Teaching

The Workbench as a tool for Teaching

The Virtual Ecology Workbench can be used by teachers to illustrate phenomena in the upper ocean ecosystem. It is useful for illustrating points in lecture courses and for student coursework at undergraduate and graduate level.

VEW Teaching Packs are designed for university courses in biological oceanography and limnology, aquatic biology, population ecology, complexity science and information science.

Teaching packs

We have prepared a set of VEW Teaching Packs (VEW-TPs). Each pack provides VEW Analyser and a virtual ecosystem. These provide a flexible resource for professors and students. Teachers can tailor illustrations for lectures, and projects for class work. The teaching packs are ideal for university courses at undergraduate and masters level in oceanography, limnology, population ecology and complexity science.

Oceanography and limnology
Biological oceanographers and limnologists use the packs to illustrate the major phenomena in the plankton ecosystem. Plankton biologists show how phenotypic processes (physiology and behaviour of individual organisms) control the ecosystem. Applied oceanographers and limnologists show how plankton influence problems of the aquatic environment, including pollution, eutrophication and epidemics like cholera that occur in plankton. Fisheries oceanographers illustrate theories of recruitment.

Population ecology
The plankton ecosystem in the open ocean provides rich material for teaching basic principles of population ecology. The VEW teaching packs make it easy to illustrate the link between processes occuring at the level of individual organisms to demographic changes in whole populations and biofeedback to the environment.

Complexity science
The plankton ecosystem is an example of a complex non-adaptive system. VEW teaching packs are useful for courses in applied mathematics. Lecturers can easily illustrate the principles and practice of complex system science, including: Emergence from primitive equation models; Complex feedback; Dynamic stability; Error estimation from ensembles of instances; Ergodicity; and many others. Information scientists use the Ecological Turing Test to illustrate the practice of linking realistic simulations to observations.

Standard and advanced level packs

There are two kinds of VEW Teaching Packs, standard and advanced. Both kinds bundle data with VEW Analyser, which is used to extract the emergent properties of a virtual ecosystem and present them as graphs and spreadsheets. Every teaching pack is documented with a user's manual, aimed at both teachers and students.

Computing

All VEW-TPs will run on a high-level personal computer with any operating system.

Availability

VEW for Teaching is our rolling programme to extend the portfolio of VEW-TPs. It involves collaboration with leading university teachers around the world. You can find here the current portfolio and details of how you can apply to participate in the VEW for Teaching programme, and how to purchase licences for existing teaching packs.

VEW Standard Teaching Packs

Each VEW-STP contains a prescribed virtual ecosystem and VEW Analyser.

VEW-STP 1 - Diurnal and seasonal variation
Virtual ecosystem in a mesocosm anchored at a mid-ocean site [27°W 41°N]. The WB food-chain model and a scenario with monthly mean climatology.

VEW-STP 2 - Influence of weather

VEW-STP 3 - Upwelling

VEW-STP 4 - Epidemiology

VEW-STP 5 - Pollution

VEW-STP 6 - Eutrophication

VEW-STP 6 - Stability

VEW Advanced Teaching Packs

Each VEW-ATP contains a prescribed model, VEW Analyser and a teaching version of VEW Designer, which allows the teacher to tailor new virtual ecosystems to illustrate advanced concepts.

VEW-ATP 1 - Allometric sets of species

VEW-ATP 2 - Food webs

VEW-ATP 3 - Stochiometry

VEW-ATP 4 - Pigments

VEW-ATP 5 - Ocean colour