Teaching technology thrives in Biology facility

New director seeks expanded role for computer center

Brewer, who holds a Ph.D. in science education from Western Michigan University, joined the Biology Department in September, taking the reins of the center from interim director Michael Gorszyca, who is also a lecturer in Biology.

Set up with funding from a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) grant and now in its second year of operation, the BCRC is a state-of-the-art computing facility for the life sciences supported by a combination of University funds and grants from HHMI. The facility is housed in a lab on the third floor of the Morrill Science Center.

The facility's principal function is support of undergraduate teaching and learning. Horacio de la Iglesia, a Biology teaching assistant, finds the BCRC a powerful instructional tool. His students are analyzing data from their "Experimental Endocrinology" labs on the facility's workstations.

"I guess the students could do their analyses without the BCRC," says de la Iglesia. "The main problem would be that [without the facility] the students would not have equal opportunities depending on their background with computers and, more important, their access to computers and software."

De la Inglesia, who comes from Argentina, adds "I think it is just amazing to have this facility. Coming from a university where this kind of resource was never available, it's a great pleasure to use [the BCRC]."

Last year the BCRC saw more than 4,000 sign-ins. Instructors holding classes in the center integrated state-of-the-art research software into their classroom presentations. Associate professor William Bemis used "MacClade" to construct and view phylogenetic trees for his ichthyology class. Professor Gordon Wyse simulated mapping cat retinal nerve cells with "MacRetina." Professor Joe Kunkel's class viewed images of molecules with "RasMol."

Assistant professor Beth Brainerd completely redesigned her human anatomy honors seminar around BCRC resources. Using the A.D.A.M. software package, her students studied the human body system by system then produced presentations about the systems they studied. By the end of last semester, Brainerd's students were discussing not only human anatomy but also computer technology as a teaching tool.

"One of the biggest problems with current teaching," comments Brewer, "is the idea that knowledge can be transmitted. Although words can be transmitted, knowledge must be constructed by the individual students." This philosophy is behind his efforts to help instructors move toward teaching methods that involve students in problem posing, problem solving, and peer persuasion. This "3 P's model" of science teaching was developed by BioQUEST, an National Science Foundation-funded curriculum consortium that publishes a library of innovative software for teaching biology, including software written by Brewer.

As the BCRC's new director, Brewer sees his mission as serving as an "advocate for improving undergraduate education; to develop and provide expertise for the implementation of instructional technology in biology; to increase the scope and utility of the BCRC." Toward these ends, Brewer plans to work closely with the Biology faculty and serve as a liaison between the department and broader science education and instructional technology initiatives, both within the University and at the national level.

Last month, Brewer traveled to the New England Science Center (NESC) to meet with their multimedia technology specialist, Jesse Anderson. One focus of a collaboration between Brewer and NESC would be to create a project based on professor Lynn Margulis' studies of the microcosmos. The Margulis lab has a huge body of video and still imagery relating to microorganisms, their environment, and their evolutionary history. With Brewer's guidance, the Margulis lab plans to make existing and new data available as digital media.

"With Margulis' data, we could turn a planetarium into a 'microcosmatorium,'" says Brewer.

As well as creating software, Brewer also finds and tests commercially-produced programs, and helps instructors incorporate them into their classes. Biology lecturer Karen Searcy is currently evaluating "EcoBeaker," commercially available through Sinauer and Associates, with students in her sophomore ecology class. With EcoBeaker, Searcy's students model interactions between "rabbits" and "grass" to illustrate and understand fundamental ecological concepts like competitive exclusion, patch-size, and inter-patch distance, and they see how the interaction of a large number of small objects, operating with simple rules, can result in large scale phenomena.

Although the BCRC is a Biology Department facility, it is open to anyone in the life sciences community. This semester, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology research associate professor Jacek Wower brought his students from BIOCHEM 421 to the BCRC to use BioQUEST software to model enzyme kinetics and to use protein sequencing programs. Microbiology associate professor Shil Dassarma and his graduate students are using the facility to field test and evaluate "MolGent," a tutorial program they are developing to illustrate simple molecular biology concepts through a series of animations.

In November, Brewer began expanding the instructional role of the BCRC with a weekly series of workshops for BCRC users and potential users. Topics covered include "Useful techniques with Photoshop," "Using the slide scanners and printers," "Surfing the net" and "Flatbed scanners/color printers." Brewer is currently developing a number of other workshop ideas including multimedia development with SuperCard, Web page development and HTML, networking and file transfer, using classroom computer projection, and effective teaching with biology software. If potential users of the BCRC want to keep abreast of workshop ideas that are currently offered, or in development, they can find out more through the facility's Web page .

Brewer encourages and supports greater integration of instructional technology into existing courses, and helps instructors develop new course ideas that take advantage of up-to-date computer technology. He is especially excited about the future of bioinformatics.

"There is a huge demand for bioinformatics skills in emerging industries, and it will only become more important in the future," he says. One of his next projects will be to bring people together who are interested in bioinformatics.

Faculty interested in learning more about software or discussing ideas for classes can contact the BCRC staff for assistance. To find out what is available, check out the facility through its Web page or by e-mail.