Learning through doing
In an effort to get his students to make slow, careful observations of organisms in the field and the lab, Gonzalo Giribet has a secret weapon — the pencil. As part of Giribet’s “Biology of Invertebrates” class, students spend hours in the lab studying dozens of animals, and making closely observed, highly detailed sketches of each. The idea, said Giribet, the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, is to encourage students to rely on illustration as an observational technique that is as powerful as, and sometimes more reliable than, photography. “In zoology, scientific illustration is very important,” he said. “It allows you to highlight every aspect of an organism, some of which may be more difficult to discern from a photograph. If you’ve spent hours drawing a butterfly, when you’re done, you’ll know for sure that it has two pairs of wings, you’ll know how the posterior and anterior wings are arranged, you’ll...