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

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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.