| John Arle | [For my environmental biology class], I'm taking what we would do in the classroom with a real-time audience and trying to come as close to that as I possibly can with the distance people. Presently, what I have put together are five labs that can be done at home. I send out materials, or they could be field projects since it's an environmental biology class. There's quite a bit that can be done just simply by going out and doing assessment of nature. I'm going to bring in the students for five in-person labs, so that part's not distance at all, but those labs are for things I think are essential, i.e., use of the microscope--there's no way that I can do it...without just bringing them in. And then we'll have three field trip projects that will be standardized--that we'll go out as faculty with them and work on a specific project. They'll have to show up for that. I'll actually have five scheduled field projects, and they will pick three of them, so there are some options. That's what I'm working on right now. Whether it's going to float or not, I'll find out this summer...
With the lecture part of the course, they're going to be working, getting the basic material out of the textbook and the associated work book. I've written up what I call my perspective on the topics for each chapter, and so those would be the things that I would be saying to them in the class--that's going to be sent home print-based...The text that we adopted has video case studies that are just wonderful, and so I'm going to use those video case studies for analysis as well as magazine and newspaper articles that I send home. The basic assignments will be the text and the workbook, and then the things that they'll really dislike will be the applications and the analysis of the videos and the articles that they have to turn in... |
| Richard Felnagle | I'd like to know a bit more about the boxes the students are going to get. This is the "experiment in a box" idea, right? Can you tell us a bit more about those? What kinds of experiments? |
| John Arle | The first one on scientific method is just taking an organism--you can take something as simple as a potato bug, sow bug, rolly-polly--you set up an experiment [to determine] where do these things go? What kind of environment do they like? dislike? I use that for scientific method. I'm not at all interested in where these things want to go, but I am interested in what kind of experiment [the student is] going to design, so they learn scientific methodology and practices. They'll have to set it up, assess their data, try to repeat the data, and so on an so forth.
We're also going to be doing a seed study lab on tropical rain forest seeds and that [experiment] is going to be paired with a seed dispersal. They'll set up an experiment, make observations, and record the outcomes. Then I have a set of study questions and some concept applications, so there's a whole lab report...the same lab report they'd be doing if they were in class...[This process] is the exact same, real-time lab or distance. I'm trying to parallel them as much as possible. |
| >Richard Felnagle | And then they have to come in to the campus for four labs on campus, is that correct? |
| John Arle | Well, I'm Rio, we don't have a campus...they will come in to a site somewhere. |
| Richard Felnagle | Do you have to be there at the site with them? Do they all do this at the same item? |
| John Arle | Yes. With this pilot group of...40, I'll have to divide them in to two groups, but yeah, they'll come in to one place at one time. The one lab I want to make sure I get done with these people is a paramecium population lab, and they have to use the microscopes to do it. I may start that lab in the first lab session very early...I'm going to try to meet with them three times, once early, once in the middle, and then once late. I didn't mention I'm also going to have a phone teleconference. I'm going to teleconference with them for the discussion of the labs. They will be in one of two teleconference sessions with me each week, and my topic is going to be discussing the lab that they worked on that week--what kind of data are they getting--and I just want to make sure that they're getting at what I want them to get at while working at home. It's mandatory participation in those teleconferences. |
| Richard Felnagle | Charlcey, could you tell us a little about the logistics--how this class works? How have the students been advised? How is the material going to get moved around? How do they know where they're supposed to be?--that sort of thing. Have they already been enrolled? |
| Charlcey Brabec | In his particular class...no, because we're not going to do it until the summer, but in the schedule that we do, if a course has an orientation--particularly with the science classes--we typically say that they are mandatory, but we know that there are always going to be exceptions that we're going to have to deliver...[We say] that the students need to come to that orientation to get the kit and know how to work with those kits. |
The Internet Connection at MCLI is
Alan Levine --}
Comments to alan.levine@domail.maricopa.edu
URL: http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/ocotillo/cwoc/forum1b.html