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Abstract
I have created a multi-level course website for a new course in Advanced Marine Biology (Bio398). As the centerpiece for the site, I wrote a web-based text as the required text for the course. This afforded me great flexibility in choosing topics to cover, allowed inclusion of materials from a broad range of sources, and obviated the need for students to buy several printed texts. In addition, to promote student-student research collaboration, I guided my students to create their own webpages for presentation of their individualized laboratory research projects, and had each student post their page on the course website. Finally, to provide perspective on the larger scientific community, I included daily updates on the research progress of a marine scientist on expedition off Antarctica. This researcher, whom the students met early in the semester, sent us her progress reports via satellite. Passwording the web-based text portion of the site enabled inclusion of some copyrighted materials discussed in class while still leaving the Antarctic updates in the public domain. Student reaction to the text and the Antarctic connection was strongly favorable, but was mixed regarding the student webpages. The flexibility this site afforded to explore diverse topics in marine biology, to draw materials from a wide variety of sources, and to delve into topics of greatest interest to the students, were well worth the time necessary to assemble the site and write the web-based text.
The course website can be accessed at http://www2.wheatonma.edu/Academic/AcademicDept/Biology/Syllabi/RMorris/Bio398M B/Bio398.html Please inquire if you would like password access.
Pedagogical Goals of the project and
strategies by which those goals were achieved
GOAL 1: Create a resource to help students study animal adaptations
to the marine environment at an advanced undergraduate level.
While developing Advanced Marine Biology (Bio398) to complement
the existing course in introductory Marine Biology (Bio244), I
discovered an abundance of introductory texts in the field and
a paucity of advanced texts. Each existing introductory text covered
all areas of marine science superficially and gave a detailed
examination of perhaps only one or two topics. It was therefore
a significant challenge to present a coherent, detailed examination
of animal adaptations to the marine environment at an advanced
level without requiring the purchase of five texts per student
for the two useful chapters in each book.
STRATEGY: Writing a web-based text, an idea inspired by Tim
Barker's Solar System (Astronomy 140) website, gave me maximal
flexibility to draw on a number of sources for the lecture material
while requiring students to purchase no texts. Because this was
the first time I had offered the course, I was writing the lecture
notes anyway, so I wrote them with the HTML format in mind and
added them to the website as they were completed. I purposely
wrote much of the material in a terse outline style to encourage
students to use this material as a supplement to, rather than
as a replacement for, their own in-class notes. I took care to
observe copyright guidelines for "brevity," "spontaneity,"
and "cumulative effect" as outlined in the Faculty Handbook,
and as an additional measure to ensure compliance, I arranged
with Academic Computing to have the web-text portion of the site
passworded. This enabled me to include, in addition to my written
notes, images culled from other websites, scanned figures from
published texts, and one full-text article with figures.
GOAL 2: Foster student-student interaction and research collaboration
The laboratory portion of Bio398 centered on individualized
Laboratory Research Projects where each student pursued a research
topic of their own choice in significant depth. To reflect more
realistically the cooperation which goes on today in scientific
research, I required each student to collaborate with at least
one other student studying a related topic. But how could my students
share their research topic ideas when their interests frequently
changed?
STRATEGY: To help the students identify potential collaborators
and to give them a venue for presenting their research results,
I had the students write their own webpages by modifying a template
of my design. After initial instruction by Shaoping Moss, students
used Adobe PageMill throughout the semester to mature their template
first into a formal research proposal, then into a final research
report. Using a webpage upload program created by Shaoping, my
students uploaded each version of their pages to a site under
the passworded domain of the course website. From this Student
Webpage site, students could view current research topics of their
classmates and I could assemble a list of animals and other materials
required for the research. Once topics had been discussed and
settled, students rewrote their webpage templates into formal
proposals and chose collaborators. Over the next five weeks, students
built equipment, performed experiments, gathered data, and compared
results. After data analysis, students rewrote and expanded their
webpage proposals to included their data and conclusions thereby
creating web-based final Laboratory Project Reports.
GOAL 3: Promote an awareness of the larger scientific community
In a course where the information discussed in lecture has been gathered by researchers from around the world, how could I most effectively communicate the dynamic and global nature of this scientific enterprise?
STRATEGY: A unique learning opportunity arose for my students during the semester, when the marine scientist from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) who gave the students a tour of WHOI during our first field trip, began a research expedition to Antarctica. Dr. Pam Arnofsky agreed to send regular email updates of her progress and discoveries. This provided me with an unexpected teaching tool. As Dr. Arnofsky's emails arrived via satellite from the Antarctic circle, I posted them on a separate, unpassworded region of the Bio398 webpage. This created a dynamic resource where my students could glimpse, through virtually live text and pictures, a modern marine research expedition in all its grit and glory.
Assessment
To gauge student reactions to the course website, I distributed both midterm and end-of-semester course evaluation forms with questions specifically addressing website effectiveness.
Of all the materials presented on the course website, the web-based
text portion of the website received the highest marks for effectiveness
both at mid-term and end-term. 87% of respondents scored it 4
or 5 on a scale where 1 was labeled "not helpful" and
5 was labeled "very helpful" at semester end. It was
used largely as a supplement to students own course notes rather
than as a replacement, and it "filled in the holes"
when studying for exams.
From my perspective, the web-text portion of the course met
all my goals and met my students' needs. I was able to provide
a broad range of information drawn from the wide variety of sources
without requiring many texts for my students. I was also able
to write and add material to the text as the course progressed,
unconstrained by a rigid text, and thereby was able to tailor
lectures to emphasize points of particular interest and/or difficulty.
I was gratified that these notes did not supplant students' own
notes. I did not want to decrease attendance by providing lecture
materials on-line. I believe a combination of a purposely terse
writing style for the text and my explicit indication of this
goal were effective in keeping the students coming to class. Another
reason the text was successful was because Bio398 was an upper
level course with an introductory prerequisite for which each
student had purchased a textbook previously. Just for reassurance,
students like to have a book in hand. By providing cross-references
to some sections of their Intro Marine Biology text, and by putting
other books on reserve, students viewed the web-based text as
a support rather than as a sole source of information.
The biggest improvement I could make to the site would be expansion
of the materials I include in the text. Scanning images was much
more time consuming than I anticipated, and it therefore went
undone in favor of class-distributed handouts occasionally. In
future years, instead of doing it all myself, I would hire a student
to assist with the image scanning.
The student-authored webpages received mixed reactions. Although
the students liked the final product (as a tool for collaboration
and cross-referencing, and a web-based resource for future Bio398
students), there was clear frustration with PageMill and the uploading
process. All students who commented on this project indicated
it was useful - either for choosing collaborators or for learning
more about computers - but many also indicated that the process
of creating and uploading their pages was confusing.
From my perspective, the 1999 student webpages will be more
useful as a reference for future students (for protocols, etc.),
than they were as a collaboration tool for this year's students.
Although several of the students said that these pages were "useful"
or "essential" in finding collaborators and reviewing
results, too many students indicated frustration with the computer
logistics of the project. In future years, I will streamline the
PageMill training to a few very useful skills, and with Shaoping
Moss and Academic Computing, I will try to work out a simpler
uploading system. This year, I believe students learned more about
computing from this project than they did about the process of
scientific research. In future years, I am convinced that having
students collaborate on-line is a valuable and worth-while goal.
I will work to make the collaborating more memorable than the
uploading.
Student feedback on the Antarctic research expedition news
was universally positive though limited. As an unexpected bonus
for both myself and the students, it was a fun addition to the
course. I believe it was appreciated by most students for being
interesting, but by few for being as significant and unusual as
it actually was. I am glad we had the chance to follow Pam Arnofsky's
expedition though. And its significance was not lost on all the
students since at least one corresponded with Pam via satellite
email during the expedition. I would like to say that in future
years I will send Pam back to Antarctica, but I believe that is
beyond my control.
The Bio398 website provides Wheaton with a "creative contribution
to a networked community" in three ways. First, because it
was on-line, the course text and materials could be accessed anytime
from anywhere using only a password. Second, because the 17 individual
Laboratory Projects were presented as student-created webpages
from the early days of the semester, students could refer to each
others' work throughout the semester to compare results, find
collaborators, or compare their performance with their peers'.
And third, because the concurrent research progress of Pam Arnofsky
in Antarctica was updated daily on the course website, students
could correspond with a scientist on site on the other end of
the planet.
Dissemination Plan
To share this course website and my experiences in Bio398 with
the larger education community, I have two plans. First, for the
Wheaton community, I presented the website and the lessons I learned
from teaching Bio398 at the Faculty Technology Workshop hosted
by the Madeleine Clark Wallace Library on May 27, 1999. In partnership
with Linda Collins, we presented our ideas on distributing course
materials via the internet as an alternative to putting them on
library reserve. Second, for the community beyond Wheaton, I plan
to install sections of the Bio398 webpage not subject to copyright
restrictions on my personal faculty website. This way, Academic
Computing is not responsible for maintaining the Bio398 course
materials on their site in perpetuity, yet a current (albeit abridged)
version of the Bio398 course website will always remain accessible.
Acknowledgments
I gratefully acknowledge Tim Barker for the idea of a web-based text for course flexibility, Michael Drout for the idea of student-authored webpages to promote collaboration, Kathy Ebert-Zawasky for the suggestion that I apply for technology enrichment support, Linda Collins for assistance with library reserve materials, Pam Arnofsky for all her emails from Antarctica, and Shaoping Moss for arranging the passworded site, for writing the upload program to put student webpages on the course page, and for initially instructing my students in the use of Adobe PageMill software.
Last updated
on 9/20/99; 2:01:08 PM
Send questions about this page to: Robert
Morris
or contact Wheaton
College.