[Overview]
[Mendel's Principles of Heredity]
[Mitosis and Meiosis]
[Birds: Characteristics and Adaptations]
[Food Chains and Webs]
[The Biosphere]
[The Bottom Line]
[System Requirements]
[Purchasing Information]
Reviewed by
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Test Platform
Power Macintosh running System 8.0 with 32 Mb RAM
CyberEd Inc., an educational software publisher that develops multimedia CD-ROM teaching products for high school and introductory college courses, has introduced the Interactive Biology Multimedia series. The general topics covered in this series include plants and ecology; genetics; cell biology/biochemistry; and general biology. For each of these topics, six CD-ROMs cover important principles in detail.
Reviews of individual CD-ROM titles will be published in HMS Beagle over the next few months. Five titles are evaluated for this review: Mendel's Principles of Heredity; Mitosis and Meiosis; Birds: Characteristics and Adaptations; Food Chains and Webs; and the Biosphere.
Summary reviews appear below, each followed by links leading to complete reviews of each CD-ROM.
Mendel's Principles of Heredity
Mendel's Principles of Heredity presents a simple, limited introduction to Mendelian genetics. The CD-ROM offers several learning vehicles, including presentations, tutorials, and quizzes, that review the fundamentals of Mendel's experimental work with pea plants. It is marketed both for classroom presentation and for student self-tutorials.
Students should find the intuitive interface easy to use. However, the coverage is limited and the product fails to make full use of the power of multimedia presentations. Many introductory textbooks (e.g., Life: The Science of Biology, Purves et al., 1998) offer CD-ROMs and Web sites that are superior, both in breadth and depth of coverage.
Mitosis and Meiosis
Many students in introductory biology find the fundamentals of cell division and the cell cycle confusing. Students often have difficulty distinguishing between the process, significance, and final products of mitosis and those of meiosis. The two CDs in this series on mitosis and meiosis present this material clearly in discrete steps that students should find easy to understand.
Unfortunately, the division of this material into two separate CDs makes it difficult to compare the two processes directly. As with the other CDs in this series, the tutorials and self-tests are too simple to provide adequate conceptual feedback. These shortcomings limit the value of this product. It may be a useful supplement for non-majors courses, or for students with little background in science.
Birds: Characteristics and Adaptations
Birds: Characteristics and Adaptations is intended as a brief overview of the evolution and general features of birds. Unfortunately, this CD makes poor use of multimedia technology, is oversimplified to the point of being misleading, and contains some information that is completely incorrect. These problems make it unsuitable for any educational audience.
Food Chains and Webs
Food chains are fundamental ecosystem components. Students must understand how chains function before moving on to more complex forms of interaction. Food Chains and Webs clearly defines the terminology used in the description of chains, and introduces students to more complicated concepts such as energy pyramids and biological magnification. The use of multiple examples greatly strengthens the subject presentation, but the self-test features offer little.
The Biosphere
The Biosphere introduces many of the basic tenets of ecology, including ecosystem components, interspecific interactions, and biogeochemical cycles. It covers most of the terminology that beginning students will need, and acquaints students with the environment role that humans play. The tutorials and self-tests provided are largely ineffective, however. Thus the CD offers little meaningful feedback.
The Bottom Line
Although the topics covered by the Interactive Biology Multimedia series are relevant for high school and introductory college biology courses, this reviewer found the depth of the coverage to be limited, the tutorials too cursory, and the use of multimedia rather superficial. The CD-ROMs do not take full advantage of the ability to link hypertext to related information, and the lack of detail often leaves important principles unclear. Tests are limited to simple true/false questions, and sometimes include questions irrelevant to the important points of the presented material. In addition, feedback for these tests is too general to be useful. In some cases, the information presented is sloppy, misleading, or incorrect. Finally, CyberEd does not provide a way for students to take electronic notes, or to annotate or customize their course of study - critical components of effective learning in an electronic medium.
System Requirements
The Interactive Biology Multimedia series is available for Macintosh or Power Macintosh running System 7.5.1 or later, Windows 3.1x, Windows 95, and Windows NT 3.51 or 4.0 with 8 Mb RAM (12 Mb recommended) and 2 Mb hard disk space. In addition, computers must have a CD-ROM drive, a mouse, and video capabilities for displaying at least 256 colors, as well as a sound card and speakers. CyberEd's Web site explains how to use Interactive Biology Multimedia series on computer networks.
The Complete Interactive Biology Multimedia CD-ROM series (24 titles) is available from CyberEd, Inc. for $2,446.00. Products may also be purchased individually, or in bundles that cover specific topics. Contact CyberEd for information on network licensing and other pricing options. They can be reached by mail at P.O. Box 3037, Paradise, CA 95967, by email, by phone at (530) 872-2432 or toll free at (888) 318-0700, or by fax at (530) 872-2445. The CyberEd Web site offers additional details about each offered CD-ROM title, as well as supplemental course materials for registered users.
HMS Beagle will publish reviews of other titles in the CyberEd Interactive Biology Multimedia series in forthcoming editions, including Blood and Immune System; Cell Respiration; Cell Structure; DNA; DNA to Protein; and Viruses.
Gary Fortier recently served as visiting assistant professor in the Department of Biology at Indiana University. He has recently accepted a new position as assistant professor in the Department of Small Animal Science at Delaware Valley College in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.