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Notes for the future

For 2025

  • Course evaluations

    • Overall, they were very good
    • Students seem to think that the labs are hard and confusing
      • Add more discussion?
      • Review labs in more detail
    • They want more R instruction
      • Periodic R review
      • More on 'for loops'
      • Tell students about Duncan's class
      • Remind them this is not Intro to R
    • They don't see direct connection to the lecture materials
      • Add links to relevant slides
    • Final project is hard
    • They want more interactive lectures and more real-world examples

  • Somehow force students to work on final project during last lab

  • Post all grades at least a day before graduation.

  • Make a good conceptual figure organizing population models and estimation methods

    • Tree diagrams?

  • Quizzes

    • Shoot for 13
    • At least 4 questions/quiz

  • Schedule

    • Slow things down so that labs aren't ahead of lectures
    • Allow more time for class discussions/debates
    • Maybe add another lab: Lab 2 on geometric growth
    • The only problem with this is that we need to finish off the estimation stuff as early as possible for grad students

  • Shorten PVA lecture to 1 class period

    • Replace with ideal free/despotic lecture
    • Would be good to simulate ideal free dynamics

  • Add [https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations](spurious correlations) to sampling lecture

  • Must switch back from 'mra' to 'RMark' b/c mra no longer on CRAN

    • Need simple steps for iOS users

  • Do M&M exercise for Lincoln-Peterson

  • Schedule Jake Knox

  • Project

    • Remove mention of rubric, or make sure that students don't use it during peer review
    • Make the final paper due before Thanksgiving? So they don't have to stress about it?

  • Voice/speech coaching

For 2024

  • Show deer data from N GA on body condition and density

  • Quiz them on density dependent vs independent factors

  • Use 4-5 questions in the quizzes, instead of 2-3.

  • Do M&M sampling exercise for mark-recapture

  • Go back to using RMark for closed pop lab?

  • Make tiger example more realistic (more money)

  • Derive logistic growth from DD birth/death rates

  • Stick with 3 age classes in age lecture

  • Use predator-prey parameter notation in Williams et al.

  • Simplify harvest lab

    • Use new years
    • Be clear that pythons need to flatline

  • Discussion: Is the universe random?

  • Combine stochastic models and extinction lectures

  • Improve PVA slides

    • Introduce the concepts of resilence, redundancy, and representation as used by the USFWS
    • Use a species status assessment, like the one I reviewed for GCWA

  • Ditch short essays on final exam

    • Too much grading and too redundant with final project
    • Convert them to multiple choice scenarios

  • Review previous lab materials and common issues at the beginning of each lab

For 2023

  • Ice-breaker

    • Name, major, primary interests

  • Assign more papers

    • With mini-assignment
    • Group discussions

  • Kahout

  • chatGPT

    • Group presentation
      • Self-scoring

  • Add more examples from Clutton-Brock, Krebs, etc...

  • Need more group activities during lecture in second half of the semester

  • Have a guest lecture earlier?

  • Spend more time going over solutions from previous labs

  • Make the labs shorter and easier to understand for undergrads

    • Especially the first few in which R is introduced

  • Overhaul lecture on enviro/demographic stochasticity

  • Provide example of final paper?

  • Still need to improve items in notes below

  • Kaplan-Meier survival lab

    • Move it earlier so students can incorporate into final paper

  • Excel templates for data collectino

    • Add all names

For 2022

  • Add score item for estimation to final project rubric

    • Grad students only
    • Provide examples

  • Use real datasets from Hastings and Krebs textbooks

  • Add a page of general questions to the final exam

  • TA expectations

    • They will gradually take over the labs as the semester progresses
    • Three field labs
    • Pick up vans
    • Grading
    • Attendance

  • Go back to 'RMark' instead of 'mra' and 'marked'

    • Should be possible to run on Mac

  • Guest speakers

    • Dave Shindle
    • Kirk Olson
      • Ask Kirk to show photos
    • Elina Garrison
    • Sarah Converse
    • Jose Jimenez
    • Ullas Karanth
    • Julien Martin
    • Jesse Whittington
    • Abby Sterling
    • Arno Lyet
    • Jhala Yadvendradev

  • Shiny Apps for:

    • Metapop lecture
    • Geo/logistic growth
    • Others

  • Improve BIDE to Geo derivation slides

  • Don't ask students to pick good values of r, rmax and K in lab 2. Just give them values.

  • Undergrads shouldn't do more than 1 or 2 exercises in R each week

For 2021

  • Read Yellowstone Wolves book chapter from 2020 book

  • Use one of the final labs for Q&A session to help students finish final paper

  • Grade first drafts earlier

  • Ask Jake Knox to guest lecture towards end of semester

  • Consider Microsoft Teams for group conversations, instead of GroupMe

  • More on fecundity estimation

  • More details about pre-reproductive vs post-reproductive surveys

  • Larger breakout rooms?

  • Force R early if we're going to use it for estimation

2020 writing assignment

  • First draft
    • Peer review
    • Add name and title
    • Use scientific writing style
      • Avoid first person
      • Imitate the writing style in the papers that you cited
    • Fecundity is birth rate multiplied by s0
    • Abundance of each stage must be estimated at one point in time
    • All of the models should have stochasticity
      • Multiple runs for each scenario

For 2020

  • Make lab assignments more challenging by forcing them to develop their own model from scratch

  • Make sure reading assignments are in correct order

  • Mix source-sink and ideal free into metapop lecture

  • Lake Herrick mark-recap:

    • Record lengths of fish species too small to tag
    • Record time of capture

  • Consider moving extinction lab back further in the semester so they don't forget how to use stochastic models for the final project

  • Provide an example of the final paper, perhaps from Chloe Green, Rachel Gardner,

  • Add R tips and guidance to the lab assignments

  • Provide more guidance for finding equilibrium solutions

  • Streamline PRESENCE lab by combining "preliminaries" with other material... or switch everything to R and unmarked

Videos

  • Intraspecific competition
    • Giraffe fight in 'Africa'