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Pre-Conference Events & Workshops

The ABS Pre-conference Workshop Day will be on Tuesday, July 23, 2019. Please find below the list of scheduled events and their individual times. Please note some events require pre-registration. Updates will are posted here as details become available.

 

ABS 2019 Outreach Fair

Organized by the ABS Education Committee

Tuesday, July, 23 from 10:30am - 1:45pm
Keynote Speaker: Seth Magle, Lincoln Park Zoo, 2PM -3PM in Illinois A at UIC's Student Center East building
Location: East Terrace at UIC's Student Center East building

Faculty members and graduate students representing over a dozen animal behavior research laboratories from across the US, Canada, South America and Australia will offer multiple activities highlighting current research questions, as well as the tools and techniques used in field research.  Using interactive displays, activities, and live animals, learn more about how insects, frogs, fish and mammals help scientists to learn more about how our brains, bodies, and world works. Listen to insects walk, get up close and personal with reptiles, make your own cricket song, blow dart a ‘baboon,’ radio-track a mouse, and hear popular songs through the ‘ears’ of other animals. Activities will be available for children of all ages!

Animal Behavior Lab Activities: Engaging Students in the Science of Animal Behavior 

Organizer: Heather Zimbler-DeLorenzo, Laura Sirot,  Andrea Bierema, Deborah Boege-Tobin, and Karyn Collie

Tuesday, July, 23 from 1:00pm - 5:00pm
Location: Illinois C, UIC's Student Center East building

Are you a hawk or a dove? Have you ever seen earwigs taking care of their young? Come find out and learn about other ideas for lab activities, including simulations, research skills, and experimental design. At this year’s Education Workshop, participants will learn about different potential learning goals of lab activities and will participate in three different hands-on activities. Presenters will discuss how these ideas were developed and provide opportunities to discuss ideas for adapting these ideas for your own goals, as well as challenges in implementing them. This workshop is free. To attend this workshop please, pre-regsiter here: https://fs9.formsite.com/ASERhq/eeggqjg8jm/index.html

Conservation Behavior Workshop: Implications of Solar Power on Wildlife Conservation  

Organizer: Barbara Clucas, ABS Conservation Committee Chair

Tuesday, July, 23 from 9:00am - 4:00pm
Location: Room 613, UIC's Student Center East building

The Conservation Committee is hosting a workshop again this year, and more information will be posted here once details are available. Fee to attend: $25 non-students, $20 students, and $5 Developing Nations attendees.

Weaving the Future of Animal Behavior Workshop 

Organizer: Emilia Martins

Tuesday, July, 23 from 8:00am - 5:00pm
Location: Room 302, UIC's Student Center East building

The Weaving the Future of Animal Behavior workshop is an annual event for early-career professionals in animal behavior. The workshop will consist of panel discussions and other activities on topics such as developing a funding strategy, building a research group, time management, teaching strategies, and professional networking. At the end of the workshop, we will form peer-mentoring circles that will continue to meet via video-conferencing throughout the subsequent year.

Developing A Concept Inventory To Evaluate Student Learning In Undergraduate Animal Behavior Courses 

Organizer: Ben Dantzer

Tuesday, July, 23 from 9:00am - 1:00pm
Location: Illinois B, UIC's Student Center East building

The workshop is free and any ABS attendee is encouraged to attend.

Undergraduate courses in animal behavior are taught across the world and are often the gateway into a career in the natural sciences. However, there is currently no common tool to evaluate student learning across animal behavior courses. Concept inventories are widely used in the natural sciences as a robust way to assess comprehension of course materials. They are a jargon-free list of multiple choice questions that are developed for the core competencies of a specific discipline and are carefully validated (e.g., document misconceptions, list learning goals, evaluate efficacy). A concept inventory does not yet exist for animal behavior. The aim of this Behaviour 2019 workshop is for attendees to design a concept inventory for animal behavior. Invited workshop participants will be diverse in gender, race, career stage, level of analysis (mechanism, function) and taxonomic focus of their research. The workshop will be advertised and open to all Behaviour 2019 attendees. The outcome of the workshop will be a finalized list of core competencies and misconceptions in animal behavior. After soliciting feedback and modifying the list accordingly, we will validate the concept inventory by circulating it to instructors of animal behavior courses. After publication, this would be a widely available tool used to assess comprehension of the discipline of animal behavior.