Starting up TE2LE UNIS

Teach to Learn (TE2LE) is an ongoing project within bioCEED where students are making their own tutorial videos. The aim of the project is to teach students in biology cross-disciplinary transferrable skills through the application of an innovative pedagogical practice, says project leader Anne-Laure Simonelli.To read more about the project TE2LE click here!

This semester TE2LE was introduced to the bachelor students at Arctic Ecology and Population Biology (AB-204) at UNIS and along with course leader Øystein Varpe, Jonathan Soulé from bioCEED Bergen were setting up the project.  The focus area is the Adventdalen estuary where the students practice counting  purple sandpiper, observing the birds’ behavior and look into prey resources in the estuary. The students will make their own videos about the statistical analyses required for research questions asked based on this study system.

Jonathan setting up the camera

Students looking for amphipodes underneath the rocks

Amphipodes form one of several prey resources for the sandpipers. The amphipodes hide under rocks. At low tide we can study them easily by looking under the rock

The purple sandpiper (Calidris maritima) is the most abundant shorebird breeding in Svalbard. The Adventdalen estuary close to Longyearbyen is one feeding habitat, where more than thousand birds may aggregate during the peak spring feeding period, prior to the tundra nesting.