Small project: Animal Kingdom practical: Fascinating Insect Worlds

The concepts, materials and e-learning tools developed and deployed in this project will contribute to the Animal Kingdom practicals attended in the Autumn Semester by ca. 90 students per semester from theBachelor’s degree programme in Biology. These practicals are also open as an elective to Bachelor’s degree students from the areas of Environmental Sciences and Agricultural and Food Sciences and are regularly attended by ca. 110 students per semester in the Spring Semester. In all cases these practicals deepen the material examined in the first-year examinations.

At present the course on diversity in the animal kingdom comprises a lecture block with accompanying practicals. The lecture is already accompanied by an online quiz (on arthropods). In the practicals we now also want to extend the didactic repertoire of the instructors. At the moment the practicals, which were taken over by the proposer in 2007, are generally introduced via the classical classroom approach, followed by independent student work on compounds available in the form of alcohol material and pinned specimens in classical insect boxes. Using the compounds students, under supervision, distinguish various arthropod groups, especially special insect structures. We now wish to introduce new presentation tools for selected insect groups.

The knowledge imparted is still too limited to pure morphology. The fascination for insects, which make up three quarters of organic biomass worldwide; their varied adaptations; and their habitats can be better conveyed with new didactic approaches. In addition, student cooperation in active acquisition of knowledge is still too restricted. The goal of this small project is to strengthen active student acquisition of knowledge via an e-learning tool and a new presentation tool. Starting with a ‘concept map’ (e-learning tool) the concreteness and visualisation (presentation tool) of the practicals will foster students’ dynamic approaches to and reflection on learning content.

Here the first step will be a pilot project (this Filep small project) focusing on two tools (concept map and a presentation tool), via which experiences will be gathered which will be deployed later in a second step to develop and implement a comprehensive Filep project.