As continued COVID-19 disruption looks likely across the world, perhaps until 2021, contingency plans are evolving in case of further disruption in the 2020-2021 academic year. This includes delivering face-to-face programs fully online for at least part of the upcoming academic year for new and continuing cohorts. This temporary pivot will necessitate distance teaching and learning across almost every conceivable pedagogy, from fundamental degrees to professionally accredited ones. Each institution, program, and course will have its own myriad of individualized needs; however, there is a common question that unites us all: how do we provide teaching and assessment to students in a manner that is accessible, fair, equitable, and provides the best learning whilst acknowledging the temporary nature of the pivot? No "one size fits all" solution exists, and many of the choices that need to be made will be far from simple; however, this paper provides a starting point and basic principles to facilitate discussions taking place around the globe by balancing what we know from the pedagogy of online learning with the practicalities imposed by this crisis and any future crises.
Simple SummaryThe interchangeable usage of the words “personality”, “temperament” and “behavioral syndromes” in animal behavior research has often led to confusion. In this paper, we devise a framework for describing the behavioral phenomenon, betweenindividual/between-population variation, and between/across context variation. This framework can be used to give unique definitions of the three terms, supported by previous literature, giving clarity moving forward in the field of animal behavior.AbstractEthologists use a variety of terminology such as “personality”, “temperament” and “behavioral syndromes” almost interchangeably to discuss the phenomenon of individuals within a population of animals consistently varying from one another in their behavioral responses to stimuli. This interchangeable usage of terminology has contributed to confusion within the field of animal behavior and limits the study of the phenomenon. Here we use a rapid, non-exhaustive and repeatable search strategy literature review to investigate where there were unique distinctions between these three terms and where there was an overlap in their usage. We identified three main areas of confusion in terminology: historical usage which is not updated; a lack of precision between different fields of study; and a lack of precision between different levels of variation. We propose a framework with which to understand and define the terms based on the levels of variation ethologists are interested in. Consistent individual animal behavioral variation relates to the different structures of variation of between-individual/between-population and between and across contexts. By formalizing this framework we provide clarity between the three terms which can be easily defined and understood.
Handling temperament tests for beef cattle have been related to production traits, with calmer temperaments having greater growth rates. In most tests of temperament or personality, observation of the animal takes place over a short period of time, sometimes completed in a matter of minutes. This study investigated whether behavior observed in a temperament test was reflective of the steer's behavior in the home pen. Indoor-housed, crossbred, Bos taurus beef steers (n = 67) were fitted with triaxial activity monitors (IceTags; IceRobotics Ltd., South Queensferry, Edinburgh, Scotland) and activity was recorded for 2 periods of 14 d each. Also, each steer was scored on 4 measures of temperament: 2 handling tests (flight speed and chute score) and 2 feeding behavior scores (aggression at feeders and ability to displace at feeders). Each temperament observation was repeated 4 times, with repeatability of the traits ranging from 0.23 (aggression) to 0.48 (flight speed). Activity measures derived from the accelerometer data, such as bout lengths, were found to be highly repeatable between the 2 periods of activity monitoring (repeatabilities of 0.67 and 0.70 for average lying bout duration and average standing bout duration, respectively). Steers with high flight speeds were also more active in the home pen (MotionIndex: rs = 0.35, P = 0.004; average step count: rs = 0.34, P = 0.005) than steers with low flight speeds. Steers that were more capable of displacing other steers at feeders had longer average standing bout durations (rs = 0.26, P = 0.036), which were more variable (standing time SD: rs = 0.27, P = 0.030), and lay down for less time (rs = -0.35, P = 0.004). No correlations were found between aggression at feeders or chute score and home pen behavior. Results of this study are the first to demonstrate that short-term temperament tests are related to longer-term behavior data in beef steers and these results should be taken into consideration for future research.
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