BIOTALENT Free Course

                                                                                                        Forget-me-not (Myosotis sp.) ©NHMC-Trichas A.

A course for the development of knowledge, skills and competences of science educators, nature guides and anyone interested in biodiversity.

Are you interested in the living world?
Do you want to know exactly what biodiversity means?
Do you want to know what threatens plants and animals on our planet?
Do you want to understand how climate change drives wildlife into extinction?

Free online course
Language: English

ABOUT THE COURSE
You will not only learn about biodiversity and climate change with the help of medicinal plants, amphibians and reptiles but also make your own inquiries following the Inquiry Based Learning methodology, towards understanding why we call our age the 6th wave of mass extinction of Earth’s biota.

COURSE MODULES
ONLINE LEARNING COMPONENT

General module: Biodiversity and Climate Change
Duration:  6 weeks - 20 learning hours (3-4 h weekly commitment)

In the general module Biodiversity and Climate Change you will learn about biodiversity and its importance to the planet and to us, its inhabitants. You will investigate the causes of climate change and its consequences for biodiversity as well as other threats wiping species off the surface of Earth. You will discover how biodiversity is studied and why scientific collections are tremendous assets for research in taxonomy and other disciplines.

Case study modules: Herpetofauna and Medicinal Plants
Duration each module: 6 weeks - 20 learning hours (3-4 h weekly commitment)

In the Herpetofauna module you will learn about the ecological relevance of amphibians and reptiles, their use as indicator for environmental health, their potential in medicine, the causes of loss of the diversity of amphibians and reptiles and what this means for the environment and human life.

In the Medicinal Plants module you will study the diversity of plants and their habitats as well as the complexity of biogeography. You will learn how climate change and other threatening factors affect plant diversity. You will explore how plants serve as resource for humans, and discover that many plant species have potential for medicine.

ATTENDED LEARNING COMPONENT  (this component was organised in the framework of the ERASMUS+ programme from 20-24 May 2019)
Duration: 5 consecutive training days (40 learning hours)

In the framework of the ERASMUS+ programme, 20 participants who successfully completed the online part of the course had the possibility to attend the Training on-the-job module. This module included scientific collections-based and field sessions on the island of Crete, based upon the online learning component. Participants had a first-hand experience with scientific collections and field work.

Have a look at the programme here.

What will you achieve?

Meet our team of experts

Access the BIOTALENT e-learning platform here

Questions? Write to info@cetaf.org or ivandvelde@naturalsciences.be

NOTE: Except where otherwise specified, all course resources are: “© BIOTALENT project”, published in open access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) which permits remix, transform and build upon the material non-commercially, as long as the original author and source are credited and new creations are distributed under the same license as the original.

This course is an output of the BIOTALENT project funded by ERASMUS+ KA2 Strategic Partnerships for Vocational Education and Training*.
*2016-1-BE02-KA202-017356

Course has been selected as a BEST PRACTICE example.

Scratchpads developed and conceived by (alphabetical): Ed Baker, Katherine Bouton Alice Heaton Dimitris Koureas, Laurence Livermore, Dave Roberts, Simon Rycroft, Ben Scott, Vince Smith