Over the last two weeks, I’ve describe my online resources, and voiced a concern that my assets may not have a permanent home. This concern led me to explore online repositories specific to biology. What, I wondered, is already out there? The answer is, quite a lot! In only a few minutes of searching, I hit on a couple of sites with more resources than I had time to explore.
If you subscribe to HAPS-L, the list serve for HAPS, then you’re already aware of the LifeSciTRC (previously the Archive of Teaching Resources, http://www.lifescitrc.org/), a wonderful service hosted by APS, the American Physiological Society (http://www.the-aps.org/). In fact, APS is currently offering a program for undergraduate educators (the deadline has been extended!). You can check it out, and apply to be a LifeSciTRCScholar, at http://www.the-aps.org/LifeSciTRCScholars. The repository at LifeSciTRC maintains a moderated list of links to online resources that are hosted by various other organizations. The resources are organized into collections, a feature that will facilitate searching for just the right animation or case study for your course. There is also a wealth of metadata, including user comments, associated with these collections. And, this is the home of the HAPS Institute course projects, which includes my product of the cadaver course a few years back. You can find a link to my project, along with a few comments, at http://www.lifescitrc.org/resource.cfm?submissionID=2938.
While the TRC repository jump-started this blog entry, I didn’t want to stop there. I found a wonderful resource at www.hippocampus.org. This site is hosted as part of the NROC project (http://theNROCproject.org). This project is non-profit, funded in part by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and supported by members. You can get on their email list through a link on the website. While a lot of the assets there currently are not for A&P, perhaps HAPS members can contribute resources to change that!
Finally, I found a lovely list of links at the Learning Objects Repository at Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi (https://iol.tamucc.edu/repositories.html ). The first link on the page is Merlot, which is one I was vaguely familiar with, but hadn’t visited much in the past. I could get lost exploring animations of how mosquitoes sense their meals! You can check out the biology resources of Merlot at http://biology.merlot.org/materials.html. Membership is free, and once a member, you can create your own resources. I hope to find more time to explore this soon!
Other links at the TAMU-CC site include the National Science Digital Library and MIT’s Open Courseware. This list is not specific to biology, but it wasn’t difficult to find sites I wanted to visit.
So, this week, I leave you with this: what online repositories do you use? Whether you are uploading or downloading, please share!
(Featured image courtesy Pam Gregory; image of Dr. Lynn Gray and Dr. Betsy Ott, as seen inverted through fresh lenses dissected from cow eyes)
-Dr. Betsy Ott
President-elect
This article showed up right after yours — it’s about a new kind of repository. I don’t know a thing about it but it seemed relevant to the discussion.
https://www.insidehighered.com/audio/2014/09/25/learning-object-repository-actually-gets-used-believe-it
I’ll have to look at the ones you listed! Thanks for hunting them up.
Thanks, Pat! This new LOR is Canvas Commons, and as a Canvas user (it’s our college LMS), I look forward to exploring what it has to offer.
Here is a recent article about OERs and faculty perception and use of them: http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/faculty-oer-report-494/