Quaardvark - the query aardvark 1 1
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. structured-text
