Peer Review

University of Wisconsin Botanical Image Library

Material Detail page

Reviewed:: Mar 31, 2016 by Biology

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:: This is a great website for learning about plants at the University of Wisconsin. It provides a great learning tool for insight into plant parts and cells. The site is an extensive collection of images and powerpoint slides related to botany and fungi. You should be able to find images to illustrate most plant groups, plant anatomy, and physiology. Included are surveys of plants from an ecological perspective.
Type of Material:: This site is a collection that provides great images and text which can serve as a great resource for students.
Recommended Uses:: The site serves as a collection of botanical images that can be accessed by anyone for use in their own educational endeavors. The material can be used in the classroom and for individual study.
Technical Requirements:: This material needs only a basic browser and the ability to view images. PowerPoint or PowerPoint viewer.
Identify Major Learning Goals:: There are no specific learning outcomes given. The purpose of the site is to provide a library of non-proprietary botanical images that can be freely accessed by faculty anywhere to use in teaching botany and mycology. Users will learn about the parts of the plants and how it differs among different plants.
Target Student Population:: High school, undergraduate students at all levels, and faculty will greatly benefit from this site.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:: There are no prerequisites for this site, although some knowledge of the anatomy of plants will help in better comprehension.

Content Quality

Rating:

Strengths:

High quality, accurately labeled images
Links to PowerPoint presentations about botany and ecology of Wisconsin
It includes images of cell and plant structures
Organized into separate collections accumulated by different people/institutions
Includes herbarium collection organized into a wide variety of categories
Most of the images are good quality
Images are appropriately categorized
The quality of graphics is very good
Images are beautiful and very colorful

Concerns:

The website would be better if there were videos or animations
There were no other major concerns about the content quality at the time of this review

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:

Strengths:

The wide variety of images could be used for an equally wide variety of purposes
Collection would be especially valuable for organizing images for a new course or for presentations/lectures
Images are all accurately labeled to make it easier to identify what you need
Contains information on organization of a general botany course (100 level)
This is a good searchable database
The images shown are colorful and engaging
This is a good site for getting a better idea of what might be seen in nature or under the microscope
The material is logically presented

Concerns:

There were no concerns about potential teaching effectiveness at the time of this review
The organization of the material may make it difficult to find all images on a given topic without scanning through several parts of the collection

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

Much of the collection is organized taxonomically
All links are valid
Easy to browse through images
Accurate labeling helps identify desired images
The information is well organized
Very easy to navigate to the different major sections of the site
Information is easy to understand

Concerns:

Although the collection is organized within each section, there is no search capability to help a new user fined all materials on specific topic
The main page could use more complete descriptions of what each link contains

Other Issues and Comments:: The authors have done a great job with this site, but the authors should be encouraged to update the material at this site.
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