Executive Summary of Results

New high-resolution time-lapse movies of plant growth responses have been created along with some digital videos of real-time plant responses. The movies are being incorporated into my "Plants-In-Motion" web site for general availability (http://sunflower.bio.indiana.edu/~rhangart/plantmotion/). The movies have been, and will continue to be used in my undergraduate course "B373, Mechanisms of Plant Growth and Development" and in a section of a graduate course (L587) on developmental biology. Several of these movies have been incorporated into an exhibit called "Plant Dance" at the Science Museum of Minnesota. The WonderLab (the Bloomington Museum of Science, Health and Technology) will use our time-lapse movies of plants with a green-screen video technology system to allow visitors to "get" into the screen with the plants and try to mimic their movements. This exhibit is a fun way for visitors to observe that plants are dynamic living things.

Need for the Project

Motivating students about plant biology can be difficult because plants move and change much more slowly than animals. Time-lapse movies provide a unique opportunity to demonstrate the dynamics of plant life. The collection of movies that we are building is becoming a valuable resource for teachers all around the world.

Use of Technology

Digital imaging systems provide a powerful and fairly inexpensive means for collecting high quality time-lapse movies in a format that is readily transmitted on the internet and used in the classroom. We have purchased a digital still camera (Kodak DC290) with time-lapse capabilities and routinely use the camera for capturing time-lapse images at resolutions that will be suitable for DVD, CD-ROM and the internet. A digital video camera is also being used to document plant responses that occur on faster time scales. A firewire webcam has been modified for filming time-lapse or real-time events with infrared light, which allows us to document plant growth in "darkness". Two laptop computers and a desktop computer equipped with video editing software allow us to generate, edit and present the movies on the Internet, in class presentations and at scientific conferences.

Instructional Design Plan

Describe how the use of technology used supported your teaching approach:

• What student learning outcomes were expected?
• How did your teaching plan encourage active learning, provide feedback, address respective learning styles, and build collaboration?
• What resources were used? (campus technology support services, etc.)
• Would your project be easily understood and executed by other faculty?

The digital movies are incorporated in presentations in the classroom to provide powerful visual demonstrations of plant development. These dynamic presentations provide students with a vivid and intuitive understanding of a variety of complex processes that are often abstract and difficult to grasp without the movies. The time-lapse movies are also proving to be extremely useful in presentations at scientific conferences for delivering research results in a visually stimulating way.

Potential to Impact Student Learning

Clearly define how your project improved student learning - include specific examples of how your project:

• Fostered depth of learning
• Supported efforts to improve retention
• Fostered the learning of large numbers of students
• Has broader applications that will affect learning K-12 or community environments?

Students leave the classroom talking about the growth processes they just witnessed in the movies. They can discuss the fundamental material provided in lectures in the context of a real event they were able to see themselves. The digital movies provide a memorable experience that will stay with the student.

Assessment Plan

Briefly explain the effectiveness of your assessment plan:

• What measure of assessment was used?
• How did your approach obtain measures of performance?
• Did you feel your measurement was accurate and effective?

The effectiveness of digital time-lapse technology is best seen in the level of involvement elicited in the students. Unfortunately, this is difficult to numerically evaluate. To help gauge the effectiveness in class, students are asked to fill out questionnaires about the value of the movies. Thus far, all questions about the impact of the movies have received the highest scores.

Another indicator of the impact of the Web-related aspect of this project comes from unsolicited reviews of the content and from requests received for permission to link to, or use, the material from the Web site. Since my Ameritech project began, I have received numerous requests by teachers and students who wanted to use time-lapse movies in various projects or for teaching. In addition, the “Plants-In-Motion” Web site has been favorably reviewed by a number of scientific publications and on-line services. This January, “Science” featured “Plants-In-Motion” in their WebWatch column (2002 Science 295: p411). The month after that article appeared, we recorded over 4000 visits to our site, which represented an increase of about 65% over the previous month. “Current Web Contents” also reviewed and recommended the site and includes a link from their site. “Plants-In-Motion” was also featured by the online magazine “Around Carolina” that is part of the Time Warner Cable's Road Runner service.

Links to the “Plants-In-Motion” site now appear on many Web pages. Entering “plants in motion” in nearly any of the popular search engines will yield a number of links to pages that links to our Web site. For example, a recent search using Google yielded over 90 hits to pages that link to my Web site, including the following:

http://www.aspb.org/education/
http://www.phschool.com/science/biosurf/plants/5_19lear.html
http://biology.about.com/cs/botany/index_2.htm
http://www.glencoe.com/sec/science/biology/bls/chapter24/weblinks.shtml
http://bcbrown.net/secondary/presentations/stupagess98/gmoss.html
http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/Tower/1217/plant.html
http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~bios425/
http://www.exploratorium.edu/ls/infosources/BotanyInfo.html
http://dmoz.org/Science/Biology/Botany/Plant_Physiology/
http://www.kidsolr.com/science/page10.html

I routinely received questions by email from elementary and high school students and parents who have come across my Web site as they are working on school science projects. I’ve had a number of positive interactions in helping the students work thorough their projects.

To my surprise, our project has apparently been a source of inspiration to the art community. A video artist from New York City has used several of our “Plants-In-Motion” time-lapse movies in a compilation of live video performance work (I am working on getting the piece on our Web site). Recently, I was invited to present a talk about “Plants-In-Motion” at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto in a symposium entitled "Biology as if the World Mattered", that will be held October 18-20.

Plan for Colleague Development

Describe your role and activities as a mentor:

• What mentoring activities were implemented to assist colleagues?
• How did you help to develop colleague's instructional technology skills?
• How do you think your contributions to the Knowledge Base will help colleagues planning similar projects?
• Is your project approach potentially applicable to other contexts or disciplines?
• What tips would you offer?

I continue to assist various faculty and graduate students in my department with their Web and digital imaging projects. I have held workshops for small groups to provide guidance for using digital imaging tools and using images on the www. I continue to be involved in maintenance of our department Web site (http://www.bio.indiana.edu/), which I rebuilt last year.

Final Comments on Project Results

• Do you think you met the goals of your project?
• What, if anything,would you do differently?
• Did you have any unexpected outcomes? (positive or negative)
• Would you recommend this teaching approach to colleagues?
• What other comments or suggestions would you offer to complete this report?

Although I wish I had all of the movies I have created on line in their final form, I believe that I have made significant progress. The equipment purchased with the Ameritech Award has been a tremendous boon for me. The award has allowed me to create time-lapse movies that were previously out of my reach. I still have work to do on the Web site, but that is ongoing. I have no intention of stopping this project with the end of the award and expect to continue to make new movies as long as the equipment continues to work and time permits. In fact, the experience has provided me with many new ideas for projects in the coming years. For example, one project that I recently started will result in a short DVD movie that will take viewers on a “time-lapse” walk through the Lake Griffy Nature Area. In this project, I return to the site every few days and film a short section of the trail, starting where I left off at the last visit. I also try to film various plants and animals that happen to be there. When edited together, the movie will take the viewers from the snow-covered trailhead at the parking area through the park and back to the parking area. Along the way, we will see the woods advance through Spring into Summer.

My long-term goal is to continue working to make “Plants-In-Motion” a robust resource for education. I will continue to make time-lapse movies of an increasingly wider range of plant responses and plant species. We will soon be adding a section containing time-lapse movies of cellular processes that we are creating as part of our regular research projects.

From recognition “Plants-In-Motion” has been receiving in the literature and on the Web, and from the feedback I’ve received from faculty at other institutions, I am confident that our digital movie collection is of significant value and I would recommend others to consider the approach for similar types of topics.

It is extremely rewarding to me to see that we have already succeeded in helping to bring Plant Biology to a broad audience. It is wonderful to see that many teachers are using our movies in their classes and providing links to our Web site on their course pages. I am particularly excited about the potential of collaborating with artists, starting with my speaking invitation in the symposium being organized by the “Shared Habitat” group in Toronto (www.sharedhabitat.com). It appears that our work will not only benefit science educators as I initially intended, but it is also resulting in interesting opportunities to bring plant sciences into other disciplines.

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