Overview of the Project
Collaborative Digital Project
USNA 271: Genes, Environment, and Behavior
Spring 2017
Our class collaboratively compiled this Scalar book in which we explored unique and interesting genes on each of our 23 chromosomes. The audience for the project is high school students and other adult readers with a minimal background in studying genetics. We intend to have future USNA 271 classes add pages to the project in the hopes that it will someday represent the entire human genome!
In this project we also consider how to present ideas of the course with multimedia. In this regard, we used innovative software and adopted creative strategies to understand the interaction between genes and environment on behavior and to think about issues of aesthetics, technology, audience, and writer/ reader engagement.
Individual role:
Each student was responsible for one chromosome in the human genome and told a story, explained, or presented one trait or condition influenced by a gene located on that chromosome. The presentations made use of images, video, audio and text to present the trait in interesting ways. We tried to avoid standard research papers and instead, we told interactive stories, used a sequence of images to make a comic, or explained the science of the trait in understandable ways.
