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This is a useful video to watch about the kinds of cuts you can make in your videos. 

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What you need to buy for this course

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Too Short To Suck

When I was working at the Bread and Puppet theater, they had an aphorism for making a good performance: 

To short to suck.

It didn’t matter if what you were saying wasn’t terribly profound, or if it was sloppy. If you could get in and get out quickly, and make a point in the middle, you were great. What you made was too short to suck.

I think this point applies especially well to making online videos, particularly when you are just beginning. Making long videos requires skill. You need to develop various techniques for holding peoples attention for longer.

But when the tools you have are limited, really just footage of your face saying some things, brevity is your friend.

When you’re reading the papers for this course, you should be asking yourself the question “What point is the author making here that I could make in under three minutes?” Look for big ideas, and interesting details.

Your thesis should come first. What is the point you want your video to make? Every word you include in your script should serve that point in some way.

Wherever possible, make the structure of your video transparent. This is why list videos are so easy to write, and easy to watch. If the video you’re watching is called 5 cool biology facts, you know what you’re getting into before you click, and by the time you get to fact number 4, you know you’re close to the end.

The videos you make need not be lists, but no matter what their structure should be apparent. It should be immediately obvious to the viewer what the video is there to do.

When making videos about scientific papers, there are two main strategies. Your video can try to summarize everything the paper says, give an overview, or, your video can try to focus on some interesting beautiful detail. No matter which strategy you choose, don’t try to accomplish too much. Remember, your videos should be too short to suck.  

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Video Grading Rubric

Hi everyone

In this video I will describe the rubric I will use for grading your videos.

Your videos will be graded holistically on a 7 point scale. Grades are based on the following 6 qualities:

Clarity: Your communication should be clear and accurate. Use simple language. Use animations, props, and other secondary visual cues to make your point twice, once with spoken words, once with visuals.

Brevity: A video in this class should not be longer than 3 minutes unless absolutely necessary. Your communication should be quick, with no time wasted. Videos which are longer than they need to be are usually boring. Cuts should be clean, with no pauses in between shots.

Focus: Your video should have an overall thesis, and every second of the video should be in service to that thesis.

Creativity: Your video should have aesthetic quality, and use novel technique to keep the viewers’ attention. Unusual titling, effective animation, novel props, and innovative cinematography are some of the many ways to make your video unique.

Virality: Videos with more likes, comments, and views will be graded more highly than videos with lower like, comment, and view counts.

Social Media Integration: Did you post the video to your facebook page? What about reddit? Is the title engaging? Is the thumbnail informative and legible? Is the description descriptive? Are the tags accurate?

When I am grading your videos, I will take these 6 qualities into account when I assign points. But like I said in the beginning, your videos will be holistically graded. Good videos will get good grades. Bad videos will get bad grades.

One final thing I should note about grading your videos is that I will not accept late submissions. This course is very fast paced, and any extra time you spend on one video will detract from the time you can spend on another. A key part of this course is learning what you can do with the time you have, and what corners you can cut while still making a video that looks presentable.

If your deadline is approaching and you are not finished, just upload what you have. Or, even better, figure out how much time you can reasonably devote to the video, and scale its scope so that it feels finished, even if you had to cut some corners.

Alright. That’s all I have to say about grading. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments.

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How this course will be Graded

Hi everyone

This video is going to be about how you will be graded in this course.

This course is graded out of 100 points. Any point you receive on an assignment is a point towards your final score.

There are 5 areas for which you can receive points, and they each have different weights:

You’ll get points for 1)attending the class 2) Watching youtube videos 3) Commenting on videos 4) Making videos 5) Putting in effort and showing improvement.

I will now tell you a bit more about these 5 categories

1) Attendance:

Attendance is worth 15 points. We meet 15 times during the semester, 10 guest lectures and 5 discussion sections. Every time you attend a meeting you will get 1 point.

2) Watching youtube videos:

Videos like this one are going to be the primary way that I communicate with you. Watching the videos I send you is mandatory. You should give a thumbs up to every video I send you, to let me know you’ve watched it. Some of the videos I send I’ll have made myself, but a lot of what I send you is just content that I think is particularly good, and that you could learn from. I will ask you at the end of the semester to provide me with a copy of your watch history. In exchange for your watching history, I will reward you with between 1 and 5 points, depending on its length.

3) Commenting on your classmates videos

You are required to watch and comment on all of the videos that your classmates make. Your comments should be thoughtful, and provide meaningful suggestions about how to make future videos better. You should not say mean things. At the end of the semester, I will ask you to generate a list of all the comments you made during the course. In exchange for your comment history, I will reward you with between 1 and 10 points, depending on the quality of your comments.

4) Educational videos

This is the biggest portion of your grade, worth 49 points. We meet a total of 10 times, and there is a video due after every meeting. Each video you make is worth up to 7 points, and I will drop your lowest three videos. So, if you got 1 point for your first three videos, but then got 7 points for the remaining 7, you would get 49 out of 49 possible points for educational videos.

There is a link in the description with a video that describes in more detail how your videos will be graded, with a rubric

5) Effort and Improvement

21 points are dedicated to effort and improvement. These are wiggleroom points to make the grading flexible.

These points are there to make the motivational purpose of grades explicit. These are points I will award to you at the end of the semester holistically, based on how hard you tried, and how much your videos improved over the course of the semester. I don’t care if your video grades are high or low. I care that you are learning, and that you can do something at the end of this class that you could not do at the beginning. 21 points is the difference between a C and an A. As long as you demonstrate to me that you are trying your best, and that you are learning, then you will receive most of these 21 points.

So do not be concerned about low grades. The grading structure is built so that any student who is working hard will do well. If you do not work hard, you will not do well, and if you try your best, your final grade will reflect it. It’s really that simple.

So, to summarize, out of the 100 points you can potentially receive, 15 are for attendance, 5 are for your watch history, 10 are for your comment history, 49 are for the videos you make, and 21 are for effort and improvement.

Alright. That concludes this video on how this course will be graded. If you have any questions, you can leave them in the comments.

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The Regular Course Assignment

Hi everyone

In this video, I’m going to lead you through the regular course assignment. I’m going to go over what needs to happen at each step of the process.

But before I get into the details, let’s talk about time.

So this is a four credit summer course, which means, according to Binghamton university, that you should be devoting about 35 hours a week to this class. There’s some wiggle room there, but for this video, that’s the number I’m going to use.

Of those 35 hours a week, 6 of them will be spent in class. We have a 2 hour guest lecture that starts at noon on Monday and Thursday, and a 2 hour discussion that starts at noon on Wednesday.

That leaves 29 hours a week for homework. You will have 2 assignments due each week, which means spending about 14 hours on each assignment. You may be able to devote considerably less than 14 hours to this, depending on how efficiently you work. Think of the number as an upper threshold. You should definitely not spend more than 14hours on an assignment.

The first step of each class assignment is to do the reading. This needs to happen before the corresponding lecture. All the readings are in the content section on the course blackboard page. Additionally, I will email you the readings before each class.

You will be assigned one or two papers per class, although I may upload supplementary material. Each of you has a different reading speed, and different levels of knowledge. So rather than expect that you finish all the reading available to you, I expect that you will devote about 1 or 2 hours to reading before the lecture.

You are not going to be tested on the material you read, but you are going to be asked to speak about it. So as you read, keep an eye out for big themes. Are there any big questions you have? Write them down and bring them to the lecture.

I’ve assigned the reading to prepare you for two tasks later on.

The first task is to engage in a lively discussion with the guest speaker. If you haven’t read what they’ve written, it will be harder to ask interesting questions.

The second task is to make a video about the lecture. The reading will provide you with relevant quotes and images that you will want to include in your videos. So as you read, take note of the parts of the paper that will be useful for your videos later on.

After you’ve done the reading, the next step is to attend the guest lecture. We’re a small group, so this wont be like the big, anonymous lectures you might be used to. You are expected to be an active participant in each lecture, and contribute meaningfully to the discussion.

To formalize this, we’re going to take advantage of the chat feature provided by google hangouts. Each of you is required to ask at least one question during every discussion. So, during the lecture portion of the class, use the chat feature to write down questions that come up while the presenter is speaking. I will be archiving these chat feeds as a record of the questions you’ve asked, and you’ll be graded on them.

Your questions should be conversational in tone. The idea is to ask questions that will deepen the discussion, and make the whole experience more interesting and enjoyable for everyone involved.

Once the lecture is over, you will have about 3 days to make a video about it. Assuming you’ve spent about 2 hours on the reading, you shouldn’t spend any more than 10 hours making the video.

To put that number in some perspective, the summary videos that I make for the course usually take me about 30 hours. A video like this one, where I am just talking into the camera, with a few bits of text for emphasis, takes me about 4 hours in total to make.

I’ve got a lot of practice at this, so I don’t expect you to be able to make a video like this in just 4 hours. But you could probably do it in 8 or 9.

The kind of video that I’ve been making to tell you about this class, like this one, or the Ostrom design principles list, is the kind of video that I expect you to make for this course. These videos consist of a written script of about 500 words that I perform into a camera. I edit the footage using simple jump cuts and add titles for emphasis, where needed.

You don’t need to follow this format if you don’t want to. Some of you may not feel comfortable speaking into a camera and might prefer to use narration over images. Or maybe you want to make sophisticated animations. I want to encourage you to be quite creative with these videos, but also to keep track of your time. Don’t spend more than 10 hours on a video, over the course of three days.

So as I said in the beginning, a regular assignment should take you no more 14 hours maximum to complete, and less if you work efficiently. If you spend about 2 hours reading, and about 10 hours making the video, that should leave about 2 hours for social media work.

You are required to watch and comment on all the videos made by your classmates in the course. Once you’ve uploaded your video, you should email a link to the elist, so that they can watch and comment on it. Your comments should be thoughtful, and productive. Highlight the things you liked about the video, and areas you think the video could be improved. Keep your comments positive. Don’t talk about features you disliked without also providing detailed, concrete ideas for improvement.

At the end of the semester, you are required to submit all of your comments to me in a word document so I can grade them. There is a link to a video in the description which explains how to do this.

So that’s pretty much it for the regular course assignment. It consists of 4 parts:

Part 1: do the reading

Part 2: contribute meaningfully to the lecture discussion

Part 3: make a video about it

Part 4: watch and comment on your classmates videos.

I’ll be uploading videos over the course of the semester that go into more detail about these things, particularly video making techniques, as well as some more information about giving and receiving feedback. But for now, this should give you a general idea of what will be expected of you week to week in this course.

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How our class does the Ostrom Design Principles

Hi everyone.

In the last video, we went over the Ostrom core design principles. In this video, I’m going to go into a bit more detail about how the course is structured, using the design principles as a guide. This is going to be another list video, because list videos are easy to keep track of.

Lets get right to it

Design principle 1: Group identity and purpose.

The identity of this group is well defined: Its all of the students enrolled in the EvoS Seminar Series at Binghamton University, plus Mel and I, who are teaching the course. Our purpose is also well defined. We have a group level goal of reaching 10,000 subscribers by the end of the semester. That goal can be accomplished by each of you pursuing your individual goals – to learn evolutionary theory, and to make good videos.

Design principle 2: Fair distribution of costs and benefits.

Being a member of this group requires work, and it will also yield rewards. But the work we do, and the rewards we receive, will be different. Each of you has paid tuition to be a member of this group, whereas I am being paid. Ostensibly, the money you’ve paid will go towards course credit, and eventually a degree, while the money that I receive is for the work I do as a teacher.

The work we all do in the class will be somewhat similar. Just like you, I will be making a video about each of our 10 guest lectures. I am responsible for giving you thoughtful feedback on your videos, and I expect you to give thoughtful feedback to each other, and to me. We will all read the same papers every week. However, while the homework assignments we all do will be the same, we should evaluate them in a way that acknowledges our different abilities, and our different schedule requirements.

This is my full time job, and I will be doing nothing but this course for the next 5 weeks. I expect to devote about 80 or 90 hours of work a week to this class. I imagine that many of you have other jobs besides this class, and might also be taking additional classes this semester, and so the time that you devote to the course will be limited. That’s fine. We should only expect each other to give to this course as much as our time and abilities will allow.

Design principle 3: Collective decision making.

This course is being taught out of Binghamton university, a decidedly hierarchical institution. Binghamton has given me the role of an instructor, which means that I have more decision making authority than you do. Many of the key decisions about the class have already been made, and the course is structured around Binghamton university requirements. However, wherever possible, I want to try to make decisions about this class collectively, as a group. This wont be so relevant in the beginning, when your assignments will be fairly simple and proscribed. But as the course progresses, and especially when we start publicizing our work, I look forward to making decisions as a group.  

Design principle 4: Monitoring

If we are going to work well together, we need to be able to keep track of what we each are doing. We are going to use some social media tools to keep track of this. Like, I want to make sure that you are watching this video. So right now, what I want you to do is pause the video, and go down to the comments section and write a comment that contains the word “purple.” Seriously, do this right now, Ill wait.

Did you write a purple sentence in the comments?  OK good.

We’re going to use various social media metrics – views, likes, comments, shares, that kind of stuff, to keep track of just how well we’re doing over the course of the semester. I’ll post another video in the future about the details of how we’re going to monitor each others work, but for now, writing a purple sentence in the comments is great.

Design principle 5: Graduated Sanctions

The main form of graduated sanctions this course will use is grades. Like I’ve said before, grades do not indicate how much you know, or your worth as a human being – they are constraints to keep your work focused in the right direction. If I notice that your work is not contributing to our stated course goals as effectively as I believe it could, I will give you a poor grade, and indicate the areas where you could improve.

Grades are an excellent graduated sanction that I can use, as an instructor, to motivate a change in your behavior. But what if you, as a student, want to change my behavior? This brings us to the next design principle.

Design principle 6: Conflict resolution.

We should be able to take advantage of the hierarchical system that Binghamton university creates to manage most conflicts. If you have a problem with some way that I am behaving, and you don’t feel like you can discuss it with me directly, you can contact my advisor, David Wilson. If you don’t want to bring the issue to him, you can also contact the university ombudsman, whose fulltime job is to solve university conflicts. Ive put both of their contact information in the description.

But, my hope is that we wont have to appeal to hierarchies to solve our conflicts. At its core, the curriculum of this class is about communication. That doesn’t just mean communication to the public, through youtube, it also means communication with each other. I think it’s really important that we cultivate a classroom environment where we feel like we can speak to each other openly, and directly. So if you have a conflict with me, or one of your classmates, our first step should be to reach out, and have a conversation about it. Most issues can be resolved in this way.

Design principle 7: Local autonomy.

This class has a fair amount of local autonomy, in that what we do wont be directly constrained by anyone from the university. But still, this is a university class, and my authority as a teacher comes from that institution. There are certain things I can’t do, like abolish grades, because this class is not completely autonomous.

Design principle 8: Polycentric governance.

If we do our job right, we will be entering into a global youtube community. That community has norms and values just like any community. What we do and what we say doesn’t just have bearing on us, and our personal academic lives – it relates to all the millions of people who use online video.

So those are the 8 design principles, as they relate to our class. Even though we are all in different parts of the world, I want to emphasize that we’re not just isolated students. We’re a group. Lets be a good one.

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The 8 Elinor Ostrom Core Design Principles

This is Elinor Ostrom. In 2009, she won the Nobel Prize in economics for her work on common pool resources, the first woman ever to win the prize. Common pool resources are things like forests, or fisheries, which require cooperation in order to be managed effectively and prevent a “tragedy of the commons” – like, over grazing, or over fishing,

Ostrom studied hundreds of groups. Some managed their resources well, others, not so well. She developed a list of 8 traits that successful groups had which allowed them to function effectively. This video is about that list, so here we go

The Elinor Ostrom Core Design Principles.

Principle 1: A strong group identity and a sense of purpose.

Groups work best when they are defined clearly. Everyone knows who is a member, and who isn’t, and what all the members are trying to accomplish.

Principle 2: Fair distribution of Costs and Benefits.

Have you even been a part of a group where one member just isn’t doing their fair share of the work? It sucks right? Ostrom found that groups work best when costs and benefits are fairly distributed. Fair doesn’t mean that everyone has to work equally hard, or that everyone has the same responsibilities. But it does mean that the people that do take on extra responsibility should be fairly compensated.

Principle 3: Collective decision making

When an effective group makes decisions, all members have a say in it. Like in design principle 2, this doesn’t mean that all members get an equal say, but it does mean that however a decision gets made, all the members need to feel that it was made fairly.

Principle 4: Monitoring

Effective groups keep track of the activities of their members, in order to make sure that all commitments are met. Monitoring ensures that everyone fulfills their role.

Principle 5: Graduated Sanctions

Closely related to monitoring, graduated sanctions make sure that there are consequences if someone does not do what they promised to do. Punishments should be mild at first, just a gentle verbal reminder, but they can be escalated, if needed, usually culminating in expulsion from the group, if all else fails.

Principle 6: Fast and Fair Conflict Resolution.

Conflict is inevitable. In an effective group, there are well defined rituals for handling conflict which are believed to be fair for everyone involved.

Principle 7: Local autonomy

Groups are often nested inside other groups. Groups are most effective when they are allowed to govern their activities on their own, without limitation from higher levels.

Principle 8: Polycentric governance

Because groups always exist in an ecosystem with other groups, the way that different groups should relate to each other should mimic the way individuals within a group should relate to each other, that is, by following the design principles.

So there you have it, those are the 8 design principles.

The reason I made this video for you is because we are a group, and I think that we will work best, and accomplish our goals the most effectively, is if we can follow these principles as we develop the class.

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On Goals

This video is about goals.

 In a couple other videos Ive talked about two main course goals

 Learning Evolutionary Biology

 Making good youtube videos.

These are both student level goals - they are the guidelines I will use to grade you, as independent individual students.  

But one of my personal goals for this course, a goal that will make me feel like this course was successful, is if we also manage to pursue a course level goal – that is, if we can successfully work on some big task, together.  I think that people tend to work better if they feel like they are pursuing a collective goal.

There are a lot of moving pieces to this class, a lot of different skills to learn. There’s the papers and the lectures and the video making and the discussions. It may feel difficult to figure out where is the best area to put your effort.

My hope, is that having a collective goal will make everything fit together a bit easier. If you are ever wondering what, or how much to do, think about how your efforts would best serve our collective goal.

The collective goal will be simple, and it will be quantifiable, so we will know just how close we get to achieving it.  

Ready?

This class runs a youtube channel, the EvoS Seminar Series, which will host all of the lectures. Our goal is to get other people besides us watching those lectures. In other words, our goal is to accumulate subscribers.

More specifically, our goal is to have 10,000 subscribers when the class finishes on August 10th. To motivate you towards this goal, if we reach it, I will give every single one of you an A+.

If we are going to accomplish this goal, we will need to work together as a group. Getting 10,000 subscribers requires 2 things.

Your videos need to be good

Your social media presence needs to be good. You need to become good at advocating for your work.

As an individual, it’s very difficult to do both of these things at the same time, because both of them take a lot of time. But as a group, we can divide the work to get everything done.  

I don’t know if we will be able to pull this off. I  would actually be very surprised if we did. But I think that if we try, we’ll all learn more, and our videos will be better.

Reaching this goal will require us to be a highly functional group. And, luckily enough, the functioning of groups is what I study, at Binghamton. So in the next video, I’m going to tell you about some of the practices that researchers have found help groups to work well together.

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On Work

Hi Everybody

This video is going to be about work.

So the majority of the time that you spend “working” on this course is going to be “home work.”

This is particularly true for this course, because, I for one, will be “at home” for every class.

So, I wanted to make a video about why teachers assign homework, and what homework is supposed to do, what its supposed to accomplish.

When I was a little kid, I thought teachers were magical beings who had the ability to impart skills into your mind, a bit like installing a program on a computer, or uploading a video to youtube.

I thought that the way it worked was that teachers had the knowledge, and by doing this thing they called “teaching”, they gave that knowledge to you.

But as Ive gotten older, Ive realized that although my  teachers do have knowledge, they’re exactly not giving it to me directly, like, they’re not uploading facts into my brain.

Instead, what they’re doing, is pointing me to knowledge. They say, “go look over there, and you might find what you’re looking for. Although, actually, you might have to practice for a few years before you get good enough at looking to know that you’ve actually seen it. So, ya know, it might be a while”

That is, my teachers haven’t taught me exactly, they’ve just given me enough structure to teach myself.

Learning is hard work, and a teacher can’t do that work for you, but they can be a guide.

And that’s what homework is, it’s a guide. Homework is a set of constraints that can help you to achieve your goal, which is to learn.

We can be more specific if you like. Perhaps the goal is to learn evolutionary biology, or maybe it’s to learn how to make great youtube videos.

But one thing the goal is NOT is “to get an A in this class” . Getting an A does not mean you’ve learned anything. That’s because getting an A isn’t a proper goal, it’s a constraint. Stay within  the constraints of “A” and you will probably achieve your goal, which is Learning Something.

If you do all the homework I assign, you will probably have learned something, and so I will give you an A.

But even if you do not do all the homework I assign, I may still give you an A, if you can demonstrate to me that you have learned something.

But if you do not demonstrate to me that you have learned something, even if you do do all the homework I assign, I will not give you an A.

That’s because the goal is the learning.

In this class, I am going to give you more homework than you can possibly do. And because its more than you can possibly do, I don’t expect you to do it all!

It’s going to be up to you to decide what homework to do, and how much time to spend on each assignment.

I will help you with that decision by grading you. I will give different assignments different weights to let you know which tasks I think are the most important, and which tasks I think will most effectively help you learn.

But the amount of effort you put into those tasks, and therefore the amount of learning that then happens, is really up to you.

According to Binghamton university, this is a 4 credit summer course. This fits an entire semester, 4 months, into 1 month. This means that I am going to ask you to work about 4 times harder on this course than you would on  a normal course, but that’s really only an estimation. A more specific estimation is that Binghamton university expects you to work about 35 hours a week on this course. So you should think of it a little like a full time job.

But like I said, I am not going to be evaluating you based on how many hours you work, I’m going to be evaluating you based on how effectively you work. This is because I don’t want you to spend your time doing something that you feel is useless.

I want you to feel like you are accomplishing a meaningful goal.

Theres more I have to say about meaningful goals, but Ill save it for another video. For now, what I want to emphasize is that your work for this class needs to be somewhat self directed.

I’m going to point you towards the goal, but how you get there is really up to you.

[evotevo]

In which Maximus and Mel introduce themselves to the class and explain why evolution is important. 

[evotevo]

EvoS Seminar Series Objectives

This course has two main goals:

To gain a greater understanding of contemporary evolutionary theory

To develop video literacy – to learn the skills required to make a point using online video

The class is structured so that these two goals dovetail. The content of the ten guest lectures will provide a detailed picture of current evolutionary research. The video assignment for each lecture is designed to both increase your comprehension of the topic, and also to give you the opportunity to increase your fluency in the video medium.

This is not a test based course. You will not be graded on your ability to answer questions, or your ability to absorb a suitable percentage of the information you have been exposed to. Expect much of the scientific course content to be well over your head. This is OK! There is far more information in the world than any human could possibly absorb. Your job, in this class, is not to know all that it is possible to know, but rather to communicate what you do know effectively. You will be graded based on the clarity of your communication.

Here is a list of 5 things that will help you do well in this course:

Answer emails promptly! As I said, you will be graded based on the clarity of your communication. Unanswered emails are not very clear.

Demonstrate improvement. You are not expected to make professional quality videos, or even good videos. But you are expected to try very hard, and the quality of your videos should improve over time.

Provide thoughtful feedback. Your job in this class is to communicate what you do know effectively. In the case of feedback, the word effectively means “in a way which can be responded to directly in the next video, and also that does not threaten the receivers sense of self worth.” Feedback should contain specific suggestions, and it shouldn’t hurt people’s feelings.

Show enthusiasm! Effective communication isn’t just about what you say, it’s how you say it. Even the most technically sophisticated videos fall flat if the presenter lacks enthusiasm.

Don’t try to say too much. This is advice for myself as much as it is for you. There is a ton more I could add to this list, but it’s important to keep your communication brief and to the point. A good video script is usually under 500 words. Any longer than that and you should probably make another video, which is exactly what I’m going to do, later.

[evotevo]

EvoS Seminar Series Online

Syllabus

Summer session II

BIOL 483x      

Meeting Times: Mondays & Thursdays 12:00 – 2:00 PM

                List of Meeting Dates: We meet 10 times in total -

                                              July 6, 10, 13, 17, 20, 24, 27, 31

                                         August 3, 7

            All meetings are virtual and take place via Youtube live.

                                       All meetings are required.

Instructor: Maximus Thaler (mthaler1@binghamton.edu ; Instructor of record)

Office hours by appointment – I am available for private video chats most times.

EvoS Faculty and Staff:

David Sloan Wilson (dwilson@binghamton.edu) Office: Science III, Room 363

Susan Ryan (evos@binghamton.edu) Office: Science III, Room 113 (EvoS Office Suite)

Course Description:

This 4-credit course is built around the EvoS seminar series, which hosts external speakers to discuss a diversity of topics from an evolutionary perspective. It is a required course for students in the EvoS program and must be taken twice to earn the EvoS certificate. See the EvoS website for more about the overall program: https://binghamton.edu/evos/

This class is traditionally 2 credits. It has been modified to a 4 credit online course by adding an extra emphasis on science communication. Your grade will be based off of the educational videos that you make in response to the work of our guest speakers. You are not expected to know anything about video making at the start of this class, but you are expected to work hard and demonstrate improvement by the end. The best videos in the class will be posted at https://evolution-institute.org/this-view-of-life/.

This course represents an extraordinary opportunity for you to interact with and learn from dynamic scientists and science communicators from around the world. You are being invited to join the interdisciplinary conversation at the highest level of intellectual discourse—an extremely rare opportunity for undergraduate students. Recognize it for what it is and make the most of it!

Required Resources:

•        A computer built in 2013 or newer, with functioning webcam. •        An optical mouse. •        A high speed internet connection (at least 4mbps) •        Google Chrome & Google Hangouts. •        Microsoft Word. •        Adobe Premier Pro.

o          A one month subscription for $29.99 is available at http://www.adobe.com/

o       Your computer will need significant processing power to run this software. Contact me immediately if you are concerned your machine is not equipped.

Optional but Recommended Resources:

•        HD Digital camera. •        Tripod. •        Microphone. •        External hard drive. •        Bandicam screen capture software. •        Debut webcam capture software. •        Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, & Audition

o           A one month subscription to the full Adobe CC is available for $74.99 at http://www.adobe.com/

Class Format:

This course takes place completely online. Twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays from 12:00 – 2:00 PM, we will virtually gather via Youtube Live to attend a talk by one of our speakers. Prior to each meeting you will receive an email with the URL of the live stream.

Each class you will be assigned a peer reviewed paper written by the speaker, or another researcher in the speaker’s field. Come prepared with questions. Talks are broadcast for approximately 60 minutes with another 60 minutes allotted for questions. Both the talk and the Q&A session will be recorded. Your homework for each class is to synthesize the talk, the Q&A, and the paper into a video blog which offers an accessible summary of what you learned.

4 credit online summer courses require 35 hours of work per week. Treat this class like a full time job. We meet as a class for 4 hours a week, meaning you are expected to devote 31 hours a week to homework. This amounts to approximately 15 hours per video you make.

Every day of the course, I will post two or three short science vlogs or tutorials on making video. Watching these videos is required – they will be your primary source of information on how to do your vlog assignments. The videos I post will be made by myself and other professional science communicators. I am available for private sessions for help with video editing.

You are expected to constructively comment on your classmate’s videos. Learning is a collaborative practice.

Evaluation:

Your grade is based out of 100 points. To keep things simple, any 1 point that you receive on assignments will be exactly equal to 1 point on your final grade.

Points are rewarded for completing the following tasks:

A)        Attendance: 15 points

This class meets 15 times during summer session II. Each time you virtually attend a seminar you will receive 1 point.

Log in on time! The fact that the course is online does not remove the punctuality norms of a standard university class.

Missed broadcasts: If you have a legitimate reason for missing a seminar, you must contact me before class and arrange how to make it up.

B)         Watching Educational Youtube Videos: 5 points

Every day during the course, I will be posting videos from a variety of science youtubers. I will also be posting tutorials I have made about how to complete specific assignments. You are required to watch all of these videos. Think of this as your textbook for the class.

There is much more excellent content on youtube that I could ever provide you links to. You are strongly encouraged to explore on your own. Watching many videos, from many genera and styles, is one of the best ways to improve your content and develop a unique vlogging voice. You are also required to watch the videos your classmates make.

At the end of the class you will be asked to submit a word document enumerating a list of all the videos you watched during summer session 2. Here is a video tutorial about how to generate a list of watched videos from your youtube history.

Points will be rewarded based on the number of videos you watch. You will be rewarded between 1 and 5 points for this video list assignment. The more videos you watch, the higher this portion of your grade will be. I will also be skimming through the list to make sure you are watching at least some educational content, and your grade will reflect that as well. If there are videos in your history you would prefer I do not know you have watched, simply remove them from the list before submitting it.

This is not meant to be tricky or invasive. I won’t be closely scrutinizing your watching decisions closely – I’m just going to skim the list at the end of the semester to make sure that you engaged with the content of the class.

C)         Youtube Comments: 10 points

You are required to watch and thoughtfully comment on your classmate’s videos. Comments should be positive, encouraging, and suggest ways to improve the content.

At the end of the class you will be asked to submit a word document enumerating a list of all the comments you made during the course. Here is a video tutorial about how to generate a list of the comments that you posted on youtube. Points will be rewarded based on the number of comments you have made, and also based on their quality. If there are comments in your history you would prefer I do not know you made, simply remove them from the list before submitting it.

I take these comments very seriously, and your classmate’s grades are based off of them as well. When I grade a video, the number of positive comments, shares, and likes, it receives will be factored into the grade. Don’t let your classmates down by ignoring their videos.

D)         Educational Video Blogs: 49 points

This class meets 10 times. For all meetings but our first, there is an educational vlog due. (A total of 9 videos for the class) Each vlog is worth 7 points. These vlogs will be graded rigorously, and the lowest two grades will be dropped. (If you got just 1 point on your first two vlogs, but all 7 points on the other 7, you would earn 49 out of 49 possible points.)  

You will be provided with much more information in the coming days about what is expected from these videos. For now, here is an abbreviated rubric to give you a sense of how your videos will be graded.

Vlog grading rubric

Your videos will be graded holistically on a 7 point scale. Grades are based on the following qualities:

Clarity: Your communication should be clear and accurate. Use simple language. Use animations, props, and other secondary visual cues to make your point twice, once with words, once with visuals.

Brevity: A vlog in this class should not be longer than 3 minutes unless absolutely necessary. Your communication should be quick, with no time wasted. Videos which are longer than they need to be are usually boring. Cuts should be clean, with no pauses in between shots.

Focus: Your video should have an overall thesis, and every second of the video should be in service to that thesis.

Creativity: Your video should have aesthetic quality, and use novel technique to keep the viewers’ attention. Unusual titling, effective animation, novel props, and innovative cinematography are some of the many ways to make your video unique.

Virality: Videos with more likes, comments, and views will be graded more highly than videos with lower like, comment, and view counts.

Social Media Integration: Did you post the video to your facebook page? What about reddit? Is the title engaging? Is the thumbnail informative and legible? Is the description descriptive? Are the tags accurate?

Descriptions of videos receiving various grades:

7: A video which receives the full 7 points will be promoted and published on This View of Life. A 7 point video is short, accurate, and has a clear thesis. The editing is clean, and it uses creative visual methods to reinforce the points made by the narrator. The video has an engaging thumbnail and title, and is liked by many members of the class.

6: A 6 point video is accurate and clear, but may be slightly too long. The editing is clean, and efficient, but not necessarily innovative. Narration is reinforced by secondary visual cues effectively, but minimally. The video has an engaging thumbnail and title, and is liked by many members of the class.

5: A 5 point video is mostly accurate and fairly easy to follow, but there may be small factual errors or ambiguities. Editing is clean, but could be better reinforced by more elaborate secondary visual cues. The video could be improved if it were shortened. The title is effective but not eye catching, as is the thumbnail. The video received an average number of likes and views.

4: A 4 point video gets the job done, but there may be factual errors which undermine it. Or, while the details of the video may be accurate, it may be rather simple, and not explain very much. The video may lack a clear thesis or a sense of focus. Editing could be tightened, and the narration could be significantly improved by secondary visual cues. Minimal effort is put into thumbnail and title. The video received average or below average numbers of likes and views.      

3: A 3 point video needs improvement. It has factual errors and does not synthesize the paper into a cohesive story. If the video has a thesis, or much of the video is tangential and does not argue the thesis well. The pace of the video is slow, with little done during editing to hold the viewers’ attention. Minimal effort is put into thumbnail and title. The video received average or below average numbers of likes and views.

2: A 2 point video has significant factual errors and lacks focus or a clear thesis. Editing is sloppy and the narration is unclear and in need of much improvement. Minimal effort is put into thumbnail and title. The video received below average numbers of likes and views.  

1: A 1 point video is too long, factually inaccurate, and unfocused. Editing is sloppy, and no effort is made to reinforce narration using secondary visual methods. Title is ambiguous, and no custom thumbnail is uploaded. The bare minimum of effort was made to complete the assignment, but the assignment was completed.

0: A 0 point video is incomplete or never uploaded.

E)         Effort and Improvement: 21 points

A critical note about grades: Grades do not represent your worth as a human being.

Grades exist for institutional reasons, not human reasons. Grades exist so that institutions can communicate about their educational caliber. Grades do not reflect how much you know, they reflect how well you were able to adapt your scholastic efforts to the university system.

I do not appreciate student concerns about low grades. I think worrying about your grade misses the point. I use grades to motivate you, not to measure you. If I give you a low grade, it is because I want to motivate you to try harder, not because I think you are inadequate in some way. This point bears repeating: Grades in this class are a motivational tool, not a measurement.

The 21 points dedicated to effort and improvement are there to make the motivational purpose of grades explicit. These are points I will award to you at the end of the semester holistically, based on how hard you tried, and how much your videos improved over the course of the semester. I don’t care if your grades are high or low. I care that you are learning, and that you can do something at the end of this class that you could not do at the beginning. 21 points is the difference between a C and an A. As long as you demonstrate to me that you are trying your best, and that you are learning, then you will receive most of these 21 points.

So do not be concerned about low grades. The grading structure is built so that any student who is working hard will do well. If you do not work hard, you will not do well, and if you try your best, your final grade will reflect it. It’s really that simple.

Grade Summary:

15 (attendance) + 5 (Video History) + 10 (Comment History) + 49 (Vlogs) + 21 (Effort) = 100 points

Late Policy:

Assignments will not be accepted late. Turn in whatever you have at the deadline and move on the the next video.  

A note on writing:

The deliverables of this class come in video form, but this means that your writing actually needs to be of higher quality. The fact that you will be speaking your words doesn’t let you off the hook, it constrains what kind of things you can write so that they are clear and easily vocalizable. Script writing is hard. I recommend that you read everything aloud that you write, to make sure it sounds good. I am available for extra help on script writing by appointment. If you prefer to work with someone in person, tutors are available at the BU Writing Center, located in LN 1209; (607) 777-6725. Please also visit their website for information about how the service works: http://writingcenter.binghamton.edu/

Academic Honesty Policy:

In this class, we will abide by the University overall academic honesty policy. That means each of you is individually responsible for attending seminars, doing the readings, and completing all assignments by yourself, and that only such independent accomplishment will serve as the basis of your grade. While we encourage you to discuss ideas with one another, each of you is independently accountable for undertaking the labor involved in completing all course materials and assignments. Thus, in this course you must submit only your own written work. Any incident of academic dishonesty will result, minimally, in an automatic “F” for the course. It could also result in letters of reprimand, probation, and/or suspension or expulsion from the University.

We encourage each of you to read in full the Bulletin section that clarifies the Student Academic Honesty and Integrity Code (available at http://bulletin.binghamton.edu/integrity.htm). The Bulletin provides definitions of various kinds of academic dishonesty, including cheating on examinations, multiple submissions, unauthorized collaboration, fabrication and misrepresentation, forgery, sabotage, and bribery, as well as plagiarism. Reading these definitions should aid you in identifying and thereby avoiding academic dishonesty.

Binghamton University subscribes to an on-line plagiarism prevention and detection service, “Turnitin.com”. By registering for this course, you agree that any written work you submit may be submitted by the teaching staff for a textual similarity review by Turnitin.com.

Students with disabilities:

Students wishing to request academic accommodations to insure their equitable access and participation in this course should notify me as soon as they are aware of their need for such arrangements. Authorizations from Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) are generally required. I encourage you to contact SSD at (607) 777-2686 (for voice and TTY) to schedule an appointment with the Director or Learning Disabilities Specialist. The SSD website (www.binghamton.edu/ssd) includes information regarding their Disability Documentation Guidelines. The office is located in UU – 119.

Student Athletes and Students with Other School Commitments:

Students with commitments to athletic teams or other traveling school teams or clubs (debating, etc.) should identify themselves to us immediately, and present the written schedule of meets and traveling days that conflict with class so that we can discuss the situation and plan accordingly.

E-mail policy and meeting via video chat:

Because this is an online course, email is the best way to reach me. You can email me at mthaler1@binghamton.edu . I try to respond to class emails within 2 hours of receiving them. I go to bed fairly early, so do not expect a response if you are emailing late at night. Please do not send very long emails with complicated questions about video making. If your question is too complex to be summarized in a few sentences, don’t tell me all the details. Instead, email me that you want to do a video chat, and just tell me a little bit about your concerns. We can schedule a meeting within 24 hours.  

Campus Help for Students

University Tutoring Services

UTS offers free tutoring for undergraduate students at Binghamton University. All UTS tutoring appointments must be scheduled online through the my.binghamton.edu portal.  Walk-in tutoring is also available for select courses. If you have any questions about UTS, call 607-777-9235, email uts@binghamton.edu, or visit the website: http://www.binghamton.edu/tutoring.

ITS Helpdesk/myCourses Support

Walk-in: Located in the Computer Center first floor lobby.

Call: 607-777-6420; E-mail: helpdesk@binghamton.edu.

https://www.binghamton.edu/its/

Libraries

The Libraries offer a wide variety and range of services including research assistance, instruction, user-friendly interfaces, digital preservation, digital scanners, and resource sharing.

Text: 607-205-8173; Call: 607-777-2345; Email: refquest@binghamton.edu

http://www.binghamton.edu/libraries

Dean of Students

If you are experiencing undue personal or academic stress at any time during the semester or need to talk with someone about a personal problem or situation, I encourage you to seek support as soon as possible. I am available to talk with you about stresses related to your work in my class. Additionally, I can assist you in reaching out to any one of a wide range of campus resources, including:

1.          Dean of Students Office: 607-777-2804

2.          Decker Student Health Services Center: 607-777-2221

3.          University Police: On campus emergency, 911

4.          University Counseling Center: 607-777-2772

5.          Interpersonal Violence Prevention: 607-777-3062

6.          Harpur Advising: 607-777-6305

7.          Office of International Student & Scholar Services: 607-777-2510

University Counseling Center

At some point during their college experience, students may encounter personal, social, or developmental issues that call for assistance beyond the advice provided by friends and family. That’s where the University Counseling Center (UCC) can help.  The UCC provides a variety of free and confidential counseling services delivered by professional counselors. All currently enrolled Binghamton University undergraduate students, graduate students and affiliated entities are eligible to receive these services free of charge.  Services and programs available through the center include individual and group counseling, consultation, referral, and psychoeducational programs.  For more information or to make an appointment, visit https://www.binghamton.edu/counseling.

Software privacy Policies

http://www.blackboard.com/footer/privacy-policy.aspx

http://www.adobe.com/privacy/policy.html

Student Grievances

If for any reason you find yourself in a difficult situation with me, or another student, that you do not believe can be involved with interpersonal communication without a mediator, you may email the course supervisor, David Wilson, dwilson@binghamton.edu, with a formal complaint. This should be a communication channel of last resort; most conflicts can be resolved by addressing the humans involved directly.

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The Evos Fermentarium Review by Vlad Kolesnikov

The Evos Fermentarium was a very interesting class that offered a unique perspective on the co-evolution of human and microbial culture. Starting with the basics of the fundamental biochemical processes behind cellular respiration the class then looked at evolution from a macro perspective, from prokaryotic origins to contemporary culture. The class also had a theological component as we looked at crop-origin myths and how the interconnectedness between life and death in the context of early religious rituals and what modern society can take away from these early legends. Given the regenerative nature of fermentation the concepts discussed in class also had an undertone of environmental sustainability.

           The most important thing I gained from this class was an increased appreciation for the co-evolution and interconnectedness between humans and the microbes with which we share our environment. As humans we have distanced ourselves from our environment, resulting in detrimental effects on both our society as well as our environment. Also, fermentation is an ancient culinary practice that has been a boon to the development of complex society as it is a simple way of storing large quantities of food for extended periods of time.

           In 25 years I will remember that aerobic respiration yields 38 molecules of ATP per 1 glucose molecule, and how to make sourdough bread! Additionally, I will probably remember the idea of the origin of sex and its interconnectedness with death, in the context of multicellularity as well as the origins of agriculture. The combination of theoretical and practical classwork was beneficial as we were able to not only learn about the biology and cultural impact of fermentation, but also practice more sustainable dietary habits. Additionally, by practicing fermentation we were able to observe the biological processes discussed in class and gave class periods variation.

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The Evos Fermentarium Class Review by Aprelle O’Hara

I was very interested in taking this class because I have previous fermentation knowledge of food and it captured my attention. Food ethics and agriculture is very important to the way I hope to live my life. I believe that in order for our society to be able to move forward after the, demise of industrial agriculture, we need to find a new respect for our food and where it comes from. This class was valuable to my life because it brought many different scientific processes and terms into my every day life and showed me how fermentation is important not only from our past but also our future. This class helped me find an appreciation for the art and science of fermentation and all of the various organisms and processes that are needed when you ferment something.  

The most important thing I learned was that fermentation is an ancient practice that allowed for our ancestors to thrive. We need to find a new appreciation for fermentation and preservation to minimize waste and become a more resilient society. This is important because the way we are currently headed in society is grim because our current food system is unsustainable.

I hope to one have my own farm or large garden, so hopefully in 25 years I will be an avid canner, picklier, brewer; anything that can be fermented, I will be making it. This class has helped me find a heavier appreciation for fermentation and I am excited to move forward in my fermentation journey.

I thought that both the theoretical and practical class time was useful because we were able to have hands on experience, which is usually lacking in other classes. The readings we did allowed us to have a broader understanding of what fermentation really means on a deeper level of both life and death. However I wish we were able to make more things, but overall this class was very fun and I would recommend it to everyone to gain a broader understanding of the importance of all organisms small and large that we take for granted.

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The Evos Fermentarium Class Review by Kim Lato

This class was valuable to me, for it opened up different ideas of how we can relate to our food, and ways to save food so as to decrease our waste. As an environmental science major, the most important thing I learned was simply how we can reuse everyday objects, including food, so as to decrease our waste and how to localize my personal food system, by making my own food. I think I will remember this class in 25 years, because hopefully my bread culture will still be alive in 25 years! I am unsure about how the time was split, because I found that a majority of our time was spent on theoretical and philosophical ideas and readings. I greatly enjoy philosophical readings, but I found it somewhat unbalanced for we spent little time (in my opinion) about the actual biology behind fermentation. Perhaps, it is simply because it may be a relatively small biological phenomena to spend several weeks on, but I still think this balance between practical biology and theoretical models behind biology could be improved upon.  I enjoyed the “lab” portion of this class, when we learned how it is we can make fermented foods, or how to simply save foods. This was the first semester this class has been taught, and so, understandably, I found that some of the labs were not very diverse.  The ones I enjoyed the most were when we were using a new product, or learning how to make a new fermented product. However, some of the labs were very repetitive, especially when it came to making kombucha. Perhaps, in the future, one of the labs could be spent dumpstering for more products or people could make a bigger effort to contact local farms and stores to donate products. Overall, this is one of the most unique classes I have taken, and greatly enjoyed the small size of the class, which allowed me to ask questions and get to know everyone.

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The Evos Fermentarium Class Review by Varun Gara

This class was extremely captivating and convivial. Taking this class has opened up my perspective to the world in a different light. It is quite enjoyable how class was solely centered around a strict academic curriculum, but a lab portion was factored in as well where we had the opportunity to undergo the hands on experience. Not only did I think the lab component was a great part of this class, but the readings were simply so different and interesting that I found myself looking forward to read. Many things were learned in this class that I will remember. Cultivating information on a multitude of different foods such as: kombucha, sourdough bread, dried apples, sprouts, and even chagga tea will stick for at least 30 years. The ouroboros was a symbol with colossal meaning behind it. It was reiterated every step of this class. Now I would like to say I am more informed about the cycle of life and the flow of energy. Also through this class, death has become something I do not feel so morbid thinking about, knowing that what I do and how I influence others, will be used in the future to some extent. The mixture of theoretical and practical methods that were employed in the class by Mr. Maximus Thaler were simply splendid. We not only read myths and abstract readings that challenged us intellectually and existentially but we went dumpster diving and set up a kombucha station in the food co-op. The myths were all fantastically picked felicitous to the themes we were discussing. Lynn Margulis and Italo Cavino are stunning in the way they convey their perspective on this whole model we know as biology. Alchemists such as Paracelsus were slightly zany, but they had tapped into the ancient wisdom (prisca sapientia) in order to form their beliefs about the world encompassing them. Dumpster diving was an experience like no other. I was taken back a bit when I seen how much good food is thrown into the dumpster based solely on the fact that a new shipment of fresher food is coming in. Cleaning the prized grapes in a cooperative living home was neat also. The kombucha station just drove the point home that we can really make a difference and reclaim our industrialized food system to that of a more holistic diet. This was a very fun class, and has definitely touched my soul.