Education:Creating learning modules
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Contents
Mission
One of the goals of Project Brahma is to generate awareness among people about India's rich biodiversity heritage. In keeping with this goal, this section aims to provide learning material related to biodiversity conservation. The learning materials would be multifaceted - incorporating not just traditional text-based information, but also YouTube videos, Images, links to online learning resources, quizzes, activities and so on. Integration of all these aspects into biodiversity education would truly be a unique attempt in the world and would be an invaluable resource for teachers and educators not just in India, but all around the world.
Target audience
The general learning resources could be developed considering two groups of target audiences - 1) High school children and 2) Undergraduate students. Each resource may be developed with increasing complexity such that it is suitable for both groups.
One could also develop field-specific learning resources which could be targeted towards a more mature audience.
Content
The requirement for any learning resource created here would be multimedia integration. Traditional methods have relied on textbook based learning, but with the proliferation of Web 2.0, incorporating other learning tools has become very easy and in fact, quite desirable. The platform on which this website is based not only enables efficient integration with Web 2.0 applications such as YouTube, Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia, but also allows us to incorporate various activities such as quizzes, external website tours and slide-show presentations into the learning process. When correctly done, this approach has the potential to become a rich resource for learning.
Know more about the different learning tools you can use on this website...
Resource lengths
How long should each learning resource be? Instructors would know that one topic can be taught for one lecture, for one whole semester, one complete year or even for the entire length of the degree. So, it depends on the topics and the instructors. However, if a resource is too long, a nice thing would be to split it up into smaller sections.
How is this resource different from Wikipedia
- Encyclopedia vs Learning resource. Articles that are not encyclopedic are a waste of Wikipedia's resources. Learning articles have limited scope and might not be encyclopedic
- No particular target group vs Specific target group
- Global focus vs India-centric
- Limited features (not in our hands) vs Vast extensibility (also customizable by us)
What this resource is not
- Not a traditional teacher-student learning environment. Given the open nature of this website and of Mediawiki in general, it is not possible to categorize the users as Teachers and Students. Instead, a student for one module can be an instructor for another one. Honesty and desire to learn are assumed.
- Cannot track the progress of any student, due to the design of the website and learning resource. Thus, the designed modules should be more for learning sake rather than grading sake.
Examples
Still not developed...following are just open ideas...
- Biodiversity of hotspots
- Endangered species of India
- Environmental laws of India
- India and biodiversity --> 1) Planning: Module:India and biodiversity:Instructors 2) Execution: Module:India and biodiversity:Students
and so on...
Rules for Instructors
- Always categorize all modules using the following syntax
[[Category:Education]] [[Category:Learning modules]]
- Also categorize the section in which the resource belongs. For example, a General article (GEN) would be categorized as
[[Category:General modules]]
General guidelines and comments
Helpful links
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