric to grade the presentations and we learned about different crayfish escapes, crayfish facial recognition, and grasshopper jumping. I also extended the deadline for their video, digitized point, and kinematic test, so we spent some of Wed. going through their kinematic code to make sure they are getting data.

Here is a video of team jump.

 

Week 10 started off with more data collection, teams came in and started working. Groups also started working on digitizing their videos and getting kinematics. The goal is to have all our videos collected by Thanksgiving, so we can move on to data analysis. In a few weeks I’ll give a short lecture on data analysis and presentation, since all groups will be presenting at the Department of Biological Sciences poster day on Dec. 7. On Wed, each group gave a short presentation on their proposed research, graded following this rubric. We also had another student present a paper on water strider jumping performance.

Here is a video from Team Water Strider

Things are moving along in the course. Week 5 started off with another cancelled field trip due to weather. But, as I’m learning with this course, we adapted and instead spent time trouble shooting R. None of the students have ever used R, so it was a lot to ask of them. I made a simple code for them to get displacement, velocity, and acceleration from the point they digitized on their video in MTrackJ. There is a learning curve to R, so we spent the first part of Monday’s class making sure everyone can run their point through and get some data. And we did. I also asked them to get mean velocity and acceleration, not giving them the code, but pointing them to online resources.

Students then went back out to the Glenn Arboretum to collect some invertebrates with Aaron and Jess. They came back with a bunch of organisms. Instead of filming, I wanted to give them time to talk about project ideas. So, I had them brainstorm. We wrote all the ideas on the board and started thinking about experimental design, sample sizes, and feasibility. They had an assignment due the next Monday on an initial project idea with citation. Starting to move from learning about animal movement and research to conducting research. In class on Wed. we had a lecture on jumping and discussed a paper on hindlimb length and jumping in leafhoppers.

Week 6 began with weather finally on our side! So, we headed out to Oregon Ridge Park to try and collect. Students had submitted initial project ideas, so we had some target species. Many students went with Jess to catch crayfish in a creek, and they were successful, capturing ~23 in an hour. I went with several students to sample the fields, and we got some crickets and grasshoppers. Students in the creek also realized there were water striders, so they caught a bunch of them. We then sat in the pavilion and students rotated around discussing project ideas, while Aaron and Jess caught all the invasive stink bugs on the pavilion. We started to organize into groups and project ideas. Seemed there was a group that wanted to work with crayfish, a group wanting to work with water striders, another on crickets/grasshoppers and one that was open. We headed back to campus, Aaron and Jess took care of our new animals.

On Wed. we spent the first few minutes finalizing groups. They have a proposal abstract due next week, as a group. We are switching over to more group work now. We then discussed movement in the air and read a paper on bee flight performance. We’re suppose to head back to Oregon Ridge on Monday to target grasshoppers and crickets, and our midterm on Wed. Then, it is all about research.

Well, we made it through week 1 and 2 of the new course. As they say, so far so good. Going in to the week I was 50% excited, 50% terrified. I get to teach a class similar to my research, instruct students on how to film animal movement using high-speed cameras and talk about topics close to my interests and research (50% excited). However, since this is a authentic research experience based on student driven research questions and hypotheses, I have no idea what they will come up with, what performance or function they will ask, how feasible it will be, and since we are relying on locally collected invertebrates (plus some from a colleague and biological supply companies), I am concerned we will not get enough specimens. So, 50% terrified.

However, we got into class on Monday and got the ball rolling. We spent Monday going over logistics of the course, introductions of the class, some basic camera principles, and then got into filming. Every student held a hissing cockroach (good for an organismal course), and every student captured a high speed video of something moving. The video was part of their first assignment, worth 5 points and based off the following rubric I created to ensure they understand what makes a good video for analysis (Video test rubric).

 

On Wed. I got in some animals from a biological supply company, including fiddler crabs, crayfish, dragon fly nymphs, damselfly larvae, American cockroaches and German cockroaches. In class we discussed the morphology, performance fitness paradigm and spent time defining terms. Lecture and discussion was based off chapter 1 in Animal Athletes.

Monday was a holiday, so no lab time. On Wednesday students submitted their first paper summary, where they had to find a paper from the primary literature relevant to the class. The following rubric was used (Paper Summary Rubric). Lecture focused on the factors that can affect performance and we discussed a recent paper, Winchell et al. 2018.Linking locomotor performance to morphological shifts in urban lizards. Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Next week we will practice getting videos on animals, introduce digitizing and kinematics, and discuss muscle physiology.