Partnering with the Beaty Biodiversity Museum to enhance teaching and learning experiences for first-year students in the Biology Program

Tuesday, February 27, 2018
Bridgette Clarkston, BOTA
Pam Kalas, BOTA/ZOOL
The Beaty Biodiversity Museum (BBM) is home to UBC’s biological research collections and contains over two million specimens—a wealth of potential for teaching and research projects. However, most courses in the Biology Program do not use the Museum as a teaching and learning resource and those that do interact mostly with the public displays. This project focuses on first-year students and is the first in a new initiative to integrate collections-based research experiences into Biology Program courses using the BBM’s research collections. The research question explored here is: what is the impact of a hands-on, discovery-based activity in the Beaty Biodiversity Museum on first-year students’ knowledge, interests and perceptions of biological diversity and natural history museums?
supperseries@science.ubc.ca