Grant Expenditures

The project was initially awarded from August 1, 2000 to July 31, 2001. A ‘no-cost’ extension was granted from August 1, 2001 to July 31, 2002.

A summary of the grant expenditures is listed in table 1. The largest change from budgeted expenditures were reduced technical costs (Deal lab) for web site and animation development. This resulted from flash animation production occurring ‘in house’ by Hain, by donated hours from the UNL New Media Center and by the Deal lab donation of unbilled hours.

Table 1. Summary of Grant Expenditures

Item	Budget	Actual	Match
Hourly students	0	800.25	1,500
CoPI (Hain)	6400	7,958	14,918
Benefits	1472	603.72
Other Professional (Gering)	4000	4,000
Technical (Deal lab)	2928	1,960
Total Salaries, Wages and Benefits	14,800	15,321.71
Travel	1,200	678.29
Total	16,000	16,000	16,418

Project Accomplishments

The initial project had a proposed budget of $75,000 and the following objectives.

1) Develop ten new lessons on environmental impacts, food safety and ethical concerns of genetically engineered crops.

2) Investigate and test ways to increase the effectiveness and interactivity of ten current basic genetics lessons.

3) Foster the use of these resources to new audiences by a.) offering workshops via distance to teachers and agronomy professionals, b.) working with high school teachers to encourage the integration of these resources into high school science instruction and c.) teach a workshop using these resource to an international audience of agronomy professionals.

The dollars awarded to the project were $16,000 and the objectives of the amended project were as follows.

1.) Investigate and test ways to increase the effectiveness and interactivity of ten current lessons in the basics of crop genetic engineering.

2.) Adapt these lessons to the needs of the high school learner by developing a companion to the Croptechnology site customized for highschool teacher and their students.

3.) Offer workshops to secondary teachers to encourage the integration of these resources into high school science instruction.

All grant objectives have been met and are outlined below.

1) Increased lesson effectiveness and interactivity.

Virtual crop genetic engineering lab:

(Note: Screen shots showing key features of the site are shown in the appendix of this report.)

Teachers and students entering the highschool companion to the Croptechnology site (http://croptechnology.unl.edu/highschool) experience a site that has a look and feel designed to be more attractive to the young learner. There are two options for accessing content in the site. If Internet connection speed is slow, the ‘html’ option is recommended and the interface of the site is a conventional display of icons and drop-down menus. If browser and connect speed allow, entering via the ‘flash site’ provides a more interactive environment. A door to a 3D virtual genetic engineering lab can be entered to reveal the workplace world of the genetic engineer. Key lab equipment items are situated in the lab to show where the main steps in the genetic engineering process are performed. The equipment items flash indicating they are icons to click on and launch lessons that teach about each of the five main steps in the process plus an overview lesson. The user can move clockwise or counter clockwise around the lab by clicking navigation buttons and see each station three dimensionally. Furthermore, they can look out the lab window and see green houses and test plots where the final stages of developing genetically engineered crops and testing their field performance takes place. Thus, we have created an environment which helps the learner understand the genetic engineering process and better understand how the genetic engineer performs their work.

Thinking Review quizzes imbedded in lesson text

The primary means of instructional delivery in our site is with text. We have imbedded images to illustrate ideas which provide a more pleasing and attractive visual for the learner. In addition, we have imbedded “thinking review quiz questions in the text to motivate students to think while reading the lessons. The lessons ask multiple choice questions based on what the student just read. Their choice is graded instantly and a feedback response provided.

Interactive animations.

Flash animations designed to illustrate key concepts have been a valuable complement to the lessons in the Croptechnology site based on student review and comments from users downloading and using these animations (see ‘Evaluation’ section below). We wanted to pursue the use of Flash as a medium for creating animations that were more interactive and thus better ‘stand alone’ resources for learning. Two of these animations were developed and have been integrated into the highschool site.

The first animation is called “Who wants to be a genetic engineer” and is a part of the “Overview” lesson. In this animation, students become the genetic engineer and are given a choice of two crops to engineer, a corn plant that resists corn borer by making a Bt protein and an apple tree that produces cinnamon flavored apples. For each project they must select and drag icons representing different steps in the genetic engineering process in the correct order. Once all steps are in place, they view an animation clip that demonstrates the process they just designed, and they can view the final product. This reinforces the student’s understanding of the process. This animation thus builds on the previous animations we have developed to illustrate the genetic engineering process.

The second animation is designed to teach learners about the process of making crosses in plants and the choices that plant breeders make in this part of their work. This animation is a part of the ‘Plant Breeding II; the Backcrossing Process’ lesson. Again the animation features a select and drag activity to make the learner think about what parents are selected in crosses, how sexual reproduction works in plants and how the crosser manipulates flowers to produce hybrid offspring. Three of the four lessons in this animation have been completed.

Other Media

Four PowerPoint presentations developed from images taken at workshops (see workshops for teachers) have been added to the lessons. These presentations provide photographs of lab procedures performed by genetic engineers or the teacher guests in their labs. These are a resource for both teachers and students who do not have access to such facilities.

A video clip series on making crosses in corn has also been added. Again this provides a resource for students who would otherwise not be able to see how this is done in the corn breeders plots.

2)     Adaption of lessons to high school leaner and their teachers

Editing of lessons by a high school teachers.

1.)     Adaptation of the ten lessons for the high school learners was accompished by collaboration with two high school teachers. The ten lessons we edited are accessible at are listed below:

Lesson

1. Overview of Crop Genetic Engineering

2. DNA and DNA extraction

3. Gene Cloning

4. Gene Design 1: Gene regions

5. Gene Design 2: Gene constructs

6. Transformation 1: Tissue Culture

7. Transformation 2: Transformation methods

8. Transformation 3: Events

9. Backcross Breeding 1: Transgene inheritance

10. Backcross Breeding 2: The Backcrossing process

Mrs. Jenny Kocian, Agricultural science teacher at Mead High School, Mead NE. was contracted to provide editorial suggestions for making the ten lessons appropriate for students at the high school level. She completed this review in the spring of 2001.   In June, 2001 we contracted Mike Geren , head of the science division at Elgin High school, Elgin NE. to work with us and lead the revision of these lessons.

Mike integrated revisionsin the text and glossary and incorporated thinking review questions at key points in the lesson to emphasize critical ideas. He also consulted on the development of animations. He completed one case study lesson plan series on the topic of “safety of foods from biotech crops”.

Editing of questions

Both the interactive quiz questions and the bank of quiz questions for each lesson were edited and customized to meet the learning level of the student and content of the lesson.

Teacher resource (see Appendix for screen shot):

A set of teacher resources was added as a feature of the high school version of the croptechnology site. This was envisioned as a critical feature for teachers who had less experience in teaching these topics or wished to integrate these topics with current events in food safety, environmental impact, or legal and ethical issues related to the use of genetic engineering in crops. Access to these resources is through a ‘teacher resource’ icon observed when accessing a lesson.

3) Workshops for teachers.

We organized and participated in several workshops that provided high school teachers with an opportunity to learn more about crop genetic engineering and the features of this web site.

Summer 2001 On campus workshop

We delivered a workshop on teaching crop genetic engineering for 12 participants at the UNL campus on June 29-30, 2001.

The workshop accomplished several things for the participants. First it provided the teachers with a better understanding of the science and technology used to develop the genetically engineering crops that have been commercialized. This understanding came from lecture, demonstrations and a visit with a plant transformation expert in their lab. Second, we provided the teachers with a take-home set of materials to help them teach their students on this topic. The materials included seed samples of various genetically engineered crops, seed samples to demonstrate gene inheritance in corn, test kits to detect some transgenic crop types, a notebook of instructional materials and a CD-ROM of the croptechnology site. In addition, we assembled PowerPoint presentations from the images the teachers took during the workshop that showed them working on various aspects of the crop genetic engineering process. These PowerPoints can be downloaded and viewed at the site.

Summer 2002 events

We participated in a workshop for highschool science teachers sponsored by the Department of Food Science, UNL, on the integration of food production and food safety into the science curriculum. About 35 teachers attended. Our segment modeled the use of animations and lesson plans from the highschool site to teach the fundamentals of crop genetic engineering.

A second opportunity we took advantage of in the summer of 2002 was student leadership training session held in Aurora Nebraska and attended by ag science teachers. Fourteen teachers attended our two hour session and worked with the features of the high school site. Several teachers from these sessions are interested in having their students complete lessons and take quizzes as a part of their courses that include instructional objectives for understanding biotechnology.

Evaluation and Assessment

We have not formally assessed the impact of the high school site on teachers or learners as the present time. We have established contacts through our workshops with teachers interested in teaching this topic and using the site. This will establish our initial projects for assessing the site and discovering key improvements that will need to be made. We have documented use of the Croptechnology site and assessed the impact of student learning styles on their use of these internet lessons. These assessments are described in the Appendix.

Appendix:

Learning styles assessment

We gave the following presentation based on our assessment of students use of the lesson on the croptechnology site as it relates to the student learning style.

Speth, C, D. Lee, and P. Hain. Helping genetics students learn more effectively from Internet based instruction by understanding their styles. Disciplinary styles in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Rockhurst University, April 2002.

Site use

The Crop Technology site has features that will allow us to measure the use of the lessons and lesson components. The site provides a continuous log of lesson access to measure the number of lesson users and display from where they connected to the site. Any user downloading animations provides us with their address, e-mails and information regarding their use of the materials. Finally, teachers wishing to use the quiz feature of the lessons must request a password protected administrative site and a login section for their students. The features will allow us to document long-term use of these lessons and facilitate follow-up with lesson users worldwide.

Over 300 users from 49 countries have downloaded content from the Croptechnology site. The quotes below have been selected and organized to represent the diversity of impacts of the croptechnology site materials.

College University courses:

Delaware: University of Delaware Newark : Through a segment on introductory biotechnology to our Nutrition Concepts students.

Idaho; University of Idaho, Moscow: Will use it to illustrate molecular biology in my Integrated Science Course, Biotechnology and Society

North Carolina; NC State University: First as a presentation tool during a Genetic Engineering Class. Then the students be directed to the Web site to either use or downlaod the animations

Phillipines: University of the Philippines, Mindanao: Classroom lectures

Slovak Republic; Slovak University of Technology: Lectures, seminars, excercises and laboratory practices from biological sciences held by our Faculty

South Dakota; Oglala Lakota College: Text book suppliment material for crop production course. Section on Biotechnology.

Spain; Universidad de La Rioja: For teaching photosynthesis processes

Texas; Texas A&M: I am going to use them in my lectures for Introduction to Genetics Lab, a junior level course.

United Kingdom: The Open University: Initially used as a demo to a distance learning course team to illustrate good practice

High Schools:

England, Huddersfield: To show how transgenic plants are made via computor

Nebraska; Marion: In a presentation demonstrating how Genetically Modified Plants Are accomplished

Nebraska, Omaha : Animation will be used for demonstration/lecture with possibility for student use as a tutorial.

South Africa; University of Pretoria : They will be used in lectures and presentations to high school students or members of the public, or as part of teaching of College students the principles and applications of plant biotechnology

Extension:

Georgia, Cordele: Preview for possible use at farmer or 4-H Club meetings.

Idaho; University of Idaho, Twin Falls: I plan to use them in classroom lectures and extension presentations.

Illinois: Urbana: I will use them as I instruct HS teachers in a biotech outreach program.

New Zealand, Institute of Environmental Science & Research: For free public lectures titled "A basic guide to genetic engineering". Organised by Royal Society of New Zealand.

Texas; Orange: These animations will be used in a presentation created for training in the Intel Teach to the Future program. It may be uploaded to the internet for other teachers to use.

Private Business:

Arizona: I stumbled across your site and am quite impressed. I will be using these to help bring some employees up to speed on what their co-workers (scientists) are doing. People in the accounting department and human resources, for example.

.South Carolina: We have privatized technology from Clemson that recreates ideal environments for growing plants. We acclimate, germinate, root and graft plants faster with our technology. Our staff is made up of business people and engineers and I want to help them understand transgenic crops. Your presentation is the simplest I have come across and explains in simple terms what transgenics are all about.

Site features

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