Thursday, May 28, 2020 - 8:30 a.m.
Jodie Jenkinson, associate professor and director, Biomedical Communications program (Credit: D. Mazierski)
Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) announced on May 20 the award of a two-year, $197,647 Partnership Development Grant to Jodie Jenkinson, associate professor and director of the Biomedical Communications program at the U of T Mississauga.
"Visualizations, interactives, simulations and animations are common learning resources in today's undergraduate science classroom," says Jenkinson. "But scientific accuracy, clarity and quality can really vary. There's also little known about how effective these multimedia learning tools really are."
Jenkinson puts this down to the gap between the communities who design the visualizations, the researchers who evaluate the learning materials and outcomes, and the instructors who rely on multimedia tools for teaching.
Jenkinson says the Partnership Develop Grant will allow her and co-applicants Gaël McGill of Harvard University and Susan Keen of the University of California, Davis to establish a partnership to engage these three communities in better integration of craft- and research-based knowledge in instructional multimedia design for undergraduate biology education.
The VISABLI (visualizations, interactives, simulations and animations in biology learning and instruction) partnership will establish a community of practice around science visualization. VISABLI will foster and sustain interdisciplinary communication and collaboration between the three stakeholder groups.
"The VISABLI partnership will contribute to the design of educational research protocols that better reflect real-world learning environments. We will work toward the development of improved standards of practice for the visualization design community, which will contribute to the creation of instructional tools for the modern biology classroom," says Jenkinson. "All of this will lead to better learning outcomes in undergraduate biology students."
Jenkinson, who conducts novel research into the role that visual complexity plays in learning, is also co-principal investigator on a National Science Foundation $500,000 US grant.