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The Animal Diversity Web team obtained funding from the Encyclopedia of Life's Biodiversity Synthesis Center to host a workshop entitled "species-focused writing and web contributions to enhance undergraduate biology research skills and learning." From October 22 to 24, 2009, 23 participants met at the Field Museum in Chicago to discuss the wide variety of existing efforts to build databases of natural history information by leveraging the efforts of students. Participants included biologists and biology faculty, education researchers, and database technology specialists and included representatives from large biodiversity databases (EOL, ADW, AmphibiaWeb, INBIO) and a variety of national and international educational institutions.

The workshop highlighted perspectives from educators and education researchers on the value of species account writing in science education. The workshop went exceptionally well and much progress was made towards a best practices guide and publication on the value of species-account writing in science classrooms. The workshop made great progress towards establishing productive communication among the most active members of this community.

Please also see the EOL blog post about this workshop on the EOL blog.