Insects and People
Entomology 201
Insects and People is an introduction to the fascinating world of insects and how they interact with people. Included is a brief survey of insect history, diversity, structure and function, and behavior. This is followed by examples of beneficial and harmful insects in a variety of human activities including some sampling of the profound impacts insects have had on history, society and culture.
Image: Tennis shoe by Gucci featuring honeybee motif. Paris, France. Photo by LJKraft.
Students were asked to collect examples of insects in art, design, and media from their lives as part of the Bug Scrapbook project.
I taught a 18-person section of Insects and People in Spring 2020 as part of Preparing for the Professoriate. As part of the program, students are encouraged to make changes to the course. After the lead professor suffered from a non-life-threatening accident in mid-February, I took on an additional 160 students in the lecture-hall course and 70 students in an online distance-education course. In mid-March, NC State switched to online education due to COVID-19.
They may have covered the same content, but the three sections described here were structured very differently. The following is separated into 1. Small Section and 2. Lecture-Hall and Online Sections, and 3. Conclusions.
Small Section
This course fills a science requirement for non-majors as well as biology-track majors, so I had a diversity of student backgrounds in my course. In the 18-person section, I reduced the weight of exams to focus more on class discussion and alternate assessments to evaluate student learning. This included developing activities for almost all class periods to engage students in their own learning. I added an additional paper project titled “Insects in My Major” to challenge students to explore their relationship to insects.
Since this course counts for a natural science core requirement for non-major students, I focused on learning objectives that are valuable to a student’s general understanding of science.
Learning Objectives
-Recognize and use reputable science resources
-Demonstrate the scientific method
-Identify a personal relationship to the subject
Course Changes to Achieve Goal
-Evaluated reference quality in all project rubrics and continued to provide feedback on student projects qualitatively and quantitatively through rubric
-Spend more time going over experimental set-up for Bug in Dish project
-Include chances to implement steps of the scientific method in class activities (E.g. SharkTank Grant Panel) and on short-answer exams
-Created “Insects in My Major” paper project
-Include weekly news relating to insects in lecture
-Improve lecture on ecological services provided by insects
-Include an in-class group activity "Thank An Insect" about ecological services and products
Measures of Success
-All students used only reputable resources (Extension, university, or government publications; SciComm articles using citations; or primary literature) on the last two projects in contrast to the first two projects in the semester when many students were citing personal blogs and fake news
-16 out of 18 students correctly described an experimental design on Exam 2
-Student reports submitted for Bug in Dish project were detailed beyond what the rubric asked for, longer than the rubric asked for, and the mean grade was higher than for the lecture hall course (which received instructions and expectations for the project but did not have additional activities or exam questions based on it).
-In the pre-test 5 out of 20 students were able to identify a reason insects positively or negatively affected their day. 4 out of 20 students left the question blank or wrote that they could not answer it.
-In the identical post-test, 15 out of 17 students talked about ecological services and products while 17 out of 17 students answered the question.
The end of semester evaluation included the question, “Were you proud of the work you created in this class? Why or why not?” These two responses show that students developed a personal relationship to the subject:
“We have a lot of projects that are interesting and helpful for understanding insects. Some projects are interdisciplinary, which I can relate the projects to my major and it makes me feel proud.”
“I was proud of the work I created in this class. It allowed me to show some of my interests while incorporating information from the class and I really enjoyed that.”
Lecture-Hall and Online Sections
Upon taking over the course from Dr. Clyde Sorenson, I intended to keep the class structure and lecture structure as similar to his original syllabus as possible. Unfortunately, this became impossible when we moved online due to COVID-19 since the professor uses the same set of multiple choice exam questions yearly and did not want me to give out his exam online in a format that some students could save it. So, I made two major changes.
I changed the second exam to a multiple choice with reasoning assessment since it covered material already covered during in-person lectures before the switch to online class format. The second change was to replace the 3rd exam grade with six half-page reflections corresponding to the remaining units covered. This allowed students to work asynchronously through pre-recorded online lectures and submit work when they were ready.
From the end of semester evaluation, students disliked the new test format, mainly because they said that the exam took significantly longer for them to do. (It also took longer to grade, so I also was not a fan.) A multiple choice with reasoning exam seemed like the best choice at the time, but I will likely not be trying it again soon. If students are going to take extra time to give a response, I would rather just assign short answer questions which would allow them to better express their knowledge.
Students had two main comments about reflections: 1. They liked the assessment better than an exam, but 2. They disliked that it took more time than an in-person proctored, multiple choice exam. For the reflections, students were told to follow guidelines with questions to inspire deeper discussion about the material than a mere summary. Overall, students provided great work and scored highly on the reflections. Reflections also provided me with a way to interact with students as it was easy to send a brief e-mail after a funny, thoughtful, or controversial reflection to continue conversation with students and try to reduce the sensation of distance after moving online.
Conclusions
By focusing the course around general science learning objectives, I was able to organize course activities, discussion, and materials around those broader objectives. This allowed students to provide multiple ways to demonstrate their achievement. I think that it also provided a helpful structure to return to these same objectives repeatedly throughout a survey course covering diverse topics.
Looking to the future, based on the quality of work received and overall positive view of reflections, I would strongly consider using them as an assessment measurement again as long as they were weighted highly enough that students considered the extra effort involved to be valued. Weekly reflections would also provide a great jumping off point for class discussion and allowing students to develop a relationship to the course content. In the small-section class, I had a few students express anxiety over being expected to spontaneously speak up during large-group discussion in class. I think reflections would be a great way to give students the time to process their ideas from class and express any new realizations or questions in a way that would allow a diversity of voices to be heard.