Teaching a Course on Measuring Behaviour

WORKSHOP

Date: Friday, August 27
Time: 10:00-12:30
Location: Planck
Chair: Richard E. Brown and Timothy O’Leary (Psychology Department, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada)

The purpose of this workshop is to discuss the teaching of undergraduate and graduate courses in “Measuring Behaviour”. The authors will discuss their experiences and share their course outline and then discuss

1. possible topics to be covered in such a course,
2. textbooks and readings,
3. laboratory (practical) projects,
4. equipment needed, (ethics for testing animal and human subjects),
5. grading
6. student evaluations.

We have developed such a course, which has one lecture and one laboratory class per week for 13 weeks. The lecture portion of the course was designed to discuss the issues involved in understanding the importance of measuring behaviour, from fruitfly courtship behaviour to human facial expression and social behaviour. The laboratory component was designed to give practical experience in conducting behavioural research. We used the textbook “Measuring Behaviour”, 3rd edition, by Paul Martin and Patrick Bateson, plus a number of journal articles and course notes that we prepared ourselves.

The laboratories enabled students to use the techniques discussed in class in four different projects:

1. Qualitative and quantitative description of mouse home cage behaviour;
2. Qualitative and quantitative decsription of mouse behaviour in the open-field and elevated plus maze: as measured by students and automated apparatus;
3. Sequential analysis of grooming behaviour in stressed and non-stressed mice, and
4. Observing the behaviour of pedestrians at cross-walks (Independent project).

For the laboratory projects, we used a video camera, video playback system, computerized behavioural scoring program, and a computerized tracking system. Other laboratory projects that we are developing include measuring Siamese fighting fish display behaviour and gait analysis in humans.