Boris Jovanovic, Natural Resource Ecology and Management, and Evrim Baran, School of Education – Aquatic Toxicology have received a Miller Grant to create and integrate an Aquatic Toxicology Wikibook as a major course component to the Aquatic Toxicology undergraduate/graduate course that will be designed and offered in Spring 2019 (pending approval). The course will follow the Open Pedagogy, an approach “in which students are active and visible participants in the construction of knowledge”. The open pedagogy includes the creation of the Wikibook with the students taking the course.
This collaborative work between the course instructor/editor and the student/authors will be intended to present perspectives in Aquatic Toxicology and to establish a theoretical foundation for the experience. The class community will create the content as well as the format of the Wikibook, such as the cover, title, and table of contents that will be published in the Wikibooks platform. The Wikibook project will also include the creation and editing of a Class Bibliography on Aquatic Toxicology literature and Class Generated Glossary on Aquatic Toxicology terms and definitions.
The multimedia elements (e.g., videos, illustrations, pictures licensed with Creative Commons) will also be integrated into the Wikibook content. Guidelines will be created to clarify roles, expectations, workflow, and timelines. Dr. Jovanovic will edit the chapters to make sure the content is accurate, thorough, and clear. Students will be educated on licensing. The process will include discussing and reflecting on group work, sharing best practices, creating team expectation agreements, defining scholarly edition, analyzing team progress and reviewing individual and team contributions, discussing best practices for providing feedback, learning about Creative Commons licensing, providing and receiving feedback, and presenting the final products.