The
project materials are accessible via the Inquiry
Page, which performs two key roles. First,
it helps to build a community of inquiry by
involving all those interested in bioinformatics
education. Second, it helps to foster the
creation and adaptation of inquiry units for use
in courses.
Each inquiry unit starts with a
guiding question and provides a space for
activities of investigation, creation,
discussion, and reflection. Units include: How
are different organisms related? How can we
use DNA sequence data to learn about HIV
evolution? How do I use the Biology
Workbench? (To review units, please search
for "Biology Workbench" units on the
Inquiry Unit Search Page.) The Inquiry Page
allows teachers and teacher educators (and their
students) to create their units using a web-based
inquiry unit generator. In addition, if a
teacher, student, or teacher educator wants to
adapt an existing Biology Workbench unit, he or
she can easily do this by using the Inquiry
Page’s "spin-off" feature.
Umesh Thakkar used the Biology
Student Workbench this Fall in his course titled,
"Emerging Technologies" (18 students)
The course is designed for undergraduate students
who are interested in examining various uses of
emerging information technologies as well as
identifying and assessing their social impacts.
More information
on the course is avaible at (http://leep.lis.uiuc.edu/fall01/LIS250EMT/)
Course integration is well
underway at Beloit College. During the
current (Fall 2001) semester, over one third of
the Beloit College Biology courses (which serve
educaton students and pre-service teachers) have
content and activities directly related to this
EdGrid project (sequence analysis,
bioinformatics, Biology WorkBench). The
faculty teaching these courses maintain ongoing
consultation with project members, Sam Donovan
and Kathy Greene.
Course Title (number of
students)
Human Biology (51
students)
Introduction to Evolution
(13 students)
Microbiology (19 students)
Environmental Biology (20
students)
Genetics (29 students)
Animal Behavior (19
students)
Independent Research in
Biology (4 students)
|