Centre for Bioscience

Open Educational Resources (OER) Project Partners

Virtual Rocky Shore

Rick Stafford - University of Gloucestershire

The Virtual Rocky Shore (VRS) addresses a key problem in undergraduate ecology, the design of manipulative experiments. Experiments often take several weeks or months to obtain suitable data, and cannot be effectively taught in the confines of practical classes or short residential field trips.

The VRS is a computer simulation of grazing snails on a rocky shore, and allows an open, enquiry-based approach to experimental design. The simulation allows data to be rapidly collected and analysed in a short space of time.

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OER Resources in JorumOpen
The Virtual Rocky Shore
Tools for Teaching Ecology and Evolution

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I am a senior lecturer in biological sciences at the University of Gloucestershire, and I teach on a range of modules encompassing ecology, evolution and physiology. Much of my research is in the development of computer simulations of ecological processes, and these simulations have also proved suitable as teaching tools to investigate concepts such as experimental design, spread of infectious diseases or the reliability of estimates of population size. My current project ‘The Virtual Rocky Shore’ is based on computer simulations of intertidal snails and their grazing patterns, and allows an enquiry-based approach to learning experimental design. Since the problem addressed by the VRS is common to almost all teaching of ecology, it made sense to disseminate this work as widely as possible, and releasing the resource as an OER was the obvious option to achieve this.

Dr Richard Stafford - University of Gloucestershire : Virtual Rocky Shore | Project Page | Blog | Sample

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Project Manager: Terry McAndrew, C&IT Manager, Centre for Bioscience. t.j.mcandrew@leeds.ac.uk

Project Officer: Chris Taylor, Centre for Bioscience. c.d.taylor@leeds.ac.uk

Project Tag: bioukoer