About 10 summers ago, Ron Vale set up a “green screen” in a cramped conference room in Lillie Laboratory and began shooting videos of scientists describing their work. No one realized the video venture he was building, iBiology, would grow to become the tremendous educational resource it is today. iBiology now contains hundreds of freely available video lectures and course materials in topics ranging from genetics to ecology.
iBiology recently released its “Evolution Flipped Course,” in which the fundamentals of evolution are explored as well as evolutionary research by leading scientists. Included in the course are lectures by MBL Interim Co-Directors Melina Hale and Neil Shubin of the University of Chicago. Hale opens the course with an introduction to evolution and, in her second video, discusses the evolution of neural circuits. In session III, “Evidence of Evolution,” Shubin describes the excitement of finding the fossil link between fish and land animals while digging into Devonian Age bedrock in arctic Canada. See the Evolution Flipped course …