Educating the vertebrate morphologists of the 21st century: technology pedagogy, and core concepts. International Congress of Vertebrate Morphology, 21-25 July 2019; Czech Republic

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This award funds a symposium, Educating the Vertebrate Morphologists of the 21st Century: technology, pedagogy, and core concepts, at the International Congress of Vertebrate Morphology (ICVM), a triennial meeting of the International Society of Vertebrate Morphology to be held in Prague, Czech Republic, in July 2019. The Congress facilitates international collaboration among researchers working in diverse fields (e.g., developmental biology, paleontology, functional morphology) and provides the opportunity for researchers to interact and to integrate vertebrate morphological research with other fields of biological sciences. Because many of the researchers attending the Congress also teach comparative vertebrate anatomy to undergraduates, the symposium will provide the opportunity to share teaching practices, integrating the field of vertebrate morphology with pedagogical research on how students learn. A major goal of the symposium is to define the core concepts of comparative vertebrate anatomy, a technique used by educators to focus students on learning big ideas and broad concepts instead of memorizing facts. Speakers will share evidence-based strategies for incorporating technological skills (e.g., 3D modeling) and inquiry-based teaching (e.g., social media outreach and service learning). The central goals of the symposium are to make comparative vertebrate anatomy more accessible to diverse student populations and to increase the diversity of future vertebrate anatomists. Both the articulation of core concepts of a field and inquiry-based teaching practices have been shown to foster retention and build problem solving and critical thinking skills. A keynote talk and workshop on inclusive teaching practices in biology are highlights of the symposium, and will be valuable to all scholar-educators in attendance. The fields of vertebrate morphology and the scholarship of teaching and learning have grown rapidly since the last ICVM teaching workshop was held fifteen years ago. Both comparative vertebrate anatomy and human anatomy are common courses in the teaching repertoire of vertebrate morphologists who identify as teacher-scholars. A lack of well-defined core concepts, which exist for other fields of biology, has kept teacher-scholars of vertebrate morphology from fully implementing evidence-based strategies for teaching and learning. As a result, a misperception exists among students that comparative vertebrate morphology is an antiquated science that relies solely on memorization and has not embraced modern techniques and technology. Furthermore, outdated teaching practices reinforce the barriers to the success of underrepresented students. This symposium will push the boundaries of applying interdisciplinary approaches to the study of vertebrate comparative anatomy in the classroom. The diverse set of symposium speakers will share evidence-based strategies for incorporating technological skills (e.g., 3D visualization and modeling) and inquiry-based teaching (e.g., social media outreach and service learning). The symposium aims to forward the mission of NSF to create an engaged and inclusive community of teachers, students, and scholars. The core concepts, pedagogical approaches, and teaching resources identified at the symposium will be disseminated in publications resulting from the conference or on publicly available websites. The award is co-funded by the BIO-IOS-Physiological Mechanisms and Biomechanics Program and the EHR Division of Undergraduate Education.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.