By: Patrick Lyons
As some of the EDC blog readers know, on occasion I have the opportunity to teach ERTH 2401, more commonly known at Carleton as the dinosaur course. This second year Earth Sciences course is designed to introduce non-science students to key geological concepts and situate dinosaurs within the dynamic environment of the Mesozoic time period. It’s not an anatomy course, but rather a way of looking at these fascinating animals and trying to understand their behaviours, their evolution and their environment. Many students outside of the faculty of Science take this course as their compulsory science credit requirement.
It’s been a few years since I have had the opportunity to teach the course and I was reflecting on the number of developments and discoveries that have taken place in dinosaur paleontological research. I realized that if I was fortunate to teach the course again, I would need to substantially update it.
For example, until very recently, fossils of feather dinosaurs (Ornithomimus) were only found in China. Well no more. Feathers have been found in a number of fossils in Alberta. Dinosaur colour? We have a good idea that Microraptor (a small four winged dinosaur) had black feathers with an iridescent sheen.
These two developments (all taking place within the last six months), emphasize a few things for me relating to teaching and learning:
1) The connection between research and teaching
2) The importance of changing, adapting and updating teaching materials and approaches
3) The speed and availability of new knowledge and understanding
When you are teaching outside of your core discipline, it can be challenging to stay current on a year-to-year basis, yet new knowledge and understanding brings excitement to the classroom (well at least for me it does!). Ideas around feather development in dinosaurs found in Alberta suggest new ways of interpreting the evolutionary reasons for feather development. These are the types of ideas that I would introduce into the classroom and have the students explore. What does this mean for bird-dinosaur relationships? How does it fit with flight?
New developments in a field are exciting opportunities for instructors to change, adapt and have learners explore new ideas. Often this means committing time and energy to changing course materials and re-thinking how you might introduce these ideas into your current teaching framework.
I want to leave you with some tricks and tools that have helped me incorporate changes into my teaching.
1) Modules: I’ve turned the dinosaur course into a series of modules that fit together. Depending on how things are progressing, student interest and developments, I can plug in a different module. I can also develop a new module on the fly. I make sure everything fits together by incorporating learning outcomes.
2) Learning Outcomes: I make extensive use of learning outcomes (for more information about learning outcomes see this blog post by Samah or attend one of our workshops). Each of my modules contains high level outcomes (and sometimes some very specific ones).
3) I use PowerPoint to help me stay organized. But I also deliberately stay simple. I don’t use fancy backgrounds or complex animations. I use it mostly as a container to organize text and media (specifically images and links to video). Keeping things simple helps makes me stay ‘mobile.’ I can add and remove slides very quickly.
4) I use simple technology strategies, such as personalizing my news sources so that I’m notified of new developments in dinosaurs research, and using RSS feeds on key websites.
5) Use social media tools. Twitter can be gold mine for new developments.