Dear colleagues,
I'm in the early stages of planning a study to determine the most effective approaches to teaching Introductory Biological/Physical Anthropology (also called "Human Origins" etc...) to undergraduates.
Mostly I'm interested in their evolutionary thinking and whether we can identify our best methods for bettering it over one semester.
This study would involve inviting students enrolled in this course at colleges and universities around North America to take pre- and post-tests on-line (which could earn them some form of extra credit on your end, if you do that sort of thing). All participation would be entirely anonymous except for the feedback about your own (anonymized first) students that you and I share, if you'd like to hear about it. The results of this study should benefit us all.
Before I get to any of it, though, it would help greatly to see your syllabi so that I can identify the major ways that our learning outcomes and our approaches vary. This will help me frame hypotheses and write survey questions.
So please, I'm begging you, please send me your most recent syllabus for Introduction to Biological Anthropology (aka Introduction to Physical Anthropology aka Introduction to Human Evolution/Origins) or the equivalent course at your institution, that you teach.
holly_dunsworth@uri.edu
If you want mine in return, I'll be happy to reciprocate!
If you do share, you have my word that I will keep your syllabus confidential and anonymous and will not share with anyone.
When you send it, would you please mention whether you'd be interested in participating in such a study in the near future?
Thank you so much in advance,
Holly
P.S. If you could share this with your colleagues who teach this course, I'd be forever grateful.
Showing posts with label human origins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label human origins. Show all posts
Thursday, November 12, 2015
Friday, January 3, 2014
Story required.
It might seem like it this week, but sex isn't the only recurring theme here on the MT. From various angles, we hit on the culture of science quite regularly, quite relentlessly, and quite hard. We can't help it, we think anthropologically. We want to know the truth of things as much as anyone else, and we think discussing and revealing what we don't know and what obstacles we face are important steps in the process toward knowing.
One of the ways that science is so clearly cultural is its love of stories.
I even did the story thing just then. I made science into an actor.
Try again: Science is done by humans and humans love stories.
Hardly anybody I know'd deny that.
But what we scientists (particularly evolutionary scientists) seem to resist like the dickens is that we require stories and we are required to fit our work into others' or to write new ones.
These superstitions can't be the straightest path toward the Truth, can they?
Back up a sec. First, I'm not trying to dump on the power of analogy. Without analogy we couldn't have gotten this far, scientifically. Lacking analogous thinking is a big reason why chimps don't reason.
And, second, I'm not trying to dump on anthropomorphism or personification because I've done that already recently (and I'd love to talk about something else today).
I'm talking about making our research, our methods, our findings, our results fit our desired narratives. Or any narrative for that matter.
One of these habits we often discuss here at the MT is selectionism which is closely related to adaptationism.
Ken's recent post on this is brilliant: 'Every trait is due to natural selection!'... often said but is it true?
And since reading his piece (and since before) I've been stewing about some related matters, like, why don't negative results get published?
I'm of the frame of mind to spin the following: Because the story arc where there is no change (no arc?) isn't usually the one that sells the screenplay to Paramount, and likewise, isn't usually the one selling Nature ads and subscriptions.
There's a pretty big recent exception to the negative attitude toward negative results. When they didn't find dark matter, we heard all about it!
But that's because it was the first exploration of its kind and the spin was that some big time physics equations were wrong and needed to be scratched and reconceptualized. How exciting and productive! And wtf is dark matter?!
But when people find no significant p-values for any effect of a food or drug on some aspect of health, who cares right? No change. No cause and effect to bring no change about! No results! which is not true, but still... Boring!
In fact, "boring" is what a reviewer called the last paper I tried to publish in a relatively high impact anthropology journal. It was because I didn't push one hypothesis over the others and instead discussed how unfalsifiable and untestable some present anthropological explanations are. The hypothesis I was expected to push--and it was punishably confusing why I didn't--was the story I'd written not too long ago. Well, because I had already rewritten this entire manuscript since initially submitting it and because I don't think I could have gotten it through a second round of revisions without insincerely and unscientifically pushing one idea over others (which aren't even falsifiable to my mind), I withdrew the paper and will try somewhere else. All I had to do was convince the reader to join me in favoring at least one clever story and I dropped the ball entirely. I flopped because I didn't even try. The story, I thought, was that there might not be a story! If Charlie Kaufman had co-signed my paper, maybe it'd have had a chance? It might have no chance in anthropology journals, but I haven't given up yet.
Try to find, let alone publish, an evolutionary paper without a story, without circumscribed causes and real or apparent effects. I haven't tried that hard, but I haven't succeeded yet either. It's probably much more common for people to attempt to publish stories but to have those rejected as the wrong stories, the ones not preferred by reviewers, or pushed by reviewers with vested interest in the 'correct' stories.
Even my little flipbook classroom exercise, which simulates genetic drift, got rejected for publication partly because they feared it would tell the wrong story: intelligent design.
What's hard to swallow is, we can't really know the real natural history in all its glory, and so there's really nothing preventing us from writing natural history the way we want to (within bounds, whatever those may be). And so why's that enough for so many scientists? Why does that suffice? Maybe doing natural history is more like doing history than I ever thought. You get the details correct and you can write the story, the agents, the causes and effects based on your own interpretation and arrangement of those details. And as long as people like your story, you're good, you might even be golden.
O! What if I'm just an anal retentive weirdo taking it all too literally?
I didn't bait you here to read me whine and gasp existentially. I actually had more interesting thoughts about the bigger picture to share today.
For instance, when you see so many potentially real but unfalsifiable evolutionary hypotheses as the stories that they are, it makes it so awkward to watch when science-minded folks spew venom at the "ignorant fantasy stories" of creationists.
For more in this vein, or related to it, even remotely, I leave you this afternoon with some recent stories about stories, some favorites, others just plain interesting or relevant:
There's no Santa Claus, There's no Easter Bunny and there's no Queen of England! by Joel Adamson
~ If you want to know why I love this piece, see the comments.
Are hobbits human? Textual and genetic analysis of our closest real and magical relatives by Matthew Yglesias
~This is great, but took flak from both sides: scientists for the paleo and nerds for the Tolkien.
...and timely follow-up to that...
Myths matter from Maria Popova
...and a response to Slate's story about a story...
Slate's embarrassing Middle Earth error by Max Read
Standing up for sex by Henry Gee
From the piece: "Now, I advance the above more than half in jest. It’s possibly no better or worse than any other idea, but I’m not going to pin anyone against a wall and shout about it. "
~ I have a hunch I'll like his book but I'm head-cocking over the attitude given what Nature publishes.
Public's views on human evolution by Pew Research Center
Surprising number of Americans don't believe in evolution by Jaweed Kaleem
~ I don't believe in evolution either if it always ends in a white dude like the crappy figure they used here.
I had my DNA picture taken, with varying results by Kira Peikoff
Does reading actually change the brain? by Carol Clark-Emory
Claims of 'virgin births' in U.S. highlight pitfalls of self-reported data by Sharon Begley
In saving a species you might accidentally doom it by Ed Yong
~ Knowing the story of natural selection saved these birds from the humans who started out by ignoring it.
We need to talk about TED by Benjamin Bratton
From the piece, "If we really want transformation, we have to slog through the hard stuff (history, economics, philosophy, art, ambiguities, contradictions). Bracketing it off to the side to focus just on technology, or just on innovation, actually prevents transformation."
~ So many parallels with what admins and students expect of profs.
And finally...
Editing your life's stories can create happier endings by Lulu Miller
~ THIS IS WONDERFUL.
One of the ways that science is so clearly cultural is its love of stories.
I even did the story thing just then. I made science into an actor.
Try again: Science is done by humans and humans love stories.
 |
| source |
Hardly anybody I know'd deny that.
But what we scientists (particularly evolutionary scientists) seem to resist like the dickens is that we require stories and we are required to fit our work into others' or to write new ones.
These superstitions can't be the straightest path toward the Truth, can they?
Back up a sec. First, I'm not trying to dump on the power of analogy. Without analogy we couldn't have gotten this far, scientifically. Lacking analogous thinking is a big reason why chimps don't reason.
And, second, I'm not trying to dump on anthropomorphism or personification because I've done that already recently (and I'd love to talk about something else today).
I'm talking about making our research, our methods, our findings, our results fit our desired narratives. Or any narrative for that matter.
One of these habits we often discuss here at the MT is selectionism which is closely related to adaptationism.
Ken's recent post on this is brilliant: 'Every trait is due to natural selection!'... often said but is it true?
And since reading his piece (and since before) I've been stewing about some related matters, like, why don't negative results get published?
I'm of the frame of mind to spin the following: Because the story arc where there is no change (no arc?) isn't usually the one that sells the screenplay to Paramount, and likewise, isn't usually the one selling Nature ads and subscriptions.
There's a pretty big recent exception to the negative attitude toward negative results. When they didn't find dark matter, we heard all about it!
But that's because it was the first exploration of its kind and the spin was that some big time physics equations were wrong and needed to be scratched and reconceptualized. How exciting and productive! And wtf is dark matter?!
But when people find no significant p-values for any effect of a food or drug on some aspect of health, who cares right? No change. No cause and effect to bring no change about! No results! which is not true, but still... Boring!
In fact, "boring" is what a reviewer called the last paper I tried to publish in a relatively high impact anthropology journal. It was because I didn't push one hypothesis over the others and instead discussed how unfalsifiable and untestable some present anthropological explanations are. The hypothesis I was expected to push--and it was punishably confusing why I didn't--was the story I'd written not too long ago. Well, because I had already rewritten this entire manuscript since initially submitting it and because I don't think I could have gotten it through a second round of revisions without insincerely and unscientifically pushing one idea over others (which aren't even falsifiable to my mind), I withdrew the paper and will try somewhere else. All I had to do was convince the reader to join me in favoring at least one clever story and I dropped the ball entirely. I flopped because I didn't even try. The story, I thought, was that there might not be a story! If Charlie Kaufman had co-signed my paper, maybe it'd have had a chance? It might have no chance in anthropology journals, but I haven't given up yet.
Try to find, let alone publish, an evolutionary paper without a story, without circumscribed causes and real or apparent effects. I haven't tried that hard, but I haven't succeeded yet either. It's probably much more common for people to attempt to publish stories but to have those rejected as the wrong stories, the ones not preferred by reviewers, or pushed by reviewers with vested interest in the 'correct' stories.
Even my little flipbook classroom exercise, which simulates genetic drift, got rejected for publication partly because they feared it would tell the wrong story: intelligent design.
What's hard to swallow is, we can't really know the real natural history in all its glory, and so there's really nothing preventing us from writing natural history the way we want to (within bounds, whatever those may be). And so why's that enough for so many scientists? Why does that suffice? Maybe doing natural history is more like doing history than I ever thought. You get the details correct and you can write the story, the agents, the causes and effects based on your own interpretation and arrangement of those details. And as long as people like your story, you're good, you might even be golden.
O! What if I'm just an anal retentive weirdo taking it all too literally?
I didn't bait you here to read me whine and gasp existentially. I actually had more interesting thoughts about the bigger picture to share today.
For instance, when you see so many potentially real but unfalsifiable evolutionary hypotheses as the stories that they are, it makes it so awkward to watch when science-minded folks spew venom at the "ignorant fantasy stories" of creationists.
For more in this vein, or related to it, even remotely, I leave you this afternoon with some recent stories about stories, some favorites, others just plain interesting or relevant:
There's no Santa Claus, There's no Easter Bunny and there's no Queen of England! by Joel Adamson
~ If you want to know why I love this piece, see the comments.
Are hobbits human? Textual and genetic analysis of our closest real and magical relatives by Matthew Yglesias
~This is great, but took flak from both sides: scientists for the paleo and nerds for the Tolkien.
...and timely follow-up to that...
Myths matter from Maria Popova
...and a response to Slate's story about a story...
Slate's embarrassing Middle Earth error by Max Read
Standing up for sex by Henry Gee
From the piece: "Now, I advance the above more than half in jest. It’s possibly no better or worse than any other idea, but I’m not going to pin anyone against a wall and shout about it. "
~ I have a hunch I'll like his book but I'm head-cocking over the attitude given what Nature publishes.
Public's views on human evolution by Pew Research Center
Surprising number of Americans don't believe in evolution by Jaweed Kaleem
~ I don't believe in evolution either if it always ends in a white dude like the crappy figure they used here.
I had my DNA picture taken, with varying results by Kira Peikoff
Does reading actually change the brain? by Carol Clark-Emory
Claims of 'virgin births' in U.S. highlight pitfalls of self-reported data by Sharon Begley
In saving a species you might accidentally doom it by Ed Yong
~ Knowing the story of natural selection saved these birds from the humans who started out by ignoring it.
We need to talk about TED by Benjamin Bratton
From the piece, "If we really want transformation, we have to slog through the hard stuff (history, economics, philosophy, art, ambiguities, contradictions). Bracketing it off to the side to focus just on technology, or just on innovation, actually prevents transformation."
~ So many parallels with what admins and students expect of profs.
And finally...
Editing your life's stories can create happier endings by Lulu Miller
~ THIS IS WONDERFUL.
Monday, November 4, 2013
A textbook-free [Introduction to Biological Anthropology] curriculum
[Update June 11, 2014: Here's how far this project has come.]
I'm thinking hard about ditching the textbook for my big general education (and major requirement) course: APG 201: Human Origins (aka Intro to BioAnth).
It's for two main reasons: (a) seems like there may be enough high quality material available on-line for free to cover what this course requires, and (b) I don't teach the course in the order that any of the textbooks do.
Here's where I discuss my approach in further detail, although I've been modifying it since then. The key to my approach is starting with accessible observations of nature, first, not theory. Once we identify some key similarities and differences between humans and others we move on to explaining those similarities and differences. We start with common ancestry and change over time, including persistent mutation, before covering natural selection.
Although I'm about to submit an order for the same textbook I've always used to my campus bookstore for Spring 2014, I'm working on the textbook-free curriculum now. It's because I'll need to follow these on-line, open access readings behind-the-scenes along with a status quo run of the course, first. If it feels good, then I'll go for it inFall 2014 Spring 2015.
Here's my working list, unit-by-unit, of readings that can replace a textbook and complement lecture material. There are too many already, and many may be better prep materials for a lecture than assigned readings for students, nonetheless I'll be continuing to update it as I find more.
If anybody has any suggestions to add to this list, please send them my way.
Note: I have not vetted all of these items. Many of them are brand new to me. Once I have a final list of readings for a textbook-free course inFall 2014 Spring 2015, I'll make a separate post.
Unit 1: Anthropological and Scientific Perspectives
Unit 2: This View of Life
Unit 3: Explaining the Similarities and Differences
 |
| A map of some of the Internet (source) |
It's for two main reasons: (a) seems like there may be enough high quality material available on-line for free to cover what this course requires, and (b) I don't teach the course in the order that any of the textbooks do.
Here's where I discuss my approach in further detail, although I've been modifying it since then. The key to my approach is starting with accessible observations of nature, first, not theory. Once we identify some key similarities and differences between humans and others we move on to explaining those similarities and differences. We start with common ancestry and change over time, including persistent mutation, before covering natural selection.
Although I'm about to submit an order for the same textbook I've always used to my campus bookstore for Spring 2014, I'm working on the textbook-free curriculum now. It's because I'll need to follow these on-line, open access readings behind-the-scenes along with a status quo run of the course, first. If it feels good, then I'll go for it in
Here's my working list, unit-by-unit, of readings that can replace a textbook and complement lecture material. There are too many already, and many may be better prep materials for a lecture than assigned readings for students, nonetheless I'll be continuing to update it as I find more.
If anybody has any suggestions to add to this list, please send them my way.
Note: I have not vetted all of these items. Many of them are brand new to me. Once I have a final list of readings for a textbook-free course in
Unit 1: Anthropological and Scientific Perspectives
- What is anthropology?
- http://www.aaanet.org/index.cfm
- http://saa.org/
- http://physanth.org/
- http://linguisticanthropology.org/
- http://www.anthgen.org/
- http://www.hbes.com/
- http://www.culanth.org/
- http://www.internationalprimatologicalsociety.org/
- https://www.asp.org/index.cfm
- http://www.paleoanthro.org/
- http://www.theabfa.org/
- http://www.paleopathology.org/BARFAA/BARFAA.html
- What's it like to be a Biological Anthropologist?
- Understanding Science
- Diversity of life, focusing on primates
- http://www.arkive.org/
- http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/
- http://ianbickerstaff.com/#/cousins/
- http://eskeletons.org/
- Old World Monkeys
- Primate locomotion
- Linnaeus and taxonomy
- http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/linnaeus.html
- http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/06/linnaeus-name-giver/david-quammen-text
- Time: http://preposterousuniverse.com/eternitytohere/faq.html
- Deep time: http://hereistoday.com/
- Darwin (for evolution only, no natural selection until Unit 4)
- Reading a phylogenetic tree
- Trait evolution on a phylogenetic tree
- http://www.onezoom.org/
- The Human Brain: http://www.livescience.com/29365-human-brain.html
- Bipedalism: http://elucy.org/Main/WhatIsBipedalism.html
- eSkeletons
- Mitosis, Meiosis and Inheritance
- Genetic recombination
- DNA transcription
- Genetic Mutation
- DNA damage and repair
- RNA functions
- Gregor Mendel and the principles of inheritance
- Mendelian genetics
- Hox genes in development
- Things Genes Can’t Do
- epigenetics
- What are genes "for" or where are traits "from"? What is the question?
Unit 4: How Evolution Works
- Evolution is the only natural explanation and it’s all we need
- Understanding evolution
- Mutations are the raw materials of evolution
- Neutral theory
- Natural selection, genetic drift and gene flow do not act in isolation in natural populations
- Negative selection
- Wallace
- Sexual selection
- Understanding Evolution
- Comparative genomics
- Molecular clocks: http://timetree.org/
- Teaching the Process of Molecular Phylogeny and Systematics: A Multi-Part Inquiry-Based Exercise (2.5 hour lab)
- Macroevolution: Examples from the Primate World
- Speciation
- Hybrid incompatibility and speciation
- Hybridization and gene flow
- Why should we care about species?
- Primate Speciation: A Case Study of African Apes
- The diversity of behavior
- What functions in living systems underlie behavior?
- Both environment and genetic makeup influence behavior
- How does social behavior evolve?
- Primate Sociality and Social Systems
- What Influences the Size of Groups in Which PrimatesChoose to Live?
- Mating systems in sexual animals
- Male Reproductive Strategies
- Measuring animal preference and choice behavior
- Primate Communication
- Primate Communities
- Primate Conservation
- Planet without apes?
- Rapid effects of steroid hormones on animal behavior
- Cooperation, conflict, and the evolution of complex animal societies
- Peace among primates
- Human Origins at the Smithsonian
- Becoming Human
- A Primer on Paleolithic Technology
- Dating Rocks and Fossils Using Geologic Methods
- Overview of Hominin Evolution
- The first hominins and the origins of bipedalism
- The evolutionary history of the australopiths
- Encephalized bipedal apes
- Evidence for meat-eating by early humans
- Origin of the genus Homo
- Homo erectus
- [more...]
- Studying function and behavior in the fossil record
- eFossils
- Challenges to human uniqueness: bipedalism, birth and brains
- Neanderthal behavior
- The transition to modern behavior
- What happened to the Neanderthals?
- Testing models of modern human origins with archaeology and anatomy
- mtDNA
- Anthropological genetics: Inferring the history of our species
- Using SNP data to examine human phenotypic differences
- Evolutionary adaptation in the human lineage
- Natural selection: Uncovering the mechanisms of evolutionary adaptation to infectious disease
- Legislative landmarks of forensics
- Forensics, DNA fingerprinting, and CODIS
- Understanding Race
- What type of person are you?
Unit 8: The Cultural Controversy
- We are not the boss of natural selection
- The F-words of Evolution
- Another F-word of Evolution
- In the Name of Darwin
- From the Belgian Congo to the Bronx Zoo
- A True and Faithful Account of Mr. Ota Benga the Pygmy, Written by M. Berman, Zookeeper
- The pleasures and pitfalls of teaching human evolution in the museum
- National Center for Science Education
- Answers In Genesis
- Institute for Creation Research
- Kitzmiller v. Dover Decision (pdf)
- Evolution's got a P.R. problem
- The Human Spark (three 50-minute episodes)
- Koko the gorilla: A documentary
- Molecular Visualizations of DNA
- A Biologist’s Mother’s Day Song
- Evolution of human lice, with molecular clock animation
- Desktop Diaries: Tim White
- Expedition Rusinga
- Your Inner Fish (many clips)
- 15-minute animal behavior sampling video (chimps)
- 15-minute animal behavior sampling video (capuchins)
Books (not textbooks)
- Darwin's Origin of Species: A biography by Janet Browne
- Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea by Carl Zimmer
- Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin
- Our Inner Ape by Frans de Waal
- Skin: A Natural History by Nina Jablonski
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