Sex, camouflage, marvelous adaptations: A writing assignment that inspires

Abstract

Writing assignments offer valuable student learning experiences in both live and online courses. But concerns about the challenges and extra work of marking, and about plagiarism, often deter instructors from using them. I used a writing assignment successfully over 20 years in a one-term invertebrate biology course, despite enrolments exceeding 100. Structured to maximally engage students yet minimize marking load, the assignment often yielded gems of stories for use in subsequent lectures. The Annotated Bibliography assignment asks students: (a) to précis the justification, main results, and significance of three papers from the primary scientific literature in under 250 words each, and (b) to provide a short (150 word) summary of the broader story connecting the three papers. Students liked this assignment because they could choose any aspect of the biology of any invertebrate genus. This inspired them to explore the literature out of personal interest. It's appealing for instructors, because annotations are compact and therefore easy to read, mark, and inspect for plagiarism. It is appealing to host universities, because it generates extensive use of library resources and motivates students to learn how to use them, and online taxonomic databases, effectively. Here I provide: (a) instructions for this assignment, (b) a straightforward marking rubric, (c) two examples of excellent submissions, and (d) comments on the risk and extent of plagiarism. Appendices provide: detailed instructions, a sample annotation with comments to guide student writing, an online submission web page, an online administrator web page, and PHP scripts for both web pages. Finally, I summarize topics and taxa from nearly 2,000 submissions. The five most popular taxa were cephalopods, insects, malacostracan crustaceans, gastropods, and arachnids. Although aspects of sex or reproduction, and camouflage or mimicry were the most popular topics, one paper on extreme limb movements in stomatopods was cited the most.