ADW: Quaardvark - the query aardvark

With funding from the National Science Foundation's Course Curriculum and Lab Improvement program (award #0633095), the Animal Diversity Web team implemented an advanced search tool we call Quaardvark (in homage to aardvarks, exceptionally good diggers).

The structured data that make up the species accounts are available for research through this tool. Students use Quaardvark to investigate questions based on important principles in ecological and organismal biology. After specifying what animals they are interested in (the query) and what they want to know about those animals (the report), students are presented with data in a spreadsheet-like format. Students explore and analyze the data using familiar tools (such as Excel). This allows students to discover for themselves the patterns underlying important biological concepts through open-ended exploration of real data.

Quaardvark has been tested at five different institutions, and was well-received by students and faculty alike.

University of Michigan Museum of Zoology

Citation: Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2006. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed June 01, 2012 at http://animaldiversity.org.
Sponsored in part by the Interagency Education Research Initiative,
the Homeland Foundation and the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants DUE-0633095 and DRL-0628151.
The ADW Team gratefully acknowledges their support. Report Error — Comment
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