Description

Natural history collections and the mobilization of specimen-based data has opened new opportunities for education. Collections, and the data associated with collections, are valuable resources that can facilitate student learning, address core competencies and content recommended by Vision and Change, and be used to teach valuable skill sets necessary for the 21st century workforce. Professionals working in and with natural history collections are developing educational materials and providing impactful student experiences; these are important collections-based deliverables that can be assessed, tracked, and published to show significant outcomes and outputs of collections. We will present survey results from students working in collections that support the value of museums and museum experiences in undergraduate education. We will discuss emerging competencies and assessment tools that can guide the introduction of collections in the classroom. We will also discuss mechanisms to develop and disseminate educational modules, track access and downloads of developed modules, and record educational adaptations of materials through the National Science Foundation funded BLUE Network: Biodiversity Literacy in Undergraduate Education (Biodiversityliteracy.org) and Quantitative Undergraduate Biology Education Synthesis (Qubeshub.org). In summation, we will introduce upcoming opportunities to develop, assess, publish, and facilitate implementation of educational materials that engage students with museum specimens and biodiversity data.

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