Exploring Natural History: Promoting Active Learning in Ecology and Biodiversity

生物科学(61)。探索自然历史项目解决了大多数学院和大学教职员工在试图将主动学习技术融入生物生物学课程时面临的困难。正在开发独特的在线工具和教育材料，以支持基于成熟和流行的在线自然历史数据库--动物多样性网络--的生物生物学的探究性教学。使用这些材料的学生被引导在旨在阐明生物生物学和生态学核心概念的活动中搜索和自我引导对自然历史数据的查询。项目工作人员正在与大湖区七个机构的有才华的教师合作，设计直接适合广泛生物学课程的活动，包括生态学、普通生物学、动物多样性、进化论和行为学。这些教育活动得到了在线协作工作空间的支持，该工作空间包括指导教职员工和学生开发问题和工具的材料，以促进结果的分析、综合和展示。这些工具的灵活性允许它们在本科教育的广泛环境中使用。该项目的在线工具和工作空间旨在向全国任何地区的各级教师免费提供，并鼓励参与者和其他感兴趣的教育工作者分享练习和经验。在线组件是模块化的，不依赖于内容，因此其他在线数字资源网站可以将它们整合到自己的教育支持工作中。这些探究活动的有效性正在通过教师专家对模块的测试，以及通过检查学生对活动的反应、内容知识的获得以及他们从数据中推理和使用数据来支持主张的能力的获得来评估。项目成果正通过在国家教育和生物会议上的专题介绍和讲习班以及各种在线工具广泛传播。

Biological Sciences (61). The Exploring Natural History project addresses the difficulties faced by most college and university faculty when trying to incorporate active learning techniques into courses in organismal biology. Unique online tools and educational materials are being developed to support inquiry teaching in organismal biology based on a well-established and popular online natural history database, the Animal Diversity Web. Students using these materials are guided to searches and self-directed inquiries of natural history data in activities designed to illustrate core concepts in organismal biology and ecology. Project staff are working with talented instructors at seven institutions in the Great Lakes region to design activities that fit directly into a wide range of biology courses, including ecology, general biology, animal diversity, evolution, and behavior. These educational activities are being supported by an online, collaborative workspace that includes materials to guide faculty and students in the development of queries and tools to facilitate the analysis, synthesis, and presentation of results. The flexibility of these tools allows their use in a wide range of undergraduate educational settings. This project's online tools and workspaces are being designed to be freely available to instructors at all levels in any part of the country and are encouraging participants and other interested educators to share exercises and experiences. The online components are modular, not content-dependent, so other online digital resource sites can incorporate them into their own educational support efforts. The effectiveness of these inquiry activities is being evaluated through testing of modules by faculty experts, and through examination of student reactions to the activities, gains in content knowledge, and gains in their ability to reason from and use data to support claims. Project results are being disseminated widely through presentations and workshops at national education and biological conferences, as well as through various online tools.