UCSB CCUT Technology Requirement
EEMB 106 - FishWeb Evaluation Summary
To satisfy the CCUT Technology Requirement, I designed a website to compliment the laboratory portion of EEMB 106: Biology of Fishes at UCSB. In reality, this is not a single site, but rather 118 individual websites. Each website contains information on a different taxonomic grouping of fishes and all 118 websites are inter-linked to form an interactive taxonomic website for all the taxonomic groups covered in EEMB 106.
To understand the value of this website to the students, I think an explanation of the techniques by which this information has presented in the past might highlight its value. The laboratory section of EEMB 106 - Biology of Fishes meets once a week for 4 hours. During that time there are exercises (dissections, feeding, reproduction, etc.) designed to take about 3 hours. During the last hour students have time to look at preserved specimens representing all the taxonomic groups that they will be responsible for the quizzes and lab practical. Along with these specimens in jars, the students are given handouts about these groups (see attachments). From these sources the students are expected to be able to identify each group to its lowest taxonomic level (usually Family), give any of the taxonomic levels above the lowest (i.e. Where does it fit in the taxonomic hierarchy?), and give some key characteristics about the group. This is a large amount of information that requires a mix of memorization, but also conceptualization of how each group relates to the other. All of this must occur in a very short time period when specimens are available.
My experience from
teaching this laboratory is that most biology students are very good a
memorizing details, but not very good at drawing links and relationships
between the facts that they have committed to memory. This is the equivalent of
collecting data, but never analyzing it. They have the information, but cannot
put it together to extract the meaning and relationships. The problem that I
have identified is that students can only experience the relationships between
groups by how close they are in the information handout and by committing the
taxonomic hierarchy to memory. In my experience, there are very few students
with the memory skill to memorize the hierarchy and be able to recall relationships
from a mental picture.
The aim of this website is two-fold. First, give the students a resource
outside of their scheduled lab section to review and learn the information
presented in the class using pictures and websites containing the information
they have already been given in extensive handouts. Second, to build a
framework where students can actually experience the relationships between all
the groups represented in the taxonomic hierarchy. This can be achieved through
the ability to create links within web pages. On any given page, the students
can not only see list of all those groups that are above it, but also the
groups that are below it and then directly click on any of those groupings to
visit another website with information on that new group. For example (it might
be helpful to view website to visualize this as the student would, enter URL: http://www.plu.edu/~behrenmd/fishweb/Tetraodontiformes.htm),
if a student is looking at the page for the Order Tetraodontiformes, they can
not only see pictures of representative members and characteristics of the
Order, but also explore what groups are closely related. If they scroll to the
bottom of the page they will see links to websites with information on 5 of the
Families contained within this Order. If they are interested in what other
Orders are contained within the Series Percomorpha, they can click on the
Percomorpha link in the hierarchical group listing. This will take the student
to another page that not only has information on the Series Percomorpha, but
also has a listing of links to the 8 Orders contained within this Series. They
can repeat this for other Orders or even go to different levels up the
hierarchical group listing to find out how far back do you have to go before
you find the relationship to sharks. It turns out it is pretty far, all the way
back to the Superclass Gnathostomata, which contains the Class Chondrichthyes
where sharks can be found. By using the links within a given page and referring
back to the main taxonomic hierarchy image map, I hope that students can
efficiently and effectively experience and learn how different groups of fish
are related taxonomically.
The website was used in EEMB 106 at UCSB during Fall 2004. During the 2005-6 academic year, I anticipate it will be used again in EEMB 106, but also in ichthyology courses at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Cal State Fullerton. Below are evaluations of the website and its use by UCSB students in EEMB 106 during Fall 2004.
CCUT Technology Requirement Reflection
It seems simple enough, design and implement a project using some form of technology to further student learning. For many teachers, the first thing that comes to mind is to build a website. However, this is just a delivery system to save some paper and time at the copy machine. The real challenge is to use the special attributes of the given technology to your best ability to increase student learning. When I sat down to figure out what I would do to satisfy this requirement, I tried to start with concepts and information that I was frustrated me as I tried to teach them. I came up with a short list and then I had to think was there an attribute of some technology that might alleviate some of that frustration. I actually found what I thought was a perfect match. A topic with lots of inter-related information would fit well into the structure or a website that allow you to link many pages together in a series of logical relationships. The teaching of fish taxonomy and classification meets this criterion well and so I decided to create a website for EEMB 106: Biology of Fishes. Well that was the easy part, now I had to build it and then see if it worked. The design was simple though time consuming with over 100 individual sites linked together. The website had two goals. First, give students a way to study material outside of their allotted class time (glorified delivery of information, with increased access). Second, through the links between the individual websites I hoped students would experience the relationships between the sites and individual groups they represented. Once students began to use the website, the feedback was very positive, and many students had suggestions to make it better. This has led to continual tinkering with the design and content of the website to meet the needs of the students. Whereas the best use of technology in an educational context was the likely goal of this project, the real lesson relates to the tinkering. This is a lesson of constant evaluation of how my teaching methods are serving my students and how can these methods best be modified to meet the challenges of current students.