Online Experiments for Multidisciplinary Instruction in Environmental and Ecological Science

Bethel College, North Newton KS

Investigators

Abstract

Interdisciplinary (99) The World Wide Web has become a major medium for distance learning. Web technologies are now being extended into laboratory science by making instruments accessible via the Web and even controllable remotely. Science students can thereby use instruments that would be otherwise unavailable or of much more limited availability. These technologies have been developed for undergraduate science instruction in the physical sciences and engineering but have been relatively little used in other scientific disciplines. The best known examples of these efforts have involved teams of scientists and programmers with considerable technical expertise. This project is extending the range of disciplines in which these technologies are being used. We are teaching environmental and ecological science to chemistry, biology, and psychology students using instruments that are accessible and controllable with a Web browser. We are broadening the types of experiments that students can do by using computers to automate data acquisition, especially to investigate phenomena that occur over a period of time that is much longer than a standard laboratory session. Making these instruments accessible on the Web allows regular monitoring of experiments without being in the laboratory. Students both on and off campus are able take advantage of these capabilities, thus widening the audience for laboratory instruction in these areas. We are using LabVIEW and AppletVIEW software to make our instruments available on the Web. We find these software packages relatively easy to use for both science students and faculty with little formal training in computer science. Hence, we can accomplish our goals without additional highly trained personnel. Web-accessible instruments are being used in environmental chemistry to measure the changes involved in the natural regulation of pH in fresh waters. Environmental science students are measuring the biological health of aquatic systems (monitoring dissolved oxygen, nitrate, carbon dioxide, etc.) after perturbations for which humans are often responsible, such as temperature elevations, addition of nutrients, or contamination with pollutants. Students studying animal behavior are monitoring the allocation of effort among various behavioral alternatives for obtaining food, thus measuring choice and its role in the efficiency of foraging over time. Students in all these courses are actively involved in the design of experiments and use computers to analyze and graph the resulting data. Advanced undergraduates are being used to assist in programming and supervising these experiments. Because high school students, recruited through a collaborative arrangement with an education service center, are also taking these courses, these advanced undergraduates are engaged in teaching roles that will give them valuable pre-service teaching experience. They also have opportunities to interact with high school science teachers. Interactions among students at a variety of levels of education are creating numerous opportunities for students to teach each other and, thereby, to enhance their own learning. While they are learning the subject matter of science, students at all levels are also appreciating the remarkable possibilities in contemporary technologies of computerized data acquisition and remote access to instruments.