Learning Objective 3 - Chapter review on evolution

Force-of-change-evolution
By Ade mc Ade McO-Campbell (Own work UK) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Learning Objective 3 - Students will display their understanding of evolution by creating a collaborative chapter review on our class wiki with at least 80% accuracy according to the rubric provided.

The Activity
Students will work in groups of four to create a chapter review on evolution and share their review on the class wiki.  The students are asked to cover the original ideas that led to the theory of evolution, how evolution works, and give an example of current evolutionary research to show how it is used today.  They are also expected to use multiple ways to present the material to make it more engaging for students with different learning styles, such as embedding images, videos, news feeds, or interesting conversations from reputable sources found on Twitter, in addition to written descriptions.

The Assessment
The success of the activity will be based on whether or not the students can accurately summarize and depict evolution.  A rubric will be provided to help guide them to do their best, with the expectation that everyone will achieve at least 80%.  The rubric for this activity is the example rubric discussed in more detail on another page of this site.

The Assessment Tool
The assessment tool for this activity is a wiki.  Wikis are websites that are editable.  Any number of people can collaborate on a wiki.  They range in size from world-wide projects involving thousands of people to single user wikis.  You can make them open to anyone or you can control access to a wiki by requiring people to login or even designating specific people who have access.  This tool is ideal for the review because each group will have its own page for students to create their review and no one outside the group will be able to modify it.  Since wikis are freely editable by those who have access, there is the potential that a student will accidentally edit or delete something unintentionally.  Some wikis save backup versions, so for our project there will not be a problem with data loss.  Wikis created on Blackboard, our learning management system, and Moodle also allow instructors to identify who contributed what work to the wiki to help determine whether each student contributed equally.

Plagiarism and Diversity
Prior to this activity some coaching on proper citation practices will be utilized so students understand that everything posted online can be seen by the world and require proper citations to avoid issues with plagiarism.  Since it is a group exercise each person will rely on their teammates to understand and follow proper citation practices to prevent any issues.  This activity allows for diversity in the way each section in the review is presented, enhancing its usefulness for students who have different learning styles.  The students can utilize their own diversity by dividing the material based on how they want to display it, and assigning each group of items to the individual that is more familiar with tools to produce that type of item.

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