Discovering Patterns in the Natural World Through Student Inquiry in Ecology and Biodiversity

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This project expands the reach of a previous CCLI grant to establish a search engine, Quaardvark, for the Animal Diversity Web (ADW) structured database sponsored by the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology. The Quaardvark query tool allows the database, which contains information and images for over 3,500 animal species, to be searched according to a number of properties of ecological, evolutionary, anatomical, and physiological interest. Researchers find it useful, as do teaching faculty and their students. Its flexibility has led to its being used for activities in courses at the University of Michigan and a number of additional colleges and universities in Michigan and Virginia. In this new award, the project has expanded to serve a network of faculty at 18 colleges and universities around the country. These partners include community colleges, liberal arts colleges, historically Black universities, comprehensive state universities, colleges and universities serving Hispanic or Native American populations, and major research universities. Teachers of organismal biology are assisted to integrate activities involving ADW materials into their curricula. Tools for assessment of student learning from these activities are under development, and Quaardvark is being modified to access data from other rich collections besides ADW. Because students can use the system on questions of their own design, even new students of biology are able to carry out research at progressively more intricate levels as they become more skilled and sophisticated in their understanding of biological concepts and searching strategies. Software supporting the project is freely available, so it can be adopted and adapted for students around the world and incorporated into other sites that promote the use of digital STEM resources.This project is being jointly funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences, Division of Biological Infrastructure and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education as part of their efforts toward Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education .