ANTH06/40 DIFUSE Module

Contributors: Logan Sankey ('20), Taylor Hickey ('23), Monika Roznere (GR), and Professor Lorie Loeb (DIFUSE PI, Professor of Computer Science), Taylor Hickey ('23, Project Manager)

This module was developed through the DIFUSE project at Dartmouth College and funded by the National Science Foundation award IUSE-1917002.

	This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Module Objective

Students will learn and apply the systematic steps that anthropologists would take to make deductible inferences about historical societies given the observations of fossil (foot print) records. The goals of the module are a subset of tasks that help achieve this primary objective.

Student Learning Objectives

1. Calculate the relationship between step length, cadence, and speed of walking in a population of undergraduate students. (Identify that anatomy and movement/kinematics are related.)
2. Compare them to that of G1 (hominin) to see if they are significantly different.
3. Explore the relationship between kinematics, fossil evidence, and behavior.
4. Apply data science techniques to analyze and interpret data in anthropology.

Module Description

This module is used to learn and apply the systematic steps that anthropologists would take to make deductible inferences about historical societies given the observations of fossil (foot print) records.

Data

Students collect data on their own footprints.

Platform

Students use google forms to collect data and the instructor uses python to create visualizations.

Schedule and Links

Use this page to get an idea of the timeline of the module, what components are involved, and what documents are related to each component. This is the schedule intended for module deployment by the DIFUSE team, though instructors are welcome to modify the timeline to fit their course environment.

Date	In/Out of Class	Assignment Description	Linked course content	Assignment Files (Linked to Repository Contents)
October 13, 2022	In-class	Read introduction on assigment PDF; gather anthropometric data using Google Form and lab handout (instructions for constructing sandbox included for increased precision in measurements); submit individual data by the end of day.	N/A	Google Form & Sheet, Instructor Guide
October 22, 2022	Out-of-class	Analyze class data; using lab handout and deliverables as a guide to critically think and summarize inferences, produce a typed lab report and submit to Canvas by 11:59 pm.	N/A	N/A

Course Information

This module is used in two courses Introduction to Biological Anthropology (ANTH 06) and Human Functional Anatomy. For ANTH 06, this is a 1st year course, and students are not expected to have any prior knowledge in anthropology. For ANTH 40, which is a 3rd/4th year course, students are expected to have taken some prior courses in anatomy and biology. However, for both courses, students should have basic skills in taking measurements, recording data, applying simple formulas to data, and reading graphs. Students are expected to make inferences, but are encouraged to use intuition and their belief.

	This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

For instructors and interested parties, the history of this repository (with detailed commits), can be found here.