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师在试图将主动学习技术纳入生物学课程时所面临的困难。正在开发独特的在线工具和教育材料，以支持生物生物学的探究教学，其基础是一个完善和流行的在线自然历史数据库，即动物多样性网络。使用这些材料的学生被引导到搜索和自我导向的查询自然历史数据的活动，旨在说明在有机体生物学和生态学的核心概念。项目工作人员正在与五大湖地区七个机构的优秀教师合作，设计直接适合各种生物学课程的活动，包括生态学、普通生物学、动物多样性、进化和行为。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师和学生开发查询和工具的材料，以促进分析，综合和展示结果。这些工具的灵活性允许他们在广泛的本科教育环境中使用。正在设计该项目的在线工具和工具包，供全国各地各级教师免费使用，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其纳入自己的教育支持工作。这些调查活动的有效性正在通过由教师专家测试模块，并通过检查学生对活动的反应，内容知识的收益，以及他们的推理能力和使用数据来支持索赔的收益进行评估。通过在国家教育和生物会议上的介绍和讲习班以及各种在线工具，广泛传播项目成果。

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.