The Virtual School of Biodiversity (VSB) was formally launched by Professor Sir Colin Campbell Vice-Chancellor of The University of Nottingham, and Professor YC Cheng, Vice-Chancellor of The University of Hong Kong, at a ceremony in The University of Hong Kong on 2 November 1998.
The VSB was founded in June 1998 at a meeting in Hong Kong between the Department of Ecology and Biodiversity, South East Asia's leading centre of biodiversity research and education, and the School of Biological Sciences of The University of Nottingham. At this meeting Dr Peter Davies, who heads the Nottingham team, and Prof John Hodgkiss resolved to establish the Virtual School and last month this was achieved. As well as Nottingham's IBiS Learning Technology Group, who represent the UK's Teaching and Learning Technology Programme Biodiversity Consortium (an association of ~40 universities) and have an international reputation in technology-based teaching and learning, the VSB also includes the internationally renowned Natural History Museum in London.
The primary aim of the VSB is to catalyse international co-operation between universities in the field of biodiversity research and education, with a view to promoting both the understanding and the conservation of the natural world. The principal objectives are to construct an innovative and resourceful learning environment on the World Wide Web, and to use it to deliver co-operative teaching and high quality distributed leaning - at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels - to institutions, organisations and individuals all over the world.
With HKU's new lap-top initiative, most 1st Year undergraduates will have access to multimedia teaching materials. At present this will take the form of course modules or units on Nottingham's Biodiversity CD ROM, some of which are being authored or customized for Hong Kong use by DEB staff in collaboration with the Ibis team. So far collaboration has involved Gray Williams working at Nottingham on an Algal Diversity module, Dr Peter Davies coaching DEB staff in the use and potential mis-use of multimedia education, and Drs Will Trewhella and Kevin Caley from Nottingham spending 3 weeks in Hong Kong working with DEB staff on a variety of teaching modules which will he initially launched in CD format for the 1st Year BSc courses at HKU in January 1999.
The Virtual School has been established under the auspices of Universitas 21, an international association of research intensive universities committed to cooperation and mutual accreditation in teaching and learning. As such it is hoped that material prepared from DEB can be distributed within the U21 framework, including a number of Chinese institutions. It is also hoped that institutions outside U21 will make use of these accredited materials, and in this connection the Nottingham team also met with members of the KFBG staff to discuss possible future collaborations.
Gray Williams
P.1-2
Back to Contents
Back to Porcupine Homepage
Go to Departmental Homepage
