Enhancing the Teaching of Undergraduate Biology Using Computer Assisted Image Capture, Three Dimensional Reconstruction and Interactive Software

本计划利用影像撷取装置、个人电脑及互动软体，加强生物科学系实验课的教学。该项目的目标课程每年招收超过1,100名学生，涵盖整个生物科学实验室课程。此前，该系在计算机联网视听教学技术方面一直存在明显不足。教师们正在更新他们的实验室教学领域，他们使用图像捕捉设备准备了一系列教程，这些教程将文本、视觉和音频资源结合在一起，通过局域网（LAN）传递给学生。许多学生经历的一个主要困难是他们无法从几个二维图像中获得三维图像，例如通过器官或组织的连续连续切片。三维成像软件的出现提供了一种从二维图像重建三维图像的方法。该系打算在高级实验课上使用这些工具来重建标本，以传达生长和分化等动态过程。在这项工作中要研究的材料包括顶端分生组织、叶原基和发育中的鸡胚的选定区域。这些演示文稿可以用于介绍性实验课的教学。该项目为学生提供了一些教育软件，使学习遗传学、生态学和生理学的学生能够通过模拟在教学实验室中不可能呈现的情况来推进和测试假设，并生成模型来检查环境中复杂的生物相互作用。

This project makes use of image capture apparatus, personal computers, and interactive software for the enhancement of the laboratory classes in the department of biological sciences. The classes targeted in this project have an annual enrollment in excess of 1,100 students and encompass the entire biological sciences laboratory curriculum. Previously, the department has been clearly deficient in computer-linked audiovisual instruction technology. The faculty is updating this area of their laboratory teaching by using image capture apparatus to prepare a series of tutorials that combine text, visual, and audio resources into `show presentations` to be conveyed to students over a local area network (LAN). A major difficulty experienced by large numbers of students is their inability to derive a three-dimensional image from several two-dimensional images such as consecutive serial sections through an organ or tissue. The advent of three-dimensional imaging software offers a means by which a three-dimensional image can be reconstructed from two-dimensional images. The department intends to use such tools in the upper-level laboratory classes to produce reconstructions of specimens to convey dynamic processes such as growth and differentiation. Material to be studied in this endeavor includes apical meristems, leaf primordia, and selected areas of developing chick embryos. These presentations can then be used in the teaching of the introductory laboratory classes. The project makes available to the students some educational software that enables students taking genetics, ecology, and physiology to advance and test hypotheses by simulating situations that are impossible to represent in teaching laboratories and to generate models to examine complex biological interactions in the environment.