LEARNING PALEONTOLOGY THROUGH DOING: INTEGRATING A PUBLISHABLE RESEARCH PROJECT INTO AN INVERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY LABORATORY COURSE

Students learn best by doing. Thus the laboratory accompanying the Invertebrate Paleontology class at University of North Carolina Wilmington employs best practices of active and collaborative learning and inquiry by incorporating a publishable team research project.

Although traditional laboratory exercises involving examining, sketching, and answering questions about specimens from different taxonomic groups are used (to prepare geology majors for a stratigraphy class), the heart of the laboratory class is a team research project. Early in the semester, students participate in a field trip to area Neogene outcrops to collect bulk samples (or, if using archived samples, to make field observations at the same or a correlative locality). Teams of 3-4 students are each assigned a bulk sample to study. Samples are wet sieved and mollusc specimens are picked, sorted and identified (usually to genus level). Each team focuses on one or more hypotheses for testing, preferably one that they have developed themselves but sometimes linked to a larger-scale project (for instance, a multiyear REU program on conservation paleobiology in which we are involved). Projects have included samples from MD, NC, SC and FL and have focused on aspects of paleoecology and evolution (escalation, drilling predation, taphonomy, ecological structure of communities, Plio-Pleistocene extinction dynamics).

The project lasts the entire semester; students devote at least 1 hour of each 3-hour lab session to it (extra time is provided toward the end of the semester). Students write a research paper using the format of a professional paper, with individually written and team-written parts, and results are also presented orally. The project is graded using a 50-point rubric and accounts for 20% of the lecture course grade. After completion, one or more abstracts based on the results are written by the instructor(s) and submitted to a regional GSA meeting. Each year since 2003 (when Kelley began teaching the class), students have presented posters on this work at SEGSA. To date, 11 abstracts have been published from this course, allowing students to experience the research process from conception to dissemination. Several students have been inspired to continue this research as an independent study and/or have gone on to graduate work in paleontology.