XVI International Botanical Congess

Plant structure (both morphology and anatomy) remains a basic requirement of any undergraduate course, and is essential to an understanding of function. The challenge is to present this material as palatable and challenging. All students have access to a teaching CD that covers all the basic plant structures as scanned images. This self-paced learning tool has text and audio covering all cells, tissues and organs, plus a self-test on all sections. The package includes a full hypertext glossary, pull-down labels and multiple views. This is supplemented by microscope slides in the lab. The lecture material emphasizes functional aspects of the various organs and tissues. The heart of the exercise is in the laboratory, where instead of ploughing through structure by structure, students undertake a project in which they have to present a comparative report, written as if for publication in a named journal, of the structure of plant organs. They learn to section and stain specimens and to make fluorescence and light photomicrographs. Examples of student work will be presented.