I found that hopping back and forth between plants and animals made the
students very uncomfortable, and they claimed it confused them. I have
had far fewer complaints since I switched to doing plant things as a group
- first animals, then plants, then things where the two interacted or had
a more ecological bent. I found that there were some principles I could
teach with one, then have the students try to think through how it might
occur by applying the principles they had learned with the other. This
worked especially well in problems dealing with cold/freezing. After
covering frozen and torpid animals and cryoproteins, membrane damage, etc,
I had them work in groups in lecture and come up with a scheme of how a
tree might survive winter. They were way ahead of their text book on that
one and did an outstanding job. They were pleased to learn that they had
developed explanations that had been known to science for only a few
years.
Janice
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Janice M. Glime, Professor
Department of Biological Sciences
Michigan Technological University
Houghton, MI 49931-1295
jmglime at mtu.edu
906-487-2546
FAX 906-487-3167
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