Flow cytometry has become an important tool in the fields of veterinary, medicine, and biological sciences in general. However, in the introductory and even in advanced university degree courses, students do not have many opportunities to be in contact with this type of technology. This situation motivated us to design a simple and inexpensive…

This study investigates the impact near-peer tutors (NPTs) have on the learning experience of students enrolled on the biomedical and medical science programmes at De Montfort University, UK. Using a questionnaire, tutees were able to comment on their confidence level on certain academic taught topics in human physiology before and after attending…

Urban ecology has matured as a field of investigation. This paper explores how well it has transitioned into the educational curricula of UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) by mapping the presence of urban ecological or environmental topics across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. The prevalence of different topics, the level at…

Teaching biological evolution can be difficult on a number of levels, be it student confusion arising from prior conceptions and the controversy surrounding evolution, or simply because the material is complex. Games and simulations can help to convey complex topics and also to increase variety in teaching methods. Here I describe a card game that…

An identification key is one of the tools used to determine the identity of a plant specimen. This research aims to design an identification key for "M. crenata" and analyze its potential as an identification tool. The research uses an observational descriptive method. The identification keys were designed for populations growing in…

One response to the global trend of increasing rates of student participation in tertiary education has been for universities to increase the number of intensive mode of delivery subjects available. This phenomenon extends to science subjects. Embarking on offering an undergraduate science subject in intensive mode for the first time at the…

EvoluZion is a forward-in-time genetic simulator developed in Java and designed to perform real time simulations on the evolutionary history of virtual organisms. These model organisms harbour a set of 13 genes that codify an equal number of phenotypic features. These genes change randomly during replication, and mutant genes can have null,…

The benefits of field courses for biological science students are well established, but field courses also have limitations: they are generally too brief to allow significant research and they are staff-designed and led, limiting the development of student autonomy. In contrast, the value of student-organised field expeditions has been little…

Teaching plant identification includes demonstrating how to use dichotomous keys; this requires knowledge of numerous botanical terms and can be challenging, confusing and frustrating for students. Here, we developed a multimedia tool to help students (1) learn botanical terms, (2) practice, train and test their knowledge of plant identification…

Environmental literacy is indicated as one element of learning that is able to solve environmental problems. However, the extent to which the environmental literacy component is embedded in various levels of education has not been revealed much. This study aims to determine the environmental literacy of students in several countries, starting from…

Education for sustainability (EfS) in higher education is an emerging specialisation within the general field of EfS. EfS encompasses cognitive, affective and behavioural aspects, and aims at enhancing a variety of learning outcomes in these domains and reaching students from all programmes. One of the main challenges for higher education…

Practical laboratory work in parasitology can be very limited, due to the difficulty in maintaining multi-host parasite life cycles, especially for a large, once-yearly undergraduate laboratory class for life science students. The use of mackerel, "Scomber scombrus," bought from a local fishmonger, is an ideal model to investigate important…

The aim of this study is to compare the effectiveness of models of programmed instruction and conventional (informative-illustrative) expository teaching in terms of fulfilling the aims of the course "Human anatomy and physiology" which is included in the physiology programme and designed for undergraduate students majoring in biology…

We developed laboratory exercises using zebrafish ("Danio rerio") and nematodes ("Caenorhabditis elegans") for a sophomore-level Integrative Biology Laboratory course. Students examined live wildtype zebrafish at different stages of development and noted shifts occurring in response to "fgf8a" deficiency. Students were introduced to development in…

Teaching collections are of great importance for science instruction at any level. There are several problems linked to the handling and curatorial management of this kind of collection. Among these is the relatively short life-span of specimens, due to the damage from continuous handling by students. Often the specimens used to replenish the…