SEB Bulletin January 2008
A new term for the Gatsby Plants Teaching Resource
The Gatsby Plants Teaching Resource website welcomed in the academic year with a large increase in the number of plant science lecturers using the resources on offer to add an extra dimension to their teaching.
The Teaching Resource is part of the Gatsby Plants initiative aimed at increasing the number of students taking plant science. The rationale is simple; support the lecturers in providing the dynamic and exciting teaching that they would like to give and then they will be able to get on with inspiring more students.
The website is run by the Gatsby Plants team of Dr Celia Knight (academic coordinator), Dr Aurora Levesley and Juliet Jopson at the Centre for Plant Sciences, University of Leeds. However, central to the team's ethos is working with the plant science community so that only resources that are actually wanted by plant science lecturers are developed.
In its pilot phase, the Teaching Resource has concentrated on resources with high visual impact and now offers a wide range of teaching materials such as movie clips, animations, images, as well as streamed research-led lectures and undergraduate practical protocols. The website also acts as a portal providing quick and easy access to other quality plant science teaching material on the Internet; as well as providing a database of UK plant science lecturers, many of whom are keen to share their ideas and experience of teaching.
This sharing aspect is key to the website as many of the teaching materials available have been generously contributed by members of the plant science community for others to use in their teaching. Contributed items include images and animations based on the contributors' research as well as 'tried and tested' teaching material.
However, not all of the material on the site is contributed. Where discussions with the plant science community have shown a need, we have acquired material such as movie clips from the likes of Oxford Scientific Films and the BBC, as well as commissioning our own short film.
As the result of discussions with a number of plant lecturers, we are trialling the production of 5 minute films based on plant science stories. The first in this series is now available and is entitled “A Monstrous Tale of Floral Symmetry” in which Prof Enrico Coen (John Innes Centre) tells the story of the Peloric form of Linnaria vulgaris, from its discovery and naming by Carl Linnaeus through to Prof Coen's own discovery of the gene responsible and his realisation that in Linnaria it is an epigenetic effect. If we get feedback that this format of film is useful then we will look to commission more.
In addition to movie clips and short films, the Teaching Resource also presents full-length lectures, predominantly from the Gatsby Plants Summer School but increasingly from other sources. Lectures include those given by Prof Bob Goldberg, Prof Julian Ma, Prof Alison Smith and Prof Sue Hartley, with more following soon. Some lecturers are already using these research-led lectures as support material for their own teaching.
Whilst the Gatsby Plants Teaching Resource has made a good start, we are keen that the plant science community continues to engage with making the Resource their own. It's easy for lecturers to get involved, something as simple as giving us feedback on the resources already available is tremendously useful in knowing whether we are hitting the mark. Also if you have an idea for a resource, then please get in touch. For example, Dr Enrique Lopez-Juez from Royal Holloway contacted us with an idea he'd had for an animation based on a diagram published in Science on the role of florigen in the coordination of flowering. We set about creating the animation, updating it as new evidence was published in Science 07. It is now available on the Resource for everybody to use.
The Gatsby Plants Teaching Resource is password protected, although the possibility of developing an open access section is up for debate. Passwords are easy to obtain from the website and the team are always happy to re-advise anybody who has forgotten theirs.
To find out more and to see the full range of teaching material available, please go to the Gatsby Plants Teaching Resource at www.gatsbyplants.leeds.ac.uk. Feel free to contact the Gatsby Plants team directly: Dr Aurora Levesley (a.levesley@leeds.ac.uk) and Juliet Jopson: (s.j.jopson@leeds.ac.uk). The project is funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation.
