Andy, I don't really teach from a book, although I have the students buy one to serve as a reference. I teach concepts through actual data - either from field labs we do in class, EcoBeaker for those we can't do, and data sets either from the TIEE site or primary literature. I do a series of protist labs to teach population dynamics, competition, predation, community dynamics and the role of disturbance. With two or three really good field labs, I can have data for discussing succession (Indiana Dunes or Warren Dunes), community structure (species diversity, dispersion, etc.), the role of competition, predation, and disturbance in communities. With the protist lab data, we can calculate r, K, and (if we are lucky) the competition coefficients which will allow us to draw the isocline diagrams. We make predictions based on pairwise interactions and then we see what happens when we throw all the species together. EcoBeaker provides an evolution lab on Darwin's Finches. This takes us into how species can avoid competitive exclusion and how these mechanisms play a role in community structure. It's a system that has evolved (?) from my inability to maintain the schedule I put into my syllabus, and the grumbling of students over too many big lab reports. This way, I get the material covered, but it flows from the lab. The students do not have so many lab reports because we turn the data analysis and interpretation into class discussions or short homework assignments. So far, the students say that they like it. It helps them remember things better, and for the visual learners, seeing is believing (at least I think that's what they mean).
I do give lots of handouts, and I do use power point notes. Liane At 12:07 PM 11/17/2007, Andrew Park wrote: >Hi Ecologgers, > >Responses are invited to the following thoughts, especially from >experienced teachers: > >I teach a 2nd year course in basic Ecology at an undergraduate >university. After four years of teaching this course, I am being >drawn to the following conclusions: > >[1] ? The textbook is awful. >* There is simply too much stuff in them. My course is one semester >long, but > even if it were a full year course, I could probably cover less > than 50% of > this book. > >[2] ? Students today are different. Numerous research studies and even more > anecdotal evidence suggest that numerical skills, basic literacy, the > ability to organize information into coherent arguments, and > engagement > with the natural world are all worse than they were (even) a > decade ago. > And yet textbooks speak to students as though they know how to read a > graph, as though they are sophisticated reasoners, and perhaps most > importantly, as though they already understand the difference between > salamanders and lizards, spiders and insects. NEWSFLASH ? THEY DON?T. > >[3] **** At the same time, the traditional technical basis for >teaching ecology > cannot be abandoned. the question is, how to make it as >engaging as some > of the more sexy, issue-based stuff. > >* Have any of you decided to chuck the required text and simply use handouts > and readings? *************************** D. Liane Cochran-Stafira, Ph.D. Associate Professor Department of Biological Sciences Saint Xavier University 3700 West 103rd Street Chicago, Illinois 60655 phone: 773-298-3514 fax: 773-298-3536 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://faculty.sxu.edu/~cochran/
