Week 15, Chapter 12 -- Digging Deeper Course home | Weekly schedule | Announcements | Instructor Info | Desire2Learn | MasteringBiology® | Honor Code | FAQs | HELP!

Instructions:

Enter the words “Human evolution” into the search box at any of the following sites (or choose another major internet news provider):

http://www.brightsurf.com/ (“The Resource for Science Information”)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/ (“Your Link to the Latest Research News”)
National Geographic: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/index.html
BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/
ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com
CBS News: http://www.cbsnews.com

Choose two articles that interest you and that are less than 2 years old. Each must either describe new fossil evidence or new genetic evidence relevant to human evolution (you can choose one of each if you like). Do not choose articles that describe new theories or hypotheses without presenting a specific new finding. Note that a lot of the stories that will come up in your search will not fit these criteria, so choose carefully. Also, if you chose a human evolution article for Chapter 10's Freelance Writer (Week 13, Evidence for Evolution), please do not use the same article for this assignment.

Part 1

• Name the title, publication date, source, and URL (with functioning hyperlink) for each article you chose.
• In your own words, summarize the research finding described in each article (one paragraph summary for each article) – do not “summarize” by using extensive quotes from the article.
• Then, for each article, explain what specific question the research is trying to settle (one paragraph each). For example, does the article address the out-of-Africa vs. multiregional hypothesis? Does it try to piece together some other aspect of human or primate evolution? Explain why this issue is important to the overall picture of human evolution. (It may help to refer back to chapter 9 for more on evidence for human evolution.)
• Finally, add a personal comment about the articles. You can comment on why you find it interesting (or not), whether there is a relationship between the two articles, something you don’t understand about the articles, or some other personal reflection on the articles.

Your assignment should be between 400 and 500 words long.

You can view a sample assignment here.

Part 2:

Use D2L's spell checker (or the one on your word processor software, which will give you a word count as well). Proofread it yourself too, because spell checkers don't catch everything. When you are satisfied, post your completed assignment in the Digging Deeper forum for this week at the D2L discussion board.

Part 3:

Respond to the Digging Deeper posts of at least two other students. (If you are the first or second person to post, you will have to check back later to complete this part of the assignment).

• Just as you spell checked and proofread your original post, you should do the same for your responses.
• Please respond to posts with 0 responses first; once every post has at least one response, you are free to choose any post to respond to.
• When you respond, please use the name of the student you are responding to. That is, say "Hi Trudy" or "Hi Paul" so that you can get used to the names of the people in class. (You can find a list of "real" names and preferred names at D2L).
• In your response, be sure you mention something specific that the writer did well. Also, specifically address anything you find that seems incorrect to you (phrased in a constructive way -- use the same language you would want someone else to use in telling you something you did wrong). You may wish to argue with (or critique) what the student wrote, request supporting evidence, evaluate the student's argument, add new information, make a factual correction, or explain why you agree. At a minimum this response should be at least 50 words and 50-100 is preferable. Check out this page for more on the topic of good and bad responses.

After you have posted your assignment AND responded to two other students, go to Desire2Learn and complete the Gradebook Declaration for this week's Digging Deeper assignment. (Your Gradebook Declaration is subject to the Honor Code.)

Contemporary Issues in Biology -- BIOL 1003 Mariëlle H. Hoefnagels, Ph.D. © 2004-2015. biology1003 at OU dot edu (at = @, dot =.) Last Updated August 5, 2014 11:02 PM