1. Using Online Natural History Databases to
Support Innovation in Undergraduate Education
Tracy Barbaro, EOL, Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology

2. • Introduction to EOL
• How Can I Use EOL in My Classroom?
• Hands On
– Collections
– Scientific Writing/Student Contributions
– Ecosystem Explorer – Species Interactions

3. EOL.org

4. What is the Encyclopedia of Life?
EOL in Summary:
• Global, on-line resource—plants, animals,
microorganisms
• Web pages for 1.9 million known species
• Plus millions more yet to be described
• Serves authoritative information as well as contributions
from the general public.
Guiding Principles:
• Common format
• Freely available
• Open Source, Open Access
• Collaboratively built
• Customizable by user
• Never completed

5. Background
Early 2000's Dan Janzen (U.Pa) and Chris Thompson(SI)
envision online species pages, around the world several
web projects start.
2003
2007

6. Support
EOL is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and
the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the following institutions:
Atlas of Living Australia
Biodiversity Heritage Library
Chinese Academy of Sciences
La Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad (CONABIO)
Field Museum of Natural History
Harvard University
El Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio)
Marine Biological Laboratory
Missouri Botanical Garden
NCB Naturalis - the Netherlands Centre for Biodiversity
New Library of Alexandria
Smithsonian Institution
South African National Biodiversity Institution (SANBI)

7. Content Partners
EOL serves species information from authoritative content partners, individuals scientists,
citizen scientists, students and the general public. Below are some of our content partners:
..and many more

8. How Can I Use EOL in My Classroom?

9. Taxon Pages As Resources for Students
Information for each species on EOL is aggregated from hundreds of
content partners into a common template called a Taxon Page.
Each tab on the taxon page contains different content.

10. Detailed Information, Media, Maps, Names,
Multiple Classifications, Literature

11. Literature
Taxon pages are a great place for finding literature/references: aggregated references for
the entire taxon page and resources from the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

12. Searching on EOL
You can search for taxa by common name or scientific name. You can also search for EOL
Collections and Communities. You can filter your search results by content type.
Filter your
search by
content type

13. Trusted and Un-reviewed Content
EOL serves both trusted and un-reviewed content. You can filter your results to show
only the types of content you are looking for.

14. Tools and Activities
• Collections
• Students Writing Brief Summaries for EOL
• Ecosystem Explorer

15. Collections
You can “collect” taxon pages, media, maps, etc. on EOL. The items you collect are
links back to the taxon page (or image, video, sound, map, etc.).
Essentially a collection is a grouping of links to taxa of interest. You can annotate and
share this collection with others on EOL.
Using Collections Ideas
Create a collection of….
• Taxon pages for each of your lab specimens (1)
• Specimens you normally would not have access to in the lab (1)
• taxa based on habitat or associations/interactions
• taxa found on a sampling field trip
• images or video that exemplify species behavior
1. Source: Encyclopedia of Life Collections: Biodiversity Resources for Biology Teachers. Michael Windelspecht, Ricochet
Science. Accessed at http://ricochetscience.com/eol_biodiversity/ on 2/22/13
Example Lab Collection: http://eol.org/collections/52874

17. Student Contributions:
EOL Content Priorities
• You may come across a taxon page with no information. This is because we do not have a content
provider for this taxa yet. EOL has determined that many of these pages are of high priority.
• Undergraduate and Graduate students can research and synthesize information about taxa on EOL’s
high priority taxa list and then summarize this information in an brief summary suitable for the
general public as part of their coursework.

18. Student Contributions to EOL
Undergraduate and graduate students can help build EOL by
researching and writing:
• Brief species summaries
• Comprehensive descriptions
• Topics such as ecology, habitat or conservation
• More complete taxon pages
Student work is vetted and reviewed by their professors. Over the
past 5 years, students have contributed to hundreds of pages on
EOL! Instructors serve as curators/review and vet student work.
See examples on EOL: http://eol.org/info/student_contributions

19. Student Contributions Workflow
1. Work with EOL to develop a taxa list for your
students
2. Introduce EOL project and eol.org to your
students
3. Students research taxa (species, genus, etc.)
4. Students write a brief summary or other topic(s)
5. Peer Review
6. Instructor review (TA’s are helpful here)
7. Students enter summaries into the class’s
Education LifeDesk for publishing to EOL taxon
pages

20. Publishing to EOL: Education LifeDesk

21. Student Contributions on EOL
Example of student
contributed brief summary,
references and attribution.
Student contributions
appear as unreviewed until
reviewed by a curator

22. Education LifeDesk
http://www.edulifedesks.org/home
Guest login:
username: guest
pass: eolguest123
Go to:
http://www.edulifedesks.org/class/8556

23. Ecosystem Explorer
The EOL Ecosystem Explorer provides a easy way to create engaging graphs of species interactions
within an ecosystem. While still in development, you can view and interact with some example
ecosystems.

24. Ecosystem Explorer
Example Ecosystem:
http://fieldguides.eol.org/eco/ecovis.php?ecosystem=39
• Under “Selected Species” Click on “Edit”
• Edit selected taxon
• Click on “Add new”
• Add a new predator - prey interaction

25. More Information
Encyclopedia of Life
www.eol.org
EOL Learning + Education
http://education.eol.org/
Questions?
Email: education(at)eol.org