Creating a more active classroom with SimBio Ecology and Poll-and-Discuss Slide Decks

The flipped approach

Proponents of flipped classrooms know that there are a wide variety of techniques for creating dynamic, student-centered classrooms. All of them assume that students will be exposed to key concepts before they arrive in class, freeing up lecture time for activities that encourage students to actively grapple with tricky concepts. SimUText Ecology is an excellent resource for instructors who want to create more active classrooms. Its interactive chapters provide more engaging homework assignments than traditional textbooks while stressing the critical thinking skills that budding scientists need to develop. Their automatically-graded questions make it easy to hold students accountable and, more importantly, to reward them for arriving in class ready to work. This begs the question: what’s the best way to take advantage of a well-prepared student body?

There is no single right answer to this question, dependent as it is on the size and configuration of one’s classroom, not to mention the proclivities of individual instructors. Nevertheless, there are some approaches that are known to work well and one of my favorites is peer instruction. This approach encourages students to discuss tricky topics among themselves. Students who may not instantly grasp a concept are encouraged to ask questions of their neighbors while students who understand the material better—or at least think that they do—are challenged to explain what they know. Poll-and-discuss questions are an effective technique for fostering this approach. This technique typically proceeds in a series of simple steps:

• The instructor introduces the topic and provides any relevant background information.
• The class is presented with a question and the class is polled to see what the students think.
• The next step depends on how the class responded:

– If the bulk of students answered the question correctly, the instructor shares the correct answer and offers a quick explanation.
– If the bulk are confused, the instructor provides some additional information and re-polls the students.
– However, if only 30-70% or so answer it correctly, the instructor asks them to discuss the question amongst themselves, challenging them to convince their neighbors that they are right!

The advantage of this approach is that it gets many, many more students to engage with the material then is likely during a traditional lecture. After all, even when instructors pause to pose questions during lectures only the most engaged students tend to volunteer a response. Additionally, this approach gives students opportunities to generate question of their own—questions they are more likely to raise when they know their neighbors also don’t know the answer.

SimBio’s Poll-and-Discuss Decks

SimBio developed poll-and-discuss slide decks for each of our interactive ecology chapters. John Roach initially drafted these for use in his ecology class at the University of Montana. Since then, they have been revised and standardized by our content team. These decks are an easy way to quickly and painlessly create more active classrooms.

Each deck addresses some of more challenging topics raised in the chapter. For example, our Climate Change deck includes sequences on Earth’s energy budget, climate feedbacks, and how warming will affect Arctic precipitation. Each sequence includes the needed background information, one or more poll-and discuss questions, and explanations that can be shared with students. Although they vary in length, each sequence is intended to accomplish one of three things:

• • 1. Let students practice tricky calculations in class. For example, the Population Growth deck offers practice with the models of population growth (geometric, exponential, and logistic) and gives them a nice summary of how to choose between the three models. It also gives them a chance to practice Levin’s metapopulation model.
    2. Offer students a chance to work through case studies that clearly model the experimental method. For example, in Physiological Ecology, students review a study of how songbirds survive long-distance migrations without drinking and the physiology that allows Sherpas and other highland people to perform so well at altitude.
    3. Provide students a slightly altered presentation of very tricky material. For example, our Competition slide deck shows students a slightly different technique for reliably using isoclines to predict the outcome of competitive interactions.

These Poll-and-Discuss slide decks are part of the set of supplemental materials that is included with each SimUText Ecology chapter. Each chapter’s materials also includes a series of supplemental questions, a list of primary learning goals, and examples of

Climate Change Slide Deck

SimBio’s Poll-and-Discuss slide deck for Climate Change contains 10 short vignettes examining important and tricky concepts from the chapter as well as a couple of other questions. The vignettes address:

• How climatologists attempt to reduce noise in their data sets
• The distinction between climate and weather
• How a planet’s albedo and insolation affect climate
• Earth’s energy budget
• The geologic carbon-cycle feedback cycle.
• The urban heat island
• Arctic warming, albedo, and changes in Arctic precipitation
• Changes in Arctic precipitation impacts on muskoxen
• Reduced winter snow cover and mismatched snowshoe hare coats
• Temperature performance curves and their interpretation

Population Growth Slide Deck

SimBio’s Poll-and-Discuss slide deck for Population Growth emphasizes giving students practice using the population growth models introduced in the chapter and determining when each is appropriate. It includes the following short exercises:

• Calculate starling population given a set of initial conditions
• Calculate bacteria population given a set of initial conditions
• Calculate the bacteria’s doubling time
• What is the difference between geometric and exponential growth?
• Why haven’t elephants inherited the Earth? What limits the growth of elephants in South Africa’s Kruger National Park?
• How can data be used to show population growth is density-dependent?
• Compare and contrast geometric, exponential and logistic population growth models
• Pick the appropriate population growth model for a given scenario
• Examine population growth of bison in Yellowstone National Park
• What are the assumptions of Levin’s metapopulation model? What happens when these assumptions are relaxed?
• How can metapopulation models help us understand the Swedish bush cricket?