DIALOGUES WITH DARWIN: BLOGGING AS AN EDUCATIONAL TOOL IN A GENERAL EDUCATION COURSE

The “Dialogues with Darwin” exhibit at the American Philosophical Society (APS) Museum in Philadelphia includes a collection of primary source material from Darwin and his contemporaries as well as a series of conversations by the public through online Diablogs. The exhibit encourages visitors to view original documents and then participate in an evolving discussion of Darwin’s ideas and their implications 150 years later.

Evolution and Extinctions is a general education class in geology at Temple University with approximately 300 students each semester. Last year, students participated in a semester-long project that included a visit to the APS museum (see Tumarkin-Deratzian et al., this session) followed by participation in an online Diablog on the APS website. The students were assigned to groups based on lab section and were asked to either discuss “Is evolution random?” or “What is the evidence that all life on Earth evolved from a universal common ancestor?” The assignment required two posts from each student: an initial response and a comment on another student’s post. Outcomes of this activity included: (1) an increase in student technology literacy, (2) an increase in student information literacy, and (3) reinforcement of the idea of science as a process, not a series of facts to be memorized.

Surprisingly, though students were not required to search for outside sources, many did use library resources in their blog entries. Some students also commented that though they were uncomfortable expressing ideas in a large lecture classroom, they did feel comfortable with online discussion because it was a controlled, safe environment that offered relative anonymity and the chance to carefully compose responses before sharing them. In addition, a large number of the students at this university are commuters, and the use of blogs facilitates conversation outside of the classroom and lab setting. Often group projects are difficult for these students because of complicated work and commuting schedules. Logistically, student procrastination presented the largest hurdle to creating a true discussion environment, and here we present some methods used to address this problem, and lessons learned.