Welcome to the Story of Dinosaurs!!!

Note on Pedagogy and Context

Stegosaurus

Getting Started in this Course – Week 1

Online Obligations: This is a mostly asynchronous course, but you will have to turn in certain things in by a specific date. Meetings such as office hours or optional synchronous tutorials/lectures will be conducted through Microsoft Teams [channel link]. All OSU students have access to Teams through their OSU email account. I’ve added you all to the channel! If you want to set up any online office hours or group chats feel free to do so on this channel.

Course Information: Syllabus can be found [here]. Please review this document to be sure you understand the obligations of this course. Please complete all work for that week by midnight [Sunday].

Details: Watch the video below for information on how to get started in this course. You follow along to the powerpoint here: 1a_Course Expectations

Learn a little about me in the video at the bottom of the page!

Video Introductions!

In this class, we will be communicating a lot through short video posts. To do this we will be using Canvas Discussion Board! Your assignment this week is to create a 30-second video introducing yourself here: [link to discussion board?]

First Things First!

Each week you will begin by taking a pre-quiz where your answers will not be counted against you if they are incorrect. If you complete the quiz you will receive full credit. Take Weekly Quiz 1a before you move on.

Something that is unique to the first week of this class is the Entry Survey. This will be used to measure how much you know and if you change any of your perceptions through the completion of this course. there are no right or wrong answers to this 100pt survey. Once you complete it you will receive the full 100pts.

Next, we will move on to the content for the week. This class will be conducted in a mostly asynchronous format. You will be interacting with the material and your classmates mostly through video messages.

To work our way through the content you will watch lecture videos of me and other resources from all around the internet. As you scroll through the home page watch the videos and fill in the Notes with Gaps. It is highly recommended that you fill out the Notes with Gaps as you are able to use ONLY those on ANY tests in this class! Here are the [Week 1 Notes with Gaps] for the first week and the PowerPoint for the first video [1b Scientific Method powerpoint].

To start, let’s discuss the Scientific Method a bit:

What is a Dinosaur?

These images are meant to be humorous, but have you ever really taken a good look at a bird’s feet? Every time I do I see dinosaurs!

BUT

What makes a dinosaur a dinosaur? Let’s have a look at a few models to see if you can find any common characteristics.

To understand what a Dinosaur is we need to first establish how they are related to each other and what information is present in the fossil record to inform us about the relatedness of dinosaurs to each other therefore, when we find information out about a certain type of dinosaur, we can extrapolate it out to a larger group of the dinosaurs to better understand what’s going on with those organisms, in this week’s activities, students are taught about the different chip shapes of dinosaurs, and how did the skins and three skins compare and relate to each other these anatomical comparisons help them begin to understand how organisms are categorized and grouped based on common features shared to better understand how this happens. Students are asked to create an exercise with candy, called the candy, cladogram candy, clicker grams are made using candy, whatever possible but students have also been asked to do this with variety of materials that can be found around their house anything that they can use to establish relationships or relatedness to each other can be used to form the cladogram.

Take the Dinosaur? Yes or No? survey here before going down to the lecture video below.

So, how did the survey go? As you go on with the Lecture Videos, be sure to fill out your [Week 1 Notes with Gaps] and follow along on the Power Point [What is a Dino pp].

[Embed Poll Everywhere window asking ‘what terms can be used to define a dinosaur? (2-3 words only)]

So, now that you know a little bit about the grouping of dinosaurs based on their hip structures, color the 3 hip bones in the dinosaur schematics in your Notes with Gaps. use that information to group the dinosaurs in the [Exploring dinosaur Phylogeny] activity.

[create hotspot activity for question 13 on NewQuiz L2]

Candy Cladistics

This exercise is intended to get you to think about how things are grouped. So, go to your kitchen and get some food items. it would be good to ensure that at least some have shared characteristics. I’m going to use candy in the video, but you can use whatever you want. Gather your items and follow along with the video, when you are done take a photo of your food cladogram and submit it here: [Food Cladogram]

Wrap-up Candy Cladistics

Complete the following exercises this week: 

1. Create a 30 second video introducing yourself! [Introduce Yourself}
2. [Weekly Quiz 1a] – The first thing you will do every week is to complete the pre-quiz. You will get full credit for participating.
3. [Entry Survey]- 100 points and is participation based.
4. [Dinosaur? Yes or No?] survey
5. [Exploring Dinosaur Phylogeny] Activity
6. [Food Cladogram]
7. [Weekly Quiz 1b] – At the end of every week, you will complete a graded quiz based on the week’s topic. This will be graded based on your answers. This quiz is open for you to take as many times as you want

Please note: there are ~2 extra exercises in this week because we need to get some starting point data.