Notes to other instructors

Notes to Instructors

General Comments: I use this material in my animal behavior courses at Holy Cross. Thus, these pages may not be set up in the most useful manner for your particular style of teaching. That is why I have organized the materials into sections that can easily be isolated from each other. It is also why I compiled the simulations both as web applets and as applications.

Please use these materials as you see fit and please send comments and suggestions to me either directly by email or by using the feedback form. It is my hope that some of these materials will be modified or expanded by other instructors and that these new materials will also be made available on the web. If you are planning to do this sort of thing, please contact me so we can coordinate our efforts.

Future Plans: I expect not to put too much more work into this site. Beyond site maintenance, the only additions I have planned are:

A flexible game that will take up to four user-defined strategies. The two simulations offered so far (Hawk and Dove, and Bourgeois, Hawk, and Dove) used pre-defined strategies. The new simulation is about 70% complete as of 9-1-98 and will allow the user to select the number of strategies (up to 4), name the strategies, define the payoffs using a structured approach, and then see the results presented as changes in strategy frequency with respect to time
I may add barycentric plots to the Bourgeois, Hawk, Dove game and to the new flexible game (last item).
Anyone with other suggestions for simulations should contact me -- if time allows I may be able to write them.
I especially welcome anyone's contributions in terms of additional or perhaps better presented hypertext.

Disclaimer: I welcome helpful comments from students and faculty. I will fix or delete errors and make changes as I have time. I have tried to make this site as fault-free as possible. However, please do not get the idea that I will be able to provide technical support, especially as regards problems installing additional software etc. So please let me know about problems which I will try to fix, but remember that I am offering this material "as is".

How I Use These Materials: How do we use these materials at Holy Cross? Thanks to Howard Hughes Medical Institute we have a nice computer lab in the department that will seat the entire behavior class (~ 25 students) with only a few students doubled up on machines. I spend about 30 minutes at the end of a class (unfortunately we don't have formal behavior labs at Holy Cross -- only field projects) taking students on a tour of the site and running the students through the simulations once. I make it clear what they are expected to do -- they must:

First read their textbook (Krebs and Davies) and the library reserve articles
Next, review the basics of game theory using the hypertext. I emphasize that they must be able to solve the games "long hand".
Run the simulations. I emphasize that they should not be running these mechanically like video games. Instead, they should be using the simulations to address the questions that accompany the simulations.
In class,we discuss what they have observed in running the simulations. We also discuss the limitations of these simple models; we critique the applicability of the models to various animal; and we use the simulations to discuss the evolutionary process in general.
From time to time in the rest of the course, we consider more advanced games from the literature.
I require students to construct and solve games on exams.

One final note about the questions relating to the simulations that are posed in the hypertext. I have not provided answers to all of the questions. In many cases there are no answers, only discussion. This is obviously due in part to the fact that simple models will not provide unambiguous answers or perfect analogies to animal behavior. It is also because we try to discuss these questions in class. Thus, I believe that more guidance in class or lab is a crucial part of using these simulations.

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