Programme de bourses "Echanges Universitaires"
Plant ecology e-course ALPANDINO in La Paz
Teaching alpine plant ecology based on biological principles is not what many mountain universities are able offer despite their placement close to major mountain ranges. We developed a 10 lecture units package of alpine plant ecology that had been converted into Spanish during the last year, with the help of the Swiss developmental council. The original course had many more lecture units and was called ALPECOLe and included many aspects rather specific to the Alps (e.g. glaciology, animal biology and palaeoecology). For this Spanish version we selected those units of the plant ecolgy part that have a general applicability on any mountain (authored by Ch. Körner and J. Stöcklin, Basel Switzerland). This e-learning course is now called ALPANDINO and was offered for free to Latin American universities. While the theoretical concepts are valid anywhere, most illustrations have been converted to Latin American examples, in order to appeal to both students and tutors in Latin America.
In order to introduce the course and brief potential lectures, the course was inaugurated on 21 and 22 March 2011, in La Paz Bolivia. We invited experts from various parts of Latin America to participate this introduction to the use of ALPANDINO in university teaching. A commercial use is not permitted. See the attached program and participant list.
During the well attended course, I explained the conceptual framework, and together with two of my coworkers, who speak Spanish (unlike myself), I went through the lectures and supplied supplementary material (including a copy of Alpine Plant Life (Springer) on which this course is largely based on.
We offered a free round trip from the respective home cities, as well as accomodation and subsistance in La Paz for a maximum of 4 nights/3 days, a number of CDs of ALPANDINO (free for further copying, as well as free download option), a copy of the text book Alpine Plant Life (Springer) by Ch. Körner (2003).
Below the English titles of each of the 10 ALPANDINO lecture units corresponding to 1-2 course work units of 45 minutes oral teaching. The course can be used either as a true self-learning tool with a small amount of tutor involvement (maybe three meetings with students), but it can also be used instead of a power point supported oral lecture in classical frontal teaching. Many of the schemes used are animated.
- Dynamic mountain climate
- Why treelines?
- Plants and climatic stress
- Alpine plants and water
- Alpine plant nutrition
- Alpine Plants' carbon relations and growth
- Atmospheric influences (global change)
- Plant reproduction
- Clonal growth and longevitynlpine plant nutritionB1
- Visit the Alpine (global excursion)
- Visit the treeline (global excursion)
- Glossary of terms
The course was a great success, and the participants stayed for the appended workshop on Thursday afternoon on sustainable land use in the Bolivian Altiplano, the final presentation of our DEZA/SNF-funded project. Participants also joined us to a field trip to our research site in Sajama. We had a very vivid and fruitful discussion with the local stakeholders (see photographs). This was a perfect practical addition to the ALPANDINO course. Below the link to the ALPANDINO website.
Prof. Christian Körner
Institute of botany
University of Basel
Schönbeinstrasse 6
4056 Basel
Tel: +41 61 267 35 10
Fax: +41 61 267 350 04
E-Mail: ch.koerner@unibas.ch
