A. Malcolm Campbell, Davidson College

During the fall of 1997, I taught immunology for the first time. I found a great text book (Immunobiology by Janeway and Travers), which has the most informative figures of any text book I have ever used. It also came with a CD-ROM of all the figures so I could project them in the classroom which facilitated nice dialogs with students. Since I was trained as a molecular cell biologist, I found the book to be well organized and clearly presented, though I did recognized some short comings. When I read the student evaluations, they too "loved" the text, but the most common criticism was that they got so focused on the cellular and subcellular aspects that they could not see the big picture. Where in the body do these processes take place? How does a pathogen "find" the right immune cells? Students are very adept at finding the weaknesses in a course and I have learned to value their criticisms. With this in mind, I propose to use the same text but to supplement the text with some visualizations via the World Wide Web (WWW).

I am aware of the ACS-funded projects being developed by Stephanie Dew (RasMol files of molecules), Mark Sutherland (Tutorials for Cell Biology and Immunology), and Robert Morgan (Virtual Histology). In order to minimize redundancy, I have contacted each of them to see what they are doing and to give them an idea of what I am proposing to do. My proposal is sufficiently different so I should be able to benefit from some of their products while still producing a novel approach to immunology. Mark has proposed to develop a module on signal transduction which is a very important process that I want to use but will not have to develop since he will do that. Robert will be producing some images of cells and tissues that I will be able to utilize while Stephanie will have RasMol files of important immunological molecules. I will compile these components, along with others I propose to develop into a highly interactive WWW site for student use.

General Goal: My goal is to supply students with a hyperlinked set of images and animations that will enable them to visualize where in the body the cellular processes of immunology take place. Specific Goals: The main page will be a picture of a human body that highlights organs involved in the immune system (e.g. bone marrow, thymus, lymph nodes etc.). Using freeware called MapEdit, the body parts will be hyperlinked to the appropriate images and animations to help the students learn what happens at various locations in the body. In addition to linking location with cellular functions, I will develop images of processes that are difficult to understand, such as positive and negative selection for T cells. Finally, my intention is to produce visual information that cannot be drawn on the board or photocopied and that will be available to the students on the WWW.

I propose to develop a series of images, animations, and RasMol files that will greatly enhance the ability of students to understand the cellular processes of immunology in the context of the big picture. When a pathogen enters the lungs, how does it wind up stimulating an appropriate immune response? This is a huge question and in order to understand the entire process, students must learn the cellular aspects. Unfortunately, it is hard for them to learn molecular aspects and keep in mind the organ and tissue level of the immune system. Therefore, I propose to address five components to link the subcellular processes with the integration of the organs and the organism.

I have developed a number of WWW resources that I use in all of my classes <www.bio.davidson.edu/Biology/Courses/courses.html >. I am comfortable with HTML and can produce many different images to supplement the text <www.bio.davidson.edu/Biology/studyguide/poster7.html>. I have developed QT movies (using Morph <www.bio.davidson.edu/Biology/movies/meiosis.mov> and MovieStar [ for cartoon animations] <www.bio.davidson.edu/Biology/movies/tropotropo.mov>) and GIF animations <www.bio.davidson.edu/Biology/Courses/Bio111/SERCAanimation.html>. I use RasMol extensively in classes and have collected a significant number of RasMol files <www.bio.davidson.edu/Biology/Courses/RasMol.html>. I have been accepted to the ACS Special Topics Workshop: "Web-deployable Educational Technologies" where I will learn many additional programs and abilities for WWW presentations. In addition, the Davidson Biology Department will be purchasing new microscopes that have CCD cameras and image analysis capabilities so I will be able to acquire my own images of cells if necessary. I am also the webmaster for the biology department web server <www.bio.davidson.edu/> which currently gets about 800 - 1000 hits each day.

Dissemination is the easiest aspect of this proposal since it will be available on the WWW. In addition to posting my products on the web, I would write an article for publication in American Biology Teacher. I have published there before and I have a good sense of what kind of papers they like to publish.

Evaluation is always the most difficult part of new teaching techniques. As scientists, we want to have proper controls but of course I cannot teach half of the class the new way and the other half the old way. So I will evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed innovations by two methods. First, I think student evaluations at the end of the semester can indicate strengths and weaknesses in this new approach to integration. I will also ask students during the semester how the new visualizations are helping and how they could be improved. One benefit of publishing on the WWW is the ability to update information rapidly, which will enable me to respond quickly to student feedback. Finally, I will put questions on the final exam, which will address the big picture to see how well the students can handle this aspect. I know from this past year, they could not answer this type of question very well so I will look for signs of improvement here.