Duffy, Shannon: Teaching Adaptation Interactively: Hands-On v App
Title: Teaching Adaptation Interactively: Hands-On v App
Name: Shannon Duffy
Major: English
School affiliation: Honors College, School of Arts and Sciences
Programs: Aresty – RA Program
Other contributors: Lauren Neitzke Adamo, Patricia Irizarry, Julie Criscione, and Camryn Kozachek (paintings)
Abstract: Understanding geologic time and how adaptations work can be challenging concepts for many students. Adaptation is a process that can take hundreds or thousands of years, a period of time that is difficult for humans to imagine. Previously, Aresty students developed a hands-on activity in which participants (1) participate in a short, interactive lesson on adaptations over time, (2) create their own animal using body parts provided, and (3) state whether they believe their animal would be more likely to survive in New Jersey today or New Jersey during the Ice Age and explain why. Current work is being done to translate the hands-on activity into an interactive app with the same features: participating in a lesson on adaptations, creating an animal, and answering questions about which New Jersey it would be most suited to. The researchers hypothesize that the app will be a good way to help older students learn about these topics, but that the hands-on activity will be more effective for younger students. The next step will be to actually test which is more effective for learning about adaptations over time: the app or the hands-on activity.