Enhancing Teaching and Learning in the Biosciences with Practical and Fieldwork Resources

Wednesday 31st March 2010, University College London

Finding, adopting and adapting resources to support practical work can be difficult. Many projects produce outputs that may be suitable for use in other institutions in similar (or even quite different) situations but fail to get adopted as widely as they could be.

This event provided an excellent opportunity to explore resources designed to support teaching practical and fieldwork, to learn more about how these resources were produced and how to adopt or adapt them for further use. Some resources are 'stand-alone' and are able to be used as provided, while other resources have been built with further flexibility opportunities in mind.

The UK Centre for Bioscience took part in a pilot programme to encourage and enable the open sharing of educational resources. The collection of projects which formed part of the 'Interactive Laboratory and Fieldwork Manual for the Biosciences' were presented in addition to Gus Cameron talking on eBioLabs, a JISC-funded initiative illustrating an alternative approach to the delivery of laboratory-based materials, based at the University of Bristol.

Summary of the Day (links to a pdf report)

Programme

10.00	Registration, refreshments available
10.25	Welcome and introductions UK Centre for Bioscience
10.30	Developing an Interactive Laboratory and Fieldwork Manual for the Biosciences David Adams, UK Centre for Bioscience
10.45	Transforming the delivery of laboratory-based bioscience courses with eBioLabs Gus Cameron, University of Bristol
11.15	Refreshments
11.35	New ways to produce and develop educational resources (OER pilot project) Terry McAndrew, UK Centre for Bioscience Event presentation
11.45	Open resources for practical teaching: Cancer Biology - Momna Hejmadi, University of Bath Medical Microbiology - John Heritage & Sue Bickerdike, University of Leeds Event presentation (requires audio) Biodiversity - Kevin Caley, University of Nottingham Field Ecology - Ross McLeod, University of Glasgow Virtual Biochemistry - David Male, The Open University Event presentation
12.45	Lunch
13.30	Practical workshop – using web-based open applications for practical teaching: Genetic Analysis (scenarios designed to support an undergraduate course in Genetics) - Ian Miller & Dan Levin, University of Manchester iCases - Influenza outbreak (interacting with experimental data in a realistic context) - Vivien Sieber, University of Oxford Event presentation Virtual Analytical Laboratory - Vivien Rolfe, DeMontfort University Virtual Rocky Shore (An interactive tool to teach experimental design) - Rick Stafford, University of Gloucestershire Event presentation VERB (Virtual Education Resource for the Biosciences) - Helen Chatterjee, UCL Event presentation
14.45	Refreshments
15.00	OER Final Provisional Project Report findings and Guides(external link)
15.20	Discussion - How to re-use, re-purpose and re-package Open Educational Resources
15.50	Reflections and close
16.00	Depart

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Enhancing Teaching and Learning in the Biosciences with Practical and Fieldwork Resources

Summary of the Day (links to a pdf report)