Peer Review

American Society for Microbiology Education Resource Library

Material Detail page

Reviewed:: Nov 13, 2011 by Biology

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:: The American Society for Microbiology Educational Resource Library is an extraordinary tool for educators in the field of microbiology. This site contains expert peer-reviewed lecture and laboratory based activities that span everything from immunology to evolution. The laboratory protocols include images and are supported with detailed information about the background, theory, and application of each protocol. Each curriculum activity comes with easy to follow instructor handouts. In the summer of 2012 the library will be adding a critical thinking question bank designed to promote an interactive learning environment.
Type of Material:: This site includes a collection that can be used to find images, media briefs, and laboratory protocols for microbiology. It is an expert peer-reviewed digital media center containing inquiry-based, student-driven materials and activities developed by faculty from many institutions.
Recommended Uses:: The material is recommended for use in the classroom, laboratory, and for research projects.
Technical Requirements:: This is a straightforward site that requires only a browser to view HTML/Text as well as images. Adobe Flash Player may be needed for the videos.
Identify Major Learning Goals:: The goals are to promote good pedagogy in microbiology, foster scholarly teaching, and enhance understanding about the microbial world.
Target Student Population:: The primary target population is microbiology educators. The material is suitable for teaching both undergraduate and graduate courses.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:: There are no prerequisites for this site, although some knowledge of microbiology will help in understanding what is presented.

Content Quality

Rating:

Strengths:

The information is an accurate representation of what is studied in microbiology
Curriculum activities include assessment tools and student feedback
Most of the images are good quality
Images are appropriately categorized
The breadth of the material is outstanding, including simple disease transmission activities to complex functional genomics activities

Concerns:

It would be nice to have the material organized by topic area
The inclusion of additional animations and/or videos for each topic area would be great for this site

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:

Strengths:

This is a good site for previewing what might be encountered in a microbiology lab
Each curriculum activity comes with separate student and instructor handouts, which makes them very easy to implement
The collection provides many interactive learning exercises, which promote the application of the information
The laboratory protocols provide an excellent tool for lab preparation and delivery of the information to the students
There are plans for a critical thinking question bank and video clips, which would be great additions to the site
Assessments and field test data are included with each curriculum exercise

Concerns:

The critical thinking question bank and video clips are not yet available

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

The information is organized by groupings of specimens that can be viewed
A logical progression of material is presented
No defective links or major bugs were found
Animations loaded quickly and ran smoothly at the time of this review

Concerns:

At the time of this review there was no search engine to specifically find materials
It would be beneficial if some information was organized by topic

Other Issues and Comments:: This is a good general site for students and professionals to give them an idea of what images may be encountered and what protocols are used in a typical microbiology laboratory.
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