Amy Walters, a UW-Madison junior anthropology major, settles in front of the computer. For the next 20 minutes she helps Ben, a fictional UW sophomore, survive a really bad day.
In his morning alone, Ben succumbs to dizziness from standing up too fast, chills from freezing temperatures and fatigue from chasing a bus.
The rest of his day continues with similar biological challenges. Walters joins Ben during these moments with a mission to help him achieve homeostasis'the body's automatic regulatory system that restores it to normal, balanced function.
With Ben's body under \her imaginative control,"" Walters utilizes her knowledge of biology to help Ben. A symbiotic relationship ensues between Walters and Ben: In search of correct answers, she assures his recovery throughout the day; from behind the screen, Ben helps her to learn how the human body works.
""Ben's Bad Day"" is an online lesson created to teach how different parts of the body work together to restore homeostasis. It represents the growing efforts of UW-Madison's T^4 Biology Project.
The goal of T^4 is exactly what it stands for: Transforming Teaching Through Technology. Through the Web, the project seeks to improve learning in UW-Madison's general biology course, Zoology 151/152. Thus far, it has created four tutorials'Natural Selection, Water Relations, Thermodynamics and Homeostasis'some of which will be available for students as early as this semester.
The T^4 Biology Project arose only a few years ago from the mind of Robert Jeanne, a UW-Madison entomology Professor who specializes in behavior and ecology. His interests in student learning led him to take the Creating a Collaborative Learning Environment course. He also began using presentation software such as Toolbook and PowerPoint for his lectures. And upon seeing John Moore's use of online tutorials as a ""how-to-do manual"" for Chemistry 104 labs, he realized the potentials technology has in teaching and student learning.
Jeanne, a long-time teacher of Zoology 151, gathered the rest of the course faculty to highlight learning problems from the course and envision ways of improving it. They embarked upon a mission to create specialized online biology tutorials.
""Through these interactive tutorials, we want students to learn difficult concepts in biology, interacting, connecting and having fun with content learned from class,"" Jeanne said.
So when he learned about funding availability from the Chancellor's Imitative, Jeanne jumped at the chance. Through the support of this seed money and the Center for Biology Education, the T^4 Biology Project took off. The state-funded project is currently in its second year of operation.
For months, the T^4 biology team brainstormed how to make science education productive. From concepts that are difficult to comprehend to ones that are easily misconceived, they developed challenging tutorials to push students to think at higher levels.
""Students tend to memorize facts, not making connections between concepts,"" said Jan Cheetham, Project Manager of T^4 Biology and former Lab Coordinator of Zoology 151/152. ""It is good to learn details, but they have to understand the overall picture because exams often ask you to apply them in new situations.""
The T^4 tutorials blend together basic concepts with real-life circumstances. Another activity on homeostasis, for example, has students play the role of a doctor and determine if Ben, after surviving his bad day, has diabetes. The students first learn about the body's glucose feedback loop, an impairment which can lead to diabetes.
Acting as doctors, students not only will think about the loop, but they also have to understand what these molecular events have to do with Ben's symptoms and decide what advice they will give to him. That realism helps students see the importance of what they learn in class, and how it relates to a real-life application.
Walters, a former Zoology 151/152 student, agrees. ""I like that the tutorials are life-applicable,"" she said. ""They took science ideas and put them into real life context, making them useful and meaningful for students.""
For a course that meets seven hours and 15 minutes and requires additional hours for studying and writing lab reports each week, students will likely appreciate the T^4 tutorials.
""It is a way to learn something at your own pace, yet have all of the information at your fingertips in an interactive setting,"" said Maria Spletter, a UW botany and molecular biology major who critiqued the working versions of some tutorials.
Students are also not left walking away from class puzzled because they answered the questions wrong.
""If someone was having difficulty understanding or grasping some of the concepts in class, the tutorial would reinforce those concepts and enable a person to learn them better,"" Spletter said.
