Professor Stephen Stearns talks with students during a review session for the mid-term exam for his introductory course on evolution, ecology and behavior.
(Photo: Beverly Stearns)
The Galapagos Islands Come To New Haven
You can't take ninety-seven freshman to the Galapagos Islands to study evolution, ecology and behavior, so Professor Stephen Stearns has done the next best thing—he's brought the Galapagos to them. With a video crew from Yale Center for Media and Instructional Innovation, Stearns, the Edward P. Bass Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, has turned one of his trips to the legendary islands into an online, multimedia experience that is the centerpiece of an extraordinary course.
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The project Web site introduces students to, among other things, dancing blue-footed boobies, skittish Sally Lightfoot crabs, and Professor Stearns himself, urging them to explore and use the material to figure out what makes a good question. "A good question is one that you are passionate enough about to commit to getting an answer, even if it's hard," he says. "And, ideally, a good question can actually change the way we look at the world."
His introduction to the online material encourages the students to "most of all, have fun." He says, "the most creative insights usually come not when you're strategizing, but rather when you are being curious and when you're open to anything that could occur to you. To come up with great questions that lead to important answers, it's important to be playful and emotionally engaged. After that, there's plenty of time to apply reason and sort it out."
His ultimate goal is for students to take control of their own educational life and, at the same time, take responsibility for it. "I want to jolt them out of their comfort zone. I want them to become independent agents. I want to make them full adult colleagues as rapidly as possible," he says.
Hannah Jacobs, a teaching fellow for the class on evolution, ecology and behavior, talks with her students.
Feedback from the class on Stearns' novel approach is enthusiastic. The site not only provides the students with information in many forms, it also invites them to take notes, submit questions, and evaluate the questions of other students.
A survey completed mid-way through the class showed that the vast majority of those responding agreed that the Galapagos project helped them understand how scientists develop research questions, and that the input received through the website helped them refine their questions.
"The interactive material reinforced some of the concepts discussed in class," one student wrote. "I actually found many fascinating things on the Galapagos website that were not covered in class," says another. "I thought the site was very well constructed. Quite frankly, I was taken aback by how nice it was. It was easy to use and very interactive."
Galapagos goes to Beijing
Next year, Stearns will be one of several faculty members from Yale participating in a new joint program with Peking University in Beijing, China.
Stearns plans to take the Galapagos module with him. He hopes to teach the basic lesson on how to ask good questions and take responsibility for one's own education.
"Trying this approach in a totally different culture will be a great learning experience for me," he says. "It will test my own assumptions about teaching and learning."
Low tech complements high tech
On a Wednesday afternoon in a small classroom in the Osborn Memorial Lab building on Prospect Street, Hannah Jacobs, a third-year law student and teaching fellow for Stearns' course, energetically dashes around the classroom. She tears off pieces of tape and hangs brightly colored posters, papers, and arrows as she elaborates on finches, beak sizes and natural selection. Her decidedly low-tech approach keeps the class of about ten students attentive and involved. She asks them to probe issues related to differential reproductive success and variation in traits, as they munch on the homemade chocolate chip cookies Jacobs brought for everyone.
After class, Professor Stearns, who has stopped in, works with a few of the students on their questions and on the issue of what makes a good question. He then talks with Jacobs for a while, discussing upcoming lessons and the best way to set up the midterm. It's clear he is as comfortable with Jacob's more traditional approach to teaching as he is with his own state-of-the-art, cutting-edge, HDTV-quality multimedia presentation. In addition to the sections and the project Web site, he still lectures to the large group, while making those lectures available online. He acknowledges he's gotten a lot of attention for the multimedia teaching approach, but he's quick to add that the point isn't technology for technology's sake.
"The point is to immerse the students in nature and stimulate them enough to ask good questions for which they will take responsibility and thus focus their own learning," he says. "There are many different ways to do that, and there are many people here at Yale taking creative approaches to teaching."
From the Yale Galapagos Project Web site
