Project Investigator(s): Bridgette Clarkston, Instructor, Department of Botany
Project Description
First-year students have few opportunities to contribute to science beyond their classroom, especially in large-enrollment lecture courses. And while the
Beaty Biodiversity Museum (BBM) is home to UBC’s biological research collections and contains over two million specimens, most courses in the
Biology Program do not use the Museum. This project introduces students to biological diversity (what it is, how it is document, preserved and used in
science) and has students contribute to an on-going BBM initiative to digitally-transcribe herbarium specimen labels. This project will document students’
knowledge and values about biodiversity and explore potential biases against unfamiliar organisms, specifically algae.
Research Questions
- What do first-year students know about biodiversity coming into Biology 121? What do first-year students value about biodiversity coming into Biology 121?
- Do knowledge and values change after students learn about biodiversity through participation in a project to digitally document biological specimens for the Beaty Biodiversity Museum?
- Do first-year students experience “plant blindness” for the algae, particularly seaweeds (macroalgae) and phytoplankton (microalgae)?
Impact on teaching and learning at UBC
1) The assignments, surveys and reflections can be adapted for other community-based experiential learning projects. 2) This project is scalable to any
size course, uses few resources, and takes advantage of existing citizen-science platforms for projects that students contribute to. There is tremendous
value in a project that can be exported to almost any biology course. 3) Any biases against algae detected in this project will be valuable for educators
who can then address these relatively simply, by including examples in their teaching (this is what the literature says works for “blindness” to land plants).