Accessible life cycles of British Columbia seaweeds

Project Title	Accessible life cycles of British Columbia seaweeds
Principal Investigator	Bridgette Clarkston
Co-Applicants	Linda P.J. Lipsen (Jennings),
Faculty	Science
Funding Year	2023
Project Summary	A challenge to teaching or learning about seaweeds is that too often the details of life cycles are inaccessible to a non-expert because they are not published outside of the primary literature, or are contained only in a specialty textbook (and therefore usually hard to access) or contain only expert-level terminology that is not explained for a non-expert audience. The issue of life cycles being largely inaccessible also extends to UBC’s specialty courses in seaweeds (Biology 320: Survey of Algae and Biology 209: Biodiversity of Algae, Fungi and Bryophytes). Both courses rely on only a few illustrations of exemplar life cycles drawn specifically for the course lab manual because most life cycles are not published outside of the primary literature and those that are can be found only in specialty textbooks that are prohibitively expensive. This project seeks to create high-quality life cycle illustrations for a selection of common seaweeds of British Columbia. These life cycles will include descriptions of stages and structures for both an expert and non-expert audience and alt-text for screen reading software. The life cycles will become part of redeveloped lab manuals for the Biology 320 and 209 courses as well as be available online for anyone to use and modify for educational purposes.
Project Poster	Designing accessible seaweed life cycle illustrations
Link to OER	https://explore.beatymuseum.ubc.ca/algae/
Grant type	OER Rapid Innovation
Funded Amount	$1,338.00