THE MUSEUM GALLERY AS ANATOMY CLASSROOM: TEACHING GEOLOGY STUDENTS COMPARATIVE OSTEOLOGY WITHOUT INCITING MASS PANIC
During the third week of the semester in fall 2009, students completed a comparative osteology exercise in Dinosaur Hall at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia. The exercise followed a lecture the previous week that introduced the major regions and bones of the vertebrate skeleton and provided an overview of dinosaurs of Late Cretaceous North America. The class worked in groups of 3-4 students to examine mounted dinosaur skeletons and answer a series of questions designed to allow them to work out effective ways to distinguish bones from different regions of the body and from different dinosaur groups, thereby building a knowledge base that they would draw on during later assignments. Groups worked separately for approximately 2 hours; the class reconvened for the last hour to share observations, with corrections and additions from the instructor as necessary.
Compared to students in a previous version of the course where dinosaur osteology was presented in a more traditional lecture format, the students who completed the museum exercise demonstrated greater confidence and proficiency in later assignments that required anatomical and taxonomic identification of isolated bones. Despite initial instructor concern that students would be overwhelmed by exposure to the museum skeletons with minimal classroom preparation, the students in general responded well to the experience. The design of the exercise, which largely required focus on similarities and differences in shape and discussion among group members, allowed the students to employ observational skills that they already possessed from work in other geology courses. The use of a familiar skill set, albeit in a very unfamiliar context, acted to reduce student anxiety about learning and working with vertebrate anatomy.