On Monday, October 24th, I was given the opportunity to lecture to a fourth-year palaeontology class (EOSC 425) for Dr. Paul Smith on human evolution. It was a lot to cover in 50 minutes (!), but with some help from active learning strategies, I was able to cover all of the necessary information and provide the students with something to take home after!
I designed the lecture around one large activity: a jigsaw. But, this wasn’t your run-of -the-mill standard jigsaw … we made hominin playing cards!
Each student was given homework to go to the Smithsonian website and research a particular hominin species. I gave them 9 guiding questions and they were asked to take simple notes. Then, in class, I formatted a flip chart paper for each of the species to look like a trading card (think: Pokemon), and the students were asked to fill the posters in with the information they collected as homework. I made sure to assign at least two people per species, and to group more consistently well-performing students (I had data since I TA the labs) with those who may not do the homework or show up to class. This worked out swimmingly, as each species had at least one person in class with notes about it!
In class, I prompted the students and introduced the topic with some big-picture ideas and some contextual information, then we dove right into the activity. It took them about 15 minutes to fill in their posters. Then, the trick was we were going to synthesise the information on their posters and make a human evolution timeline!
Starting with the oldest (Sahelanthropus) and going to the youngest species (us), each group came up and presented their playing card to the class and gave some details on it before sticking it onto the board over their temporal range (I drew the timeline with ranges before class). I augmented their presentations when necessary and also filled in some important information about the timeline that wasn’t specific to any particular species (e.g., when brain size started to drastically increase simultaneously in multiple hominins). After we finished the timeline, I brought everything back together in lecture (which we had very little time and too much content for; definitely room for improvement next year) and provided some additional context and some mechanisms for human evolution. I gave them a handout of the card format to add notes during their colleagues’ presentations. I have taken pictures of all of their posters and put them all online, so they can keep adding to their cards. The idea is for them to end up with a complete set of cards for studying purposes and to have kept them active during their colleagues’ presentations. This worked really well, I think! Most students had something written down for each hominin by the time we were done class.
I solicited feedback from the students after the class by sending out a quick survey, and in general they all really, really liked the activity but felt like the remainder of the lecture was a bit rushed. I noticed this too, and it was a result of running an elaborate activity for the first time and the activity simply taking a little too long. Next time, I think I will have the students prepare their information at home in the exact format of the poster, so the transfer of information will be faster! I will also refine my content to make sure I can deliver it in a more timely manner.
As part of my SoTL research was figuring out how to adapt jigsaw to different settings and to different types of content, this was the perfect launching point and I look forward to my second attempt next year!
As more feedback flows in from the students I will keep adding to this post…
Rhy