Teaching taxonomy in the age of Wikipedia, part 2
This is a follow-up on an earlier post about some changes I wanted to make in the way that I taught taxonomy and biological diversity. I’d never been quite satisfied with the way that taxonomy and diversity is taught. What finally occurred to me is that it had always been taught in a shallow way – looking at various kingdoms, phyla, etc. and talking about key characteristics of those different groups. What was lacking, in my opinion, was a look at the deep structure that shows the unity of life instead of the diversity. A chance to explore all the branches of the phylogenetic tree rather than just look at the leaves, if you will.
So, I created the Examining Biological Diversity Using the Tree of Life project, currently hosted on wikispaces but may eventually get moved onto the World of Wall wiki. The first part of the project was a tracing back from our branch on the phylogenetic tree of life.
Phylogenetic tree of life - CC licensed (AT-NC-SA) by Ethan Hein; http://www.flickr.com/photos/ethanhein/2253993304/
I had students start at the entry for Homo sapiens on the Tree of Life website, then work their way backwards through all the groups of ever increasing size of which we are a part. As they worked their way backwards I had them record the key characteristics of each group in a Google Notebook (which I guess I won’t be doing again so any suggestions for alternatives are graciously welcomed).
For the second part, I gave each student one or two organisms, then find out where we connected on the phylogenetic tree. If they were assigned the blue whale, they would be able to find out that we are both mammals (Class Mammalia). Then I’d have them write a description of the first group in which they differed from us. The blue whale is in Order Cetacea so they would find out a bit about the characteristics of that group. Finally, I’d have them publish their results on a wiki I set up for the project. The results are on the NBCHS biodiversity wiki. I’m going to have future classes add to the wiki until we have created our own tree of life wiki.
I was, to be honest, a bit disappointed with the results for the second part. I was expecting a greater degree of depth to their research. I’ll take some responsibility for that. My expectations may not have been very clearly articulated. I hope that next time results will be better since I will have some examples – positive and negative – for them to look at.
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Great ideas here, and I appreciate that you’ve shared your methodology. Just some thoughts on extending the project: what about having the students look at the common characteristics of shared groupings, and to research on the individual manifestations of those characteristics in the compared species? You could also bridge this with evolution by having the students research the timeline of divergence of the groups. Another approach could be to have the students pick two favorite animals (perhaps with the limitation that there can’t be repeats) and then to build the relationship of all back to humans. I’m working with my students on building dichotomous keys at the moment, building up to taxonomy – thanks for the inspiration!
Jonathan M Pratt - 2009/01/30 at 15:26
Thanks for those suggestions, Jonathan. I will likely integrate some aspect of them as this continues in the second semester and in future years. One of the elements of this project that excites me is that there are so many directions to go from here and possibilities for adding to the knowledge repository that we are building.
I was thinking of letting students pick a favourite animal or two, but decided against it so there would be some breadth to the organisms being studied. Maybe next time I’ll give them some more discretion for their research organism.
Rob - 2009/01/30 at 16:06