Tag: rearing education

Here is an example of how Professor Allen Carson Cohen uses connection with participants to make the educational experience more personalised. Participants in classes view a video or other teaching format and interpret what they are seeing or hearing. They submit (through email or individual Zoom meeting) to Prof. Cohen their interpretation or understanding of what they are seeing, and the instructor replies with comments about how well they have understood the concept being explored.

In this case, students had been told that pH is an important part of how their insects treated natural foods or artificial diets in the insects’ guts. Here, they are seeing the different colours of foods that had been treated with a pH dye that is blue for acids and red for basic pHs. This serves as a basis for an individual/personalized discussion between the participants and the instructor leading to other questions or learning situations that are of special interest to students.

Please note that this format, especially if done in a Zoom meeting or an email with attached images, can allow Professor Cohen to make a virtual visit to your laboratory or workplace to help you more directly with your specific interests. This is what Dr. Cohen calls a “mini-consultation.”

More about virtual meetings and “mini-consultations” in posts to come soon!

We learn best by doing rather than just seeing and hearing. The more we are involved in a learning process, the more we will gain from their educational experience. This axiom is clear to me after decades of teaching, and I keep trying to upgrade my teaching to rise to ever-increasing student/learner involvement.

In Fall 2024, I taught a class in insect rearing for first year life science students here at North Carolina State University.* Here is a sample of one of the slides in a presentation I did on metabolism of waxworms (Galleria mellonella) and how they use lipids and carbohydrates to generate elevated body temperatures.

From this image, FIRST YEAR students were able to write paragraphs explaining their understanding of how metabolism, size (accomplished here by larval aggregations), and insulation (accomplished by the waxworms with silk) could permit what we normally consider “cold-blooded” creatures (insects) to become warm-blooded. What I learned from the interactive paragraphs between the students and myself was that we could conduct a productive discussion that guided the “entry level” students to understand how the concepts behind metabolism, behavioural actions, structural adaptations such as fur, feathers, and silk could lead to waxworms’ cultural characteristics (their success in speeding their development, avoidance of predators and parasites, and many other advantages of making themselves warm.

The main point of this discussion is that the kinds of success we had with extensive student/teacher interactions was a much more efficient and enjoyable learning experience. Having learned this lesson from my freshman students, I vowed to apply it to all my teaching–including my online classes. Please look for future discussions of my interactive teaching ideas in post to come shortly.