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VERB: A Virtual Educational Resource for the Biosciences

VERB: A Virtual Educational Resource for the Biosciences


			Taxidermy Echidna specimen from the Grant Museum of Zoology Copyright University College London

VERB (Virtual Educational Resource for the Biosciences) is an online teaching and learning resource created by student Alex Lee (Zoology 2009), Dr Helen Chatterjee (GEE) and Mark Carnall (Grant Museum), designed to accompany and enhance undergraduate degrees in the Biosciences. It contains a series of web books outlining the diversity of the animal kingdom from an evolutionary perspective, plus an associated glossary with hyperlinked entries. The topics of focus are phylogeny (evolutionary history) and functional anatomy, but subjects as wide as genetics, ecology, physiology, development, and cell biology are discussed where relevant.
The resource was piloted earlier this year in partnership with a vertebrate diversity practical class, culminating in an online assessment that contributed to the first year marks of approximately one hundred Bioscience students. Furthermore, VERB doubles as a valuable revision tool: students have constant access to the resource, which they are able to browse by taxon, undertaking mock quizzes to test their knowledge and gain feedback. The resource makes extensive use of the excellent collections in the Grant Museum of Zoology
Initially created in Moodle and funded by ESCILTA (the UCL Executive Sub Committee on Innovations in Learning, Teaching and Assessment) we are now working on a HEFCE/JISC funded project with the HEA Centre for Bioscience to develop an Open Educational Resource (OER) – one that is readily accessible to the wider Biosciences community. This will allow other institutions to use, modify, and reuse content, on the condition that they, in turn, recycle it back into the community. Sharing in this way should reduce the number of institutions producing the same resource. Instead, it promotes a more collaborative approach that should, ultimately, produce high quality resources for university-level teaching in a manner that is both time and cost effective.
UCL is one of 10 Higher Education partners who will work with the HEA Centre for Bioscience to develop “An Interactive Laboratory and Fieldwork Manual for the Biosciences” which will comprise a broad range of learning and teaching materials representative of the types of resource available, including VERB, to support practical work in many Bioscience disciplines. The project will also identify the issues and problems for developing OER in the Biosciences. The Centre for Bioscience is taking part in a wider pilot programme for the release of Open Educational Resources (OER) following the successful bid for £250,000 from HEFCE/JISC as part of the subject strand. This is part of a wider programme of £5.7m to encourage and enable the open sharing of educational resources.
For further information about VERB contact: Dr Helen Chatterjee, Director of Studies for Biological Sciences, Research Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment. For further information about Open Educational Resources visit: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ourwork/learning/opencontent
For further information about the HEA Centre for Bioscience visit: http://www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/events/themes/elearn/oer.aspx
Screenshots from BIOL1006 Vertebrate Diversity WebBook

VERB (Virtual Educational Resource for the Biosciences) is an online teaching and learning resource created by student Alex Lee (Zoology 2009), Dr Helen Chatterjee (GEE) and Mark Carnall (Grant Museum), designed to accompany and enhance undergraduate degrees in the Biosciences. It contains a series of web books outlining the diversity of the animal kingdom from an evolutionary perspective, plus an associated glossary with hyperlinked entries. The topics of focus are phylogeny (evolutionary history) and functional anatomy, but subjects as wide as genetics, ecology, physiology, development, and cell biology are discussed where relevant.

The resource was piloted earlier this year in partnership with a vertebrate diversity practical class, culminating in an online assessment that contributed to the first year marks of approximately one hundred Bioscience students. Furthermore, VERB doubles as a valuable revision tool: students have constant access to the resource, which they are able to browse by taxon, undertaking mock quizzes to test their knowledge and gain feedback. The resource makes extensive use of the excellent collections in the Grant Museum of Zoology

Initially created in Moodle and funded by ESCILTA (the UCL Executive Sub Committee on Innovations in Learning, Teaching and Assessment) we are now working on a HEFCE/JISC funded project with the HEA Centre for Bioscience to develop an Open Educational Resource (OER) – one that is readily accessible to the wider Biosciences community. This will allow other institutions to use, modify, and reuse content, on the condition that they, in turn, recycle it back into the community. Sharing in this way should reduce the number of institutions producing the same resource. Instead, it promotes a more collaborative approach that should, ultimately, produce high quality resources for university-level teaching in a manner that is both time and cost effective.

UCL is one of 10 Higher Education partners who will work with the HEA Centre for Bioscience to develop “An Interactive Laboratory and Fieldwork Manual for the Biosciences” which will comprise a broad range of learning and teaching materials representative of the types of resource available, including VERB, to support practical work in many Bioscience disciplines. The project will also identify the issues and problems for developing OER in the Biosciences. The Centre for Bioscience is taking part in a wider pilot programme for the release of Open Educational Resources (OER) following the successful bid for £250,000 from HEFCE/JISC as part of the subject strand. This is part of a wider programme of £5.7m to encourage and enable the open sharing of educational resources.

For further information about VERB contact: Dr Helen Chatterjee, Director of Studies for Biological Sciences, Research Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment.

For further information about Open Educational Resources visit: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ourwork/learning/opencontent

For further information about the HEA Centre for Bioscience visit: http://www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/events/themes/elearn/oer.aspx

Screenshots from BIOL1006 Vertebrate Diversity WebBook