26 October 2009

Animal Societies and Communication

BIOL 453 -- FALL 2009

Last Thoughts on the First Half

Third (optional) exam

The third (optional, take-home) exam, an essay on the topic "Is communication an example of cooperation?", resulted in a mixed bag of responses.   There were some really good essays submitted, ones that reflected on our readings, discussions, and lectures about communication and cooperation.   On the other hand, quite a few essays showed little awareness of our discussions or lectures and instead relied heavily on one or a few readings.

Last two reading reports

The final reports on readings made great reading.   Many of the reports on human mate choice were carefully prepared.   Like most of our reading assignments, it is too bad we did not have time to discuss more of the readings thoroughly.   But it was gratifying that the readings provided us with so many interesting things to think about!

The optional report, a re-write of your choice of any previous one, resulted in uniformly excellent work!   It is not easy to figure out what the issue and aims of project are.   Nor is it easy to figure out how it relates to other work and what the significance of the project is.   Even figuring out what is important in the methods and results is not easy.   We had some challenging papers this semester from all of these points of view.   But these last two batches of reading reports included many that met the challenge!

Grades for the first half of the semseter

The grades are based on the total points for exams and readings.   Students with higher scores tended to be the ones that contributed most to discussions also, so no adjustments were necesssary for contributions during class.

Overall, everybody did a good job, and some students did outstanding work!   Thank you to everybody who joined our discussions.   I realized some things about social behavior and communication that I had not before . . . and I hope everyone else did too!

Switching from evolution to physiology can be like switching from astronomy to physics ... enjoy the new perspective!