Biology project brings Internet into classroom

The course material of Introductory Biology is supplemented by the Biology Project World Wide Web site, a collection of interactive learning activities and tutorials aimed at teaching biology concepts.

The Biology Project web site was begun last year, under a two-year $155,000 grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, to develop interactive learning platforms. The web site now includes 36 problem sets and activities, said Denice Warren, one of the two full-time specialists employed under the grant.

Each of these activities, or problem sets, are composed of 30 to 200 web pages, Warren said, their subject matter spanning the curriculum of Biology 181.

Students can access the material from the Biology Learning Center, a 40-computer laboratory in the Chemistry and Biological Sciences building, or from any Internet-connected computer.

Students in most sections will also take weekly quizzes via computer and have access to lecture notes and course information on the Biology Project web site.

The Biology Project is the product of biochemistry professors Richard Hallick and William Grimes, who began using computer-based tutorials eight years ago in conjunction with their Biology 181 classes.

"Because the class sections are so large, we wanted to provide as many ways as possible to let students get help," Hallick said. "We found that most students actually don't come to office hours, and we wanted to provide additional activities that would involve students in thinking about biology."

The Biology Project began as the Biology Learning Center. Hallick and Grimes created biology-related problem sets with in the Hypercard computer program. They needed a computer center where students could come to use the tutorials, so the two started the Biology Learning Center, Hallick said.

"When the Internet became available we realized that we could go beyond basic class work and make available educational materials in biology on the Internet to anybody in the world," he said.

A year after it began posting on the Internet, The Biology Project web site now receives about 20,000 hits each day and has received positive feedback from biology educators and students worldwide, Hallick said. The site is course-independent, but all the material relates directly to Biology 181, he said.

This semester approximately 600 students are taking the two sections of 181 that Grimes and Hallick teach together.

Besides encouraging students to access learning material out of class, Hallick and Grimes are enthusiastic about using the Internet during lectures.

"With the web, we can take really recent research data and incorporate it into our educational materials," Hallick said. "We can bring in incredibly beautiful images of biology to class and to the on-line instructional material."

"Information in textbooks is a year old, at least, and usually full of errors," Grimes said. "Incorporating materials from the World Wide Web gives students direct access to the latest research data.

"I can sit here in a classroom at the University of Arizona giving a lecture on cells, and access the University of Utah to bring up an image of cancer cells," Grimes said.