UCL pioneers virtual educational resources for bioscience

23 September 2009

Links:

ucl.ac.uk/biology/" target="_self">UCL Genetics, Evolution and the Environment

Higher Education Funding Council for England

UCL staff and students have helped to create an online teaching and learning resource designed to accompany and enhance undergraduate degrees in biosciences.

VERB (virtual educational resource for the bioscience) contains a series of 'web books' outlining the diversity of the animal kingdom from an evolutionary perspective, plus an associated glossary with hyperlinked entries.

VERB focuses on phylogeny (evolutionary history) and functional anatomy, but touches on many other subjects, including genetics, ecology, physiology, development and cell biology.

The resource, which makes extensive use of the collections in the Grant Museum of Zoology, doubles as a revision tool - students have constant access, allowing them to browse by taxon, undertake mock quizzes to test their knowledge and gain feedback.

Project leader Dr Helen Chatterjee (UCL Genetics, Evolution and Environment) and her team are working with the Higher Education Academy Centre for Bioscience to develop open educational resources that are readily accessible to the wider biosciences community.

The project, funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England and the Joint Information Systems Committee, will allow other institutions to use, modify and reuse content on the condition that they, in turn, recycle it back into the community.

Sharing should reduce the number of institutions producing the same resource, promote a more collaborative approach and, ultimately, produce high quality resources for university-level teaching in a manner that is both time and cost effective.

Dr Chatterjee said: "The open education resource philosophy is to widen access to existing resources making them available to the wider Higher Education community.

"Our involvement in the Centre of Biosciences project will afford university staff and students across the UK, and beyond, to gain access to VERB.

"Sharing resources in this way reduces duplication, time and effort for other HE teaching staff, and allows students access to resources which would otherwise only usually be held within individual universities' virtual learning environments."

For further information follow the links above.

Image: Snake skeleton in the Grant Museum

UCL context

UCL is one of ten partners working with the HEA Centre for Bioscience to develop 'an interactive laboratory and fieldwork manual for the biosciences'.

This will comprise a broad range of learning and teaching materials, including VERB, to support practical work in many bioscience disciplines. The project will also identify the issues and problems for developing open educational resources in the biosciences.

UCL pioneers virtual educational resources for bioscience

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