Teachers in UK, Canada use biology animations produced at CC

Sometimes it is hard to know when you are making a difference. Stephen Loomis, Jean C. Tempel ’65 Professor of Biology, got the message, though. When animations of biological processes and phenomena he created were removed from public access on the College’s Web site, teachers from other schools asked where they had gone.

Mark Hermanson, a research specialist and lecturer in Chemistry at University of Pennsylvania, uses Loomis’ animation of the nerve synapse in his environmental chemistry class. Linking to the CC site through the University of Bristol, UK site, Hermanson demonstrates the effects of the chemical weapon VX gas using the animation.

“The animation…allows us to show how this system functions when not affected by nerve poisons. It then gives us the opportunity to show exactly where the nerve poison function takes place,” said Hermanson. A perfect launching point for classroom instruction, “the animation pauses exactly at the point where VX would alter the process.”

Melissa McDonald, who teaches biology, chemistry and physics at J. Percy Page High School in Alberta, Canada also uses the synapse animation in class. “I have found it is a difficult concept to teach due to its dynamic nature,” McDonald said of the neuron transmission process. “Since using the animations, the students seem to grasp the concept much more quickly and gain a more thorough understanding.”

The animations were originally created by Loomis, under a Mellon Foundation grant, for courses that aimed to reduce lecturing and increase active learning. “I use the animations in class to introduce a topic or to assess student understanding of a concept,” Loomis explained. “Most students like the animation as an alternative activity.”

Loomis’ excellence in teaching was recognized in 2000 with the College’s John S. King Memorial Teaching Award and nationally with an award from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

The animations were moved from www.conncoll.edu to a password-protected intranet for students where course information is stored. When requests for the animations came in from teachers around the world who had been using them in their classes, though, Loomis agreed to make the files accessible to the public again.

Assisting him in the development of the computer graphics were students Benjamin Hayes ’98 and Bess Ann Bayne Greevy ’00. Hayes created animations for Loomis’ human physiology course as a student, and he took a year-long position after graduating to create the animations for Introduction to Zoology. Starting with a concept or topic that was difficult to explain in class, Hayes said he and Loomis would have a “chat about what was needed, which usually started with ‘wouldn’t it be cool if we could…or had?’”

Greevy said that the animations presented the same information as in the textbook, but some students found the animations more engaging and a better way to internalize the material. “If you can make learning fun and make it something you want to do, that’s always good,” she said.

Hayes now uses the animations in his own classroom as a high school biology teacher. He likes being able to take a page from the book, or CD-ROM, of his former teacher and mentor. “That’s how a great teacher thinks. That’s how a great teacher teaches. I’d like to hope I’m like that one day.”

See animations of human physiology and zoology.