What is the nature, scope and role of cases in this setting?
In the Department of Plant Sciences a new 3rd year student group project was developed in collaboration with Ensemble to give students the opportunity to work collaboratively in groups to construct cases about the use of specific biological technologies to develop algal biofuels. The student cases took the form of collaborative reports and presentations. In this setting, cases were constructed by students using scientific information and data from journal articles, books, and patents to investigate and report on the potential for industrial production of algal biofuels using specific technologies.
How are cases designed, developed, described and reconstructed?
Students were supported in the construction of their case reports and presentations with a set of journal articles as starting references, a briefing pack to guide their collaborative work, lecturers acting as mentors and other academics acting as consultant experts. Over two and a half weeks the students met in their groups to write a report and a powerpoint presentation on the use of their allocated technology for producing algal biofuels. They used the recommended articles and found new resources of their own from journal articles, online reports, patents and books. Their consultants also guided them in finding additional relevant resources.
What new tools have been developed and how?
In order to support their resource use, students were provided with a bibliography Exhibit that provided a number of starting references associated with different topics that could be searched and browsed through facet filters. The Exhibit also enabled them to add their own new resources and descriptions. This Exhibit was altered according to student and staff feedback over three iterations of the algal biofuels project. In addition, other online collaborative technologies were trialed during the different iterations such as using a wiki or Google documents for collaborative report writing.
What are the pedagogical advantages and opportunities of using semantic technologies?
Semantic technologies have the potential to help sort, categorize and filter a large number of references and provide further links to related sources of information that students could use to build a case report or presentation. In addition, group collaboration can be supported through the use of a semantic bibliography that allows multiple submissions of further resources and alternative or additional labels for classifying sources. This could support complex case building from a variety of alternative sources and perspectives. However, the pedagogical aims of the Plant Sciences algal biofuels project altered along with the different iterations. The extent to which, the project was bounded within a specifically scientific, molecular and plant focused remit had an effect on the need for semantic technologies as support. The project was well scaffolded, with guidance on resources to use and the focus of collaborative work, but this restricted the potential of the semantic nature of online support tools, which could have increased the network of sources and collaboration possibly beyond the scope of the project.
