Popular Science
We believe that science should available to the general public, not just experts in our field. With more people excited about science (especially bugs) the world will be a better place.
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However, jargon heavy research articles can difficult to read, and prevent people from reading about science. The help with this problem, our lab works alone and with journalists to publish popular science articles that anyone can read. In 2020, we also started publishing a blog for non-experts to accompany our research papers.
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Teaching Evolution and Climate Change in High School
Beyond doing research, we are dedicated to helping teachers reach their students with engaging activities that will grow public knowledge about evolution and climate change – two areas that American’s struggle to understand. We are developing curricula to help teachers present to their students what we think are important principles in biology.
We are fortunate to work with excellent partners like Dr. Julie Bokor at the UF Center for Precollegiate Education and Training and current high school teachers, especially Jennifer Broo and Jessica Mahoney, to develop learning modules that meet national science standards and that reflect the needs of teachers in their classrooms, and we try to make things easy for teachers to incorporate.
One major gap in the public’s knowledge of evolution by natural selection is the critical importance of naturally segregating heritable variation in populations. Our curricula to teach the importance of naturally segregating variation in climate-relevant traits can be found here under “Drowsy Drosophila” along with several other excellent curricula from UF-CPET.
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Please contact Dan Hahn (dahahn@ufl.edu) if you have any interest in using this curriculum in your classroom, providing us feedback to make the module more useful, or if you would like to work with us to develop even more. We expect to have an all-online WISE module available in 2019/2020.
Drowsy Drosophila: Rapid Evolution in the Face of Climate Change.
J. Broo, J. Mahoney, J.R. Bokor, and D.A. Hahn. 2018. The American Biology Teacher 80: 272-277
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(This paper describes our high school curricula and how it can be used.)
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Modifying Scientific Research Into Introductory Science Course Lessons Using a 5E Lesson Format: An Active Learning Approach.
R. Idsardi, D.A. Hahn, J.R. Bokor and J.A. Luft. 2019. Journal of College Science Teaching. 48.5: p14+.
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This paper describes learning gains from a subset of our high-school exercises in the college setting.
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Teaching Publications
Undergraduate Mentorship
Our lab is proud to act as a place of hands-on learning for undergraduate volunteers.
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When it is used correctly, undergraduate research volunteering provides valuable help to a researcher, and valuable learning experience for the volunteer. The Hahn Lab currently has a team of six undergraduate volunteers, and has helped over a dozen undergraduates write papers, construct posters, and prepare oral presentations about independent research they develop and conduct.
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