Study of the teaching of biodiversity as a general course in a university of Taiwan

Life Sciences 2007 (2007) Proc Life Sciences, PC67

Poster Communications: Study of the teaching of biodiversity as a general course in a university of Taiwan

O. T. Mak1, S. Y. Liu2

1. Life Sciences, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan. 2. Environmental Education, National Kaohsiung Normal University, Kaohsiung County, Taiwan.

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The development of biodiversity brings huge impact to recent human society and economical lives. It becomes an important issue in the 21st century. Cooperating with biotechnology, they have become the strategy of national long term development. However, in Taiwan there are not many studies concerning the biodiversity curriculum, and most of the recent studies involved are the teachers of primary and secondary students for subject evaluation. It is important to promote the concept of biodiversity among the non-biological undergraduate students and provide enough information for them to understand the basic principle of biodiversity. It is also a challenge to develop the program for biodiversity course in our university, and necessary to study the conceptual analysis and curriculum development in biodiversity course for the undergraduate students. In this study, biodiversity conceptual analysis for the reference of curriculum development and the tool of course evaluation in our university were carried out in order to putting the course into practice, designing the teaching course and preparation of teaching strategy. Six different international and Taiwan domestic issues of biodiversity were used for the test of 280 undergraduate students after 16 weeks of general biodiversity teaching. Statistic results were integrated into three different conceptual levels, practical, scientific and cultural level respectively. Results between the preference of biodiversity and the three different levels are shown in Table 1. These results indicate that undergraduate students in National Cheng Kung University are more preferable to biodiversity view in practical and cultural issues but not in scientific issues. All these results suggest that in spite of our university being a scientific and technological base institute, students are changing their biodiversity views in many general subjects after suitable teaching of biodiversity, and further study is necessary for the study of biodiversity related to scientific issues.


Table 1: Preference of biodiversity related to three different levels


Where applicable, experiments conform with Society ethical requirements.

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