ANIMATIONS In this project, we developed collections of animations that can be used to support "cyberlearning" approaches to teaching and learning biology (1). We focused on the complex biological processes of the light reactions of photosynthesis and genetic engineering or recombinant DNA technology. To collaborate efficiently and create a useful publicly accessible product, we took advantage of book-marking tools like Delicious and Diigo (see the Social Bookmarking Panel for further information) to collect and annotate animations. The collection of animations was then used in a pilot assignment that used multiple representations of these complex biological processes to engage students in careful analysis of the animations to better understand the biology. The pilot assignment was a short, 2-page free response worksheet that was assigned to two of the team members who were new subject material. The assignment compared the different animations and garnered feedback on how various representations of the same biological process affects students’ understanding of it. Figure 1. Screenshot of a Photosynthesis animation detailing Electron Transport Chain (2). To generate the collections of photosynthesis (See Figures 1 and 3) and genetic engineering animations (See Figures 2 and 4), we compiled sources from sites such as YouTube, Google, Delicious, National Science Library Database, HHMI's website, and other science-related sites. Our final collection for photosynthesis was stored and annotated on Delicious pages and those for genetic engineering on Diigo (can we provide links to the collections. The animations found ranged from highly varied in quality (2D or 3D), length, narration (voice or text), and topic. We learned how to search these large and complex websites for what we were looking for and learned how to use Delicious and Diigo to compile, organize, and share the animations we found. Figure 2. Screenshot of Genetic Engineering animation illustrating plasmid integration (3). This project epitomizes the goal of the C3 Cyberlearning to find tools to improve the way educators communicate biological concepts to their students. The pilot assignment illustrated that students are able to use Internet sites like Google and YouTube to find animations and how such animations can streamline the manner in which complicated biological processes are learned. Figure 3. Screenshot of another Photosynthesis Figure 4. Screenshot of another Genetic animation describing photon capture by Engineering animation showing chlorophyll (4). another version of plasmid insertion (5). REFERECENCES 1. Borgman, C. (2008). Fostering Learning in the Networked World: The Cyberlearning Opportunity and Challenge. Report of the NSF Taskforce on Cyberlearning. NSF, Arlington, VA. 2. Photosynthetic Electron Transport and ATP Synthesis. Accessed 23 January 2010. <http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/olcweb/cgi/pluginpop.cgi?it=swf::535::535::/ sites/dl/free/0072437316/120072/bio13.swf::Photosynthetic%20Electron%20Transport%20and%20ATP%20Synthesis> 3. Hain, P. & Wambaugh, N. Making a Recombinant Plasmid. Accessed18 January 2010. <http://plantandsoil.unl.edu/animation/making_a_recombinant_plasmid.swf> 4. Kyrk, J. Light Reactions. Accessed 23 January 2010. <http://www.johnkyrk.com/photosynthesis.html> “Cyberlearning” in Biology Education: Using Animations, Data Visualizations, and Social Bookmarking Tools to Augment Biology Education Abhinav Mittal Senior Ecology and Evolution Grace Noble Freshman Biology and English Heyree Choi Junior Biology and Music SOCIAL BOOKMARKING Social bookmarking sites allow users to collect and share their favorite websites by submitting links to an online forum associated with their user account or a group. Users can then browse links submitted by others, and can comment on them or add them as bookmarks on their own pages. Social bookmarking sites can be used as a search tool to find content relevant to a certain keyword, or they can be used to share links among specified groups of people—a class, a group of instructors, or a research team. In our project, we focused on using two different social bookmarking websites: Delicious (10) and Diigo (11). Both online tools require new users to register with the site (it’s free) to start bookmarking websites and sharing them with others. Both websites also have small browser add-ons that make it easy to collect and annotate links as the user views web pages. Users can choose whether or not they want to install these add-ons. Once a user bookmarks a site, the tag will be displayed on the “My Bookmarks” page on Delicious or the “Library” page on Diigo. Users on both sites can also add people to their “Network” if they want to view others’ bookmarks in addition to their own. Also, both Delicious and Diigo have a search bar at the top of the page that lets users find specific bookmarks of interest, similar to the way that Google or other search engines are used to find websites. Diigo is a little different than Delicious in that it enables users to highlight information and add sticky note tags right onto the webpage being bookmarked. Diigo also provides additional features for collaborating—it lets users create public, private, or semi-private groups where bookmarks can be shared among a team. We explored these social bookmarking sites and used them to store, annotate, and share information about animations of photosynthesis and genetic recombination. Each member of each group searched for online animations, bookmarked the ones they found, and added annotations to describe how effective the animation was at presenting photosynthesis or genetic recombination. These tools were invaluable in allowing us to view one another’s bookmarks, as well as our own, in one convenient place. Delicious and Diigo were especially useful in that they let us easily compare the quality of the animations we found. This work provides both a persistent resource - the annotated collection of resources - and a model for what faculty can do in collaboration with their students or other faculty. Figure 9. Example of collection results for “Biology” found on Delicious (12). We hope that this project can show faculty how social bookmarking sites are easy to use and beneficial for collaboration. Science teachers could utilize these tools to share online resources with each other, as well as with the students they are teaching. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants No. 0937791 & 0737474. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. INTRODUCTION The objective of the Cyberlearning at Community Colleges (C3) Project is to engage undergraduate biology faculty in professional development around contemporary teaching practices. The focus of this project is the effective use of existing and publicly accessible digital library materials; networked computing and communications technologies; and E-science resources. Conducted jointly by the University of Pittsburgh and the BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium, this project engages biology faculty in cyberlearning experiences. This poster will address three of the several subtopics that we explored in this project: animations, data visualization, and social bookmarking as tools to enhance the learning and teaching of biology. We collected online animations on photosynthesis and genetic engineering/recombinant DNA that instructors could use as aids in teaching photosynthesis or genetic engineering. We compiled and annotated the animations using the online tools Diigo and Delicious. We also explored tools like Gapminder and Many Eyes to “visualize” data sets and compared the features of these tools to create visual depictions of our own data sets. In addition, we investigated social bookmarking websites that allow users to tag websites of interest and then display their tags to the public. Bookmarking sites like these could be used by instructors and students alike to search for online sources that relate to a particular subject. We hope that teachers will be able to use these tools to show students trends in real data. Such integration of online technologies would help bring real examples of current biological work into the classroom in real time to truly revolutionize the approach by which students learn biology. We want to acknowledge the assistance of our lab members of the C3 student group who helped in all stages of work troubleshooting issues, providing feedback, and serving as soundboards to bounce ideas back and forth. Project led by Sam Donovan. Lab Team Bob Charland, Elia Crisucci, Keith Garmire, Neha Gupta, Kelly Perini, Justin Pruneski, Jessica Steiner, Victoria Wytiaz 5. Lodish, et. Al. Plasmid Cloning. Accessed 18 January 2010. http://www.sumanasinc.com/webcontent/animations/content/plasmidcloning.html 6. Price, F., Donovan, S., Stewart, J., & Jungck, J. (2001). Beagle Investigation Returns with Darwinian Data (BIRDD) [Computer software]. The BioQUEST Library, 7. Gapminder. Accessed 3 April. 2010. <www.gapminder.org> 8. Manyeyes. Accessed 3 April. 2010. <http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/> 9. Swivel. Accessed 10 April 2010. <www.swivel.com> 10. Delicious: Social Bookmarking. Accessed 30 January 2010. <http://delicious.com/> 11. Diigo: Web Highlighter and Sticky Notes, Online Bookmarking and Annotation. Accessed 30 January 2010. <http://www.diigo.com/> 12. Search Results for Biology on Delicious. Accessed 3 Apr. 2010. <http://delicious.com/search?p=biology&chk=&context=login%7C&fr=del_icio_us&lc=>. DATA VISUALIZATION Biology is experiencing a deluge of quantitative data. Visualizing relationships between numerical values is an important part of fully understanding the phenomena being studied. Fortunately, many user-friendly visualization tools are available online for free. We explored websites such as Gapminder, ManyEyes, and Swivel in our project. The data set chosen for the visualization was the Galapagos finch morphology from the BIRDD database (6). Twenty-six finches representing multiple species were included with information about their wing length, sex, tail length, beak width, beak height, lower beak length, upper beak length, nostril-upper beak, tarsus length, and claw length. This data was available as a spreadsheet and was imported into various visualization tools. Gapminder is a non-profit venture promoting achievement of the United Nation Millennium Development Goals by increasing the knowledge about statistics and other social, economic issues at global levels (7). Gapminder's collaboration with Google allows users to make their own graph using the Google Gadget called Motion Chart. For example, we imported the Galapagos finch morphology data into a Google doc spreadsheet, then clicked insert -> Gadget, and chose Motion Chart. The graph indicates four variables, X-axis, Y-axis, color, and bubble size. The finished Gadget can be added to any web-page or blog. Figure 5. Example of finch morphology data visualized using Gapminder (7). Manyeyes, another useful visualization tool, was created to explore different types of visualizations to help people collectively make sense of data (8). Once a data set is uploaded, anyone can access the data and visualize it. We imported the finch morphology data (6), and after clicking 'visualize', many visualization types appeared: Analyzing a text, comparing a set of values, seeing relationships among data points, creating a map, and tracking rises and falls over time. After choosing a type of graph, visualization is automatically created as long as the variables fit the visualization type chosen. Below are the scatter plot and the matrix graph respectively from the finch morphology data. The visualization can be added to any web-page or blog as well. Figure 6 & 7. Examples of finch morphology data visualized using Manyeyes (8). Swivel is especially useful in comparing a set of values. Swivel has its own formatting tools, allowing users to create and upload a spreadsheet and visualize the data instantaneously (9). A bar graph of the finch morphology data was created. The relationship between the species and the variables are clearly shown, but the graph is ineffective in visualizing the correlation amongst the variables. Figure 8. Example of finch morphology data visualized using Swivel (9). Exploring different types of visualization tools provided displays up to four variables and a time change within the data. ManyEyes is excellent for creating many types of visualizations to help make sense of a data set initially. Swivel instantaneous insights about the different strengths and weakness of the tools based on the desired visualization of data. Gapminder, effectively instantaneously, provides a chart when data is created, and is useful for showing the quantitative relationship between variables. We hope that biology students and instructors can utilize these tools to better understand quantitative aspects of biology.
Welcome message from author
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
ANIMATIONS In this project, we developed collections of animations that can be used to support "cyberlearning" approaches to teaching and learning biology (1). We focused on the complex biological processes of the light reactions of photosynthesis and genetic engineering or recombinant DNA technology. To collaborate efficiently and create a useful publicly accessible product, we took advantage of book-marking tools like Delicious and Diigo (see the Social Bookmarking Panel for further information) to collect and annotate animations. The collection of animations was then used in a pilot assignment that used multiple representations of these complex biological processes to engage students in careful analysis of the animations to better understand the biology. The pilot assignment was a short, 2-page free response worksheet that was assigned to two of the team members who were new subject material. The assignment compared the different animations and garnered feedback on how various representations of the same biological process affects students’ understanding of it. Figure 1. Screenshot of a Photosynthesis animation detailing Electron Transport Chain (2).
To generate the collections of photosynthesis (See Figures 1 and 3) and genetic engineering animations (See Figures 2 and 4), we compiled sources from sites such as YouTube, Google, Delicious, National Science Library Database, HHMI's website, and other science-related sites. Our final collection for photosynthesis was stored and annotated on Delicious pages and those for genetic engineering on Diigo (can we provide links to the collections. The animations found ranged from highly varied in quality (2D or 3D), length, narration (voice or text), and topic. We learned how to search these large and complex websites for what we were looking for and learned how to use Delicious and Diigo to compile, organize, and share the animations we found. Figure 2. Screenshot of Genetic Engineering animation illustrating plasmid integration (3).
This project epitomizes the goal of the C3 Cyberlearning to find tools to improve the way educators communicate biological concepts to their students. The pilot assignment illustrated that students are able to use Internet sites like Google and YouTube to find animations and how such animations can streamline the manner in which complicated biological processes are learned.
Figure 3. Screenshot of another Photosynthesis Figure 4. Screenshot of another Genetic animation describing photon capture by Engineering animation showing chlorophyll (4). another version of plasmid insertion (5).
REFERECENCES 1. Borgman, C. (2008). Fostering Learning in the Networked World: The Cyberlearning Opportunity and Challenge. Report of the NSF Taskforce on Cyberlearning. NSF, Arlington, VA. 2. Photosynthetic Electron Transport and ATP Synthesis. Accessed 23 January 2010. <http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/olcweb/cgi/pluginpop.cgi?it=swf::535::535::/sites/dl/free/0072437316/120072/bio13.swf::Photosynthetic%20Electron%20Transport%20and%20ATP%20Synthesis> 3. Hain, P. & Wambaugh, N. Making a Recombinant Plasmid. Accessed18 January 2010. <http://plantandsoil.unl.edu/animation/making_a_recombinant_plasmid.swf> 4. Kyrk, J. Light Reactions. Accessed 23 January 2010. <http://www.johnkyrk.com/photosynthesis.html>
“Cyberlearning” in Biology Education: Using Animations, Data Visualizations, and Social Bookmarking Tools to Augment Biology Education
Abhinav Mittal!Senior!Ecology and Evolution!
Grace Noble!Freshman!Biology and English!
Heyree Choi!Junior!Biology and Music!
SOCIAL BOOKMARKING
Social bookmarking sites allow users to collect and share their favorite websites by submitting links to an online forum associated with their user account or a group. Users can then browse links submitted by others, and can comment on them or add them as bookmarks on their own pages. Social bookmarking sites can be used as a search tool to find content relevant to a certain keyword, or they can be used to share links among specified groups of people—a class, a group of instructors, or a research team. In our project, we focused on using two different social bookmarking websites: Delicious (10) and Diigo (11).
Both online tools require new users to register with the site (it’s free) to start bookmarking websites and sharing them with others. Both websites also have small browser add-ons that make it easy to collect and annotate links as the user views web pages. Users can choose whether or not they want to install these add-ons. Once a user bookmarks a site, the tag will be displayed on the “My Bookmarks” page on Delicious or the “Library” page on Diigo. Users on both sites can also add people to their “Network” if they want to view others’ bookmarks in addition to their own. Also, both Delicious and Diigo have a search bar at the top of the page that lets users find specific bookmarks of interest, similar to the way that Google or other search engines are used to find websites. Diigo is a little different than Delicious in that it enables users to highlight information and add sticky note tags right onto the webpage being bookmarked. Diigo also provides additional features for collaborating—it lets users create public, private, or semi-private groups where bookmarks can be shared among a team.
We explored these social bookmarking sites and used them to store, annotate, and share information about animations of photosynthesis and genetic recombination. Each member of each group searched for online animations, bookmarked the ones they found, and added annotations to describe how effective the animation was at presenting photosynthesis or genetic recombination. These tools were invaluable in allowing us to view one another’s bookmarks, as well as our own, in one convenient place. Delicious and Diigo were especially useful in that they let us easily compare the quality of the animations we found. This work provides both a persistent resource - the annotated collection of resources - and a model for what faculty can do in collaboration with their students or other faculty.
Figure 9. Example of collection results for “Biology” found on Delicious (12).
We hope that this project can show faculty how social bookmarking sites are easy to use and beneficial for collaboration. Science teachers could utilize these tools to share online resources with each other, as well as with the students they are teaching.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants No. 0937791 & 0737474.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
INTRODUCTION The objective of the Cyberlearning at Community Colleges (C3) Project is to engage undergraduate biology faculty in professional development around contemporary teaching practices. The focus of this project is the effective use of existing and publicly accessible digital library materials; networked computing and communications technologies; and E-science resources. Conducted jointly by the University of Pittsburgh and the BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium, this project engages biology faculty in cyberlearning experiences.
This poster will address three of the several subtopics that we explored in this project: animations, data visualization, and social bookmarking as tools to enhance the learning and teaching of biology. We collected online animations on photosynthesis and genetic engineering/recombinant DNA that instructors could use as aids in teaching photosynthesis or genetic engineering. We compiled and annotated the animations using the online tools Diigo and Delicious. We also explored tools like Gapminder and Many Eyes to “visualize” data sets and compared the features of these tools to create visual depictions of our own data sets. In addition, we investigated social bookmarking websites that allow users to tag websites of interest and then display their tags to the public. Bookmarking sites like these could be used by instructors and students alike to search for online sources that relate to a particular subject. We hope that teachers will be able to use these tools to show students trends in real data. Such integration of online technologies would help bring real examples of current biological work into the classroom in real time to truly revolutionize the approach by which students learn biology.
We want to acknowledge the assistance of our lab members of the C3 student group who helped in all stages of work troubleshooting issues, providing feedback, and serving as soundboards to bounce ideas back and forth.
Project led by Sam Donovan.
Lab Team Bob Charland, Elia Crisucci, Keith Garmire, Neha Gupta, Kelly Perini, Justin Pruneski, Jessica Steiner, Victoria Wytiaz
5. Lodish, et. Al. Plasmid Cloning. Accessed 18 January 2010. http://www.sumanasinc.com/webcontent/animations/content/plasmidcloning.html 6. Price, F., Donovan, S., Stewart, J., & Jungck, J. (2001). Beagle Investigation Returns with Darwinian Data (BIRDD) [Computer software]. The BioQUEST Library, 7. Gapminder. Accessed 3 April. 2010. <www.gapminder.org> 8. Manyeyes. Accessed 3 April. 2010. <http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/> 9. Swivel. Accessed 10 April 2010. <www.swivel.com> 10. Delicious: Social Bookmarking. Accessed 30 January 2010. <http://delicious.com/> 11. Diigo: Web Highlighter and Sticky Notes, Online Bookmarking and Annotation. Accessed 30 January 2010. <http://www.diigo.com/> 12. Search Results for Biology on Delicious. Accessed 3 Apr. 2010. <http://delicious.com/search?p=biology&chk=&context=login%7C&fr=del_icio_us&lc=>.
DATA VISUALIZATION Biology is experiencing a deluge of quantitative data. Visualizing relationships between numerical values is an important part of fully understanding the phenomena being studied. Fortunately, many user-friendly visualization tools are available online for free. We explored websites such as Gapminder, ManyEyes, and Swivel in our project. The data set chosen for the visualization was the Galapagos finch morphology from the BIRDD database (6). Twenty-six finches representing multiple species were included with information about their wing length, sex, tail length, beak width, beak height, lower beak length, upper beak length, nostril-upper beak, tarsus length, and claw length. This data was available as a spreadsheet and was imported into various visualization tools.
Gapminder is a non-profit venture promoting achievement of the United Nation Millennium Development Goals by increasing the knowledge about statistics and other social, economic issues at global levels (7). Gapminder's collaboration with Google allows users to make their own graph using the Google Gadget called Motion Chart. For example, we imported the Galapagos finch morphology data into a Google doc spreadsheet, then clicked insert -> Gadget, and chose Motion Chart. The graph indicates four variables, X-axis, Y-axis, color, and bubble size. The finished Gadget can be added to any web-page or blog.
Figure 5. Example of finch morphology data visualized using Gapminder (7).
Manyeyes, another useful visualization tool, was created to explore different types of visualizations to help people collectively make sense of data (8). Once a data set is uploaded, anyone can access the data and visualize it. We imported the finch morphology data (6), and after clicking 'visualize', many visualization types appeared: Analyzing a text, comparing a set of values, seeing relationships among data points, creating a map, and tracking rises and falls over time. After choosing a type of graph, visualization is automatically created as long as the variables fit the visualization type chosen. Below are the scatter plot and the matrix graph respectively from the finch morphology data. The visualization can be added to any web-page or blog as well.
Figure 6 & 7. Examples of finch morphology data visualized using Manyeyes (8). Swivel is especially useful in comparing a set of values. Swivel has its own formatting tools, allowing users to create and upload a spreadsheet and visualize the data instantaneously (9). A bar graph of the finch morphology data was created. The relationship between the species and the variables are clearly shown, but the graph is ineffective in visualizing the correlation amongst the variables.
Figure 8. Example of finch morphology data visualized using Swivel (9).
Exploring different types of visualization tools provided displays up to four variables and a time change within the data. ManyEyes is excellent for creating many types of visualizations to help make sense of a data set initially. Swivel instantaneous insights about the different strengths and weakness of the tools based on the desired visualization of data. Gapminder, effectively instantaneously, provides a chart when data is created, and is useful for showing the quantitative relationship between variables. We hope that biology students and instructors can utilize these tools to better understand quantitative aspects of biology.
Related Documents
