文章基本信息

标题：Using Inquiry and Tree-Thinking to “March Through the Animal Phyla”: Teaching Introductory Comparative Biology in an Evolutionary Context
其他标题：Using Inquiry and Tree-Thinking to “March Through the Animal Phyla”: Teaching Introductory Comparative Biology in an Evolutionary Context
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作者：James J. Smith ; Kendra Spence Cheruvelil
期刊名称：Evolution: Education and Outreach
印刷版ISSN：1936-6434
出版年度：2009
卷号：2
期号：3
页码：429-444
DOI：10.1007/s12052-009-0156-x
出版社：BioMed Central
摘要：Biodiversity was originally taught in our Introductory Organismal Biology course at Michigan State University (LB144; freshman/sophomore majors) by rote memorization of isolated facts about organisms. When we moved to an inquiry-based laboratory framework to improve pedagogy, an unfortunate and unforeseen result was the loss of much of our study of biodiversity. In this paper, we describe the restructuring of LB144 to restore the study of biodiversity and organismal groups while retaining the benefits of an inquiry-based approach. The curricular intervention was accomplished through the creation and implementation of a four-week Comparative Biology laboratory stream. During this stream, student research teams recorded and organized observations that they made on a range of organisms and analyzed their data in a phylogenetic framework. During the stream, our students worked through a set of exercises designed to help them learn how to read, interpret, and manipulate phylogenetic trees. We placed particular emphasis on the concept that phylogenetic trees are hypotheses of relationship that can be tested with scientific data. This incorporation of phylogenies and phylogenetic analysis, or “tree-thinking,” into our students’ work provided an explicit synthetic evolutionary framework for their comparative biodiversity studies. End-of-stream products included a team phylogenetic analysis exercise and an individual comparative biology oral presentation.
关键词：Comparative biology;Evolution;Inquiry-based approach;Introductory biology;Phylogenetic analysis;Tree-thinking