The iDigBio Education and Outreach Working Group, Biodiversity Literacy for Undergraduate Education (BLUE) Kurator, AIM-UP!, Quantitative Undergraduate Biology Education and Synthesis (QUBES), and Biodiversity Collections Network (BCoN) teamed up on a workshop entitled Resources for Collections-Based Undergraduate Education at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, on May 24-25, 2017.The workshop was a kick-off meeting for a QUBES Faculty Mentoring Network (FMN) focused on implementing and optimizing collections-based undergraduate modules. The goal of the workshop was to bring FMN participants together for two days to receive training on existing collections-based modules developed by AIM-UP! and BLUE as well as to further develop, optimize, and extend these modules to fit with different courses and students.
The morning of day one was filled with presentations from workshop organizers covering topics on partnering initiatives, collections data, data cleanin
g with Kurator, and module design. You can find all of the workshop presentations posted here. Next, the facilitators briefly introduced each of the four modules and divided the participants into four groups.
The remainder of the workshop was dedicated to the modules themselves and the forming of the FMNs through small group work. The groups walked through their module, discussed challenges and critiques of the module in its current form, and came up with group goals for implementing optimizing, and extending the module. Each group also created a FMN timeline to plan out when they would finish and implement their final products.
The workshop concluded with each group reporting back what they had discussed and planned. The participants also spent time finding common goals and products that could be worked on and utilized across the networks. As this was just the kick-off workshop for the FMNs the work has really just begun. Each group will be meeting remotely to continue to develop their modules and products and support each other through implementation through the fall 2017 semester. Find more information and resources from the workshop on the QUBESHub website.
