The EvoS Experiment - Malagasy Style!

The First EvoS - Core Course Students at University of Toliara!
These Students are nationally selected leaders;
the future of Educational Psychology in Madagascar!

As I walked from my hotel to the CEDRATOM complex at University of Toliara; the pungent burning of freshly butchered coconut palms was an all to real reminder that recovery from Hurricane Haruna is far from over.

Indeed, day one for this pilot educational experiment - offering an EvoS Consortium based Core Course, for our Educational Studies students  - got off to a rough start...

Yet - it seems like it is heading towards a remarkable finale!

It is a course that examines the vast interconnection amongst the all of the Human  Sciences. Fostering literacy in the basic processes of science - and breaking down old-fashioned perceptions of strict barriers between any and all disciplines. It is a course I titled Mythic Minds: Connecting the Story of Our Moral Brains Across the Unified Human Sciences.

We're connecting the very newest of neuro-science to the most ancient of anthropology!
We're integrating a mythic understanding of the Universe - with an evidential understanding of the same!

These are seriously lofty ideas - and the still flooded streets, hourly electrical brown-outs, and collapsed sheet-metal shacks I witness daily enroute to campus are a constant reminder of the realities many of my students are facing.

Where several Students in my class had most all of their possessions destroyed by Haruna just days ago, my colleague; Dovick Alexis and I, figured we should plan for a slow beginning for the class.  As Students trickled in, we provided them with the Moral Foundations Questionaire; explaining that this "introduction to psychology" would be different than their other courses in that we will be actually engaging in the scientific research process as we proceed through the course. Exploring our own moral psychology - through this survey mechanism - was the entry point to understanding something we are calling a "Unified Human Sciences" approach. As all the students arrived and completed their questionnaires, I turned on our brand our new LCD Monitor (Thanks to IEET!) - combined with the second screen of my Laptop; and our trusty dry-erase whiteboard for the brown-outs - I  introduced the students to the psychological quandaries of optical illusions; a fun if standard entry to understanding the human brain.

UoT is a low resource school;
in a low resource region;
in a low resource nation
It Doesn't Matter!
EvoS Content is working here!

3 days in to the 10-day intensive seminar now, and we've covered a mind boggling amount of ground - especially considering that we're working in three different languages (English, French, and Malagasy!)

Students are beginning to get grounded in our Unified Human Sciences framework; able to see how any human trait must ultimately be described and explained from a multitude of disciplines, timescales, and levels of organization. We've also explored some of the history of Human Sciences - and noted it's a bit WEIRD. That is - most of these Human Sciences were developed by Scientists who could be classified as coming from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Developed backgrounds. What does Moral Psychology - Malagasy Style actually look like?

Today we decided we will map the moral vocabularies of the Malagasy language! We will have our Educational Psychology students take cultural ownership of the concepts we just learned by seeing how the vocabularies surrounding morality in their own communities may or may not "map" onto the transdisciplinary moral psychology of the west.

We dissected a French translation of the field's emerging standard research tool - The MFQ-30; or Moral Foundations Questionnaire originally created by Jonathan Haidt, Jesse Graham, and Brian Nosek; we talked about how a translation is much more than a "1-to-1" word conversion; we have to make these metrics culturally relevant! Quite a task for our first year Undergrads, but I am confident they're up for it. Student teams of 3 have each selected 3 items from the MFQ-30; and over the next week - they will each interview (n=15) Toliara residents (per group; total surveyed to be n>100) - from widely variable backgrounds regarding the accessibility, relevance, and associated moral Malagasy vocabularies - in the context of Haidt and colleagues theory of Moral Foundations.

Our Students work in this area will directly result in a reliable and enduring new Social Sciences research tool for the entire nation of Madagascar! A tool that Students themselves are already self-reporting - they could also use to engage their future High School students in the transdisciplinary science of moral psychology!

As part of the final class assessment - students must craft science-based arguments for or against a very specific Educational Policy position:

• That further developing the EvoS program at University of Toliara should be a significant priority across all of our Biological and Human Sciences related departments.

Preliminary evidence suggests this policy may be very supportable!

A Seed Under the Tamarind Tree

Under the leguminous shade of the campus
Tamarind tree - we sat and talked....

Under the leguminous shade of the campus Tamarind tree - we sat and talked - about the heat - yes; but also about a very bright future for technology and science education at the University of Toliara (UoT).

I was with my colleague; Dovick Alexis - and the head of our social sciences institute, the ENS, Dr. Juliette Silasi.

We had just toured the Institutes developing Information Technology Center - which is incredibly promising but severely hampered by security concerns due to a straightforward - lack of resources to invest in basic infrastructure.

Now was time to get down to business; I had two goals here - to get permission to begin developing a website for the UoT; and to advance our UoT membership level in a leading international science education network - The EvoS Consortium for Evolutionary Studies.

The website would require permission from our President; Prof. Dina Alphonse; however - the offerings from EvoS were met with an enthusiasm and logical connections I was not prepared for!

I presented Dr. Silasi with a basic transdisciplinary model of Human Sciences - and she intuitively understood what EvoS is about. Indeed - the very structure of the ENS institute Silasi has shaped over the years is ideally suited to become a campus hub for EvoS - strengthening both this social sciences institute - and developing a resource for literally ALL other natural and social sciences departments at UoT.

We agreed that, in addition to my development of Neuropsychology programming for the ENS (why I originally came aboard) - I would offer an introductory course; in the vein of David Sloan Wilson's "Evolution for Everyone" at the University of Binghamton - and now across the SUNY system. An introduction into the world of integrated bio-social sciences - it's great for the students of course; but I am also seeing how it may be transformative for the University as well!

That evening we all sat down with President Alphonse. The concept of a UoT website was welcomed as a way to advance multiple University goals (e.g. technology integration, multi-lingual integration, and global presence). As well - President Alphonse was equally warm to the premise of EvoS - and it's ability to strengthen Universities by building bridges across departments. The President welcomes our pilot EvoS course in the Faculty of Psychology - and pending success here; we may be able to offer resources across the broad range of biological and social sciences offered at this most unique University; using a basic evolutionary framework as the glue that connects all knowledge!

In the very same way that biological and social sciences are inter-linked; so were my requests for a website and an EvoS experiment.

Laza Andrainy - Member of the UoT
IT Leadership Team

Today we purchased the domain: www.UniToliara.info; and today we begin a truly massive service-learning project to bring UoT to the world stage - by creating an Internet presence worthy of our promise! Amongst coffee cups and palm trees; I sat with a motivated young student; Laza Andrainy. We had worked till 8 last night crafting text at the English Language Learning Center - and today we began Laza's training in basic web-publishing using Google sites.

We have a LOT of work ahead of us; the University is of substantial size - mapping it onto a website from scratch is daunting - never mind doing it in three languages (English, French, Malagache)!! Yet - in this hard work - I believe some magic will happen. I believe the website - and it's creation through our cross-departmental IT Leadership Team; can serve as an engine, incubator, and metric for connecting disciplines and departments throughout the University in all of the ways the EvoS model for Higher Educator fosters. More fundamentally; I believe it is a way for UoT Students to take increased ownership of both their education - and the Internet itself. As I watched Laza learn and begin to create digital, global content for the first time on our humble Acer Netbook; it was clear a seed has been planted.

Follow our project as we cultivate the growth of information technology and transdisciplinary science education in Southwestern Madagascar!

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Thanks to the Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies - African Futures Project for the donation of the laptops used to create the first University of Toliara Website!