Ask A Biologist is a science outreach program originating from

Arizona State University Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public university, public research university in Tempe, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 as Territorial Normal School by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, the university is o ...

's School of

Life Sciences This list of life sciences comprises the branches of science that involve the scientific study of life – such as microorganisms, plants, and animals including human beings. This science is one of the two major branches of natural science, ...

, a unit of the

ASU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at ASU is the largest college at Arizona State University and includes 21 schools and departments. Students majoring in The College make up 19 percent of all campus immersion students and 24 percent of all ...

About the program

Ask A Biologist is a pre-kindergarten through high school program dedicated to answering questions from students, their teachers, and parents. The program's primary focus is to connect students and teachers with working scientists through a question-and-answer web e-mail form. The companion website also includes a large collection of free content and activities that can be used inside, as well as outside, of the classroom. The award-winning program has been continuously running for more than 25 years, with the assistance of more than 150 volunteer scientists, faculty, and graduate students in biology and related fields. In 2010 the program released its new website interface and features that became the subject for articles in the journals

Science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

and

PLOS Biology ''PLOS Biology'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of biology. Publication began on October 13, 2003. It is the first journal published by the Public Library of Science. The editor-in-chief is Nonia Pariente. In ...

Primary audience

Ask A Biologist materials are free and open to anyone with access to the World-Wide-Web. The question portion of the program serves primarily students, grades pre

K-12 K-1 is a professional kickboxing promotion established in 1993 by karateka Kazuyoshi Ishii. Originally under the ownership of the Fighting and Entertainment Group (FEG), K-1 was considered to be the largest Kickboxing organization in the world. ...

, as well as their teachers and parents. In addition, lifelong learners are encouraged to use the website materials.

History

Ask A Biologist was launched late in 1997 by Charles Kazilek in the School of Life Sciences, with an early version viewable on the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

a.k.a. The WayBackMachine. Initially, the site consisted solely of a question submission form, a feature that remains one of its core activities. By 2001, the site had grown to over 1,000 pages of content, including articles about current research, profiles of scientists, an image gallery, mystery images, puzzles, coloring pages, quizzes, and science activities. In 2003, the website released the Virtual Pocket Seed Experiment, the first of several data sets that could be used in and outside of the classroom. The experiment was based on the classic seed germination experiment, but included the feature of time-lapse animation of various seed experiments. In 2004, a second data set was released, in cooperation with Audubon Arizona. The Virtual Bird Aviary, included the majority of bird species found in the Southwest United States including more than 400 vocal recordings and companion sonograms, bird images, text descriptions, and range maps. In 2005, the website was peer-reviewed by the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT), earning a "five out of five stars" rating. In 2006, the website introduced the Mysterious World of Dr. Biology a

comic book A comic book, comic-magazine, or simply comic is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panel (comics), panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are often accompanied by descriptive prose and wri ...

adventure. The activity encouraged students to piece together a mystery. Students reconstructed a chain of events in the Dr. Biology laboratory and field site, writing their own narrative for the story. Early in 2007, Ask A Biologist became one of the early content channels on

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

U with its audio

podcast A podcast is a Radio program, program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. Typically, a podcast is an Episode, episodic series of digital audio Computer file, files that users can download to a personal device or str ...

of the same name. Hosted by Dr. Biology, the program was soon listed as one of five great courses by Macworld. Some of the guest scientists interviewed on the show included

biologist A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual Cell (biology), cell, a multicellular organism, or a Community (ecology), community of Biological inter ...

s and

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...

-winning authors Edward O. Wilson and

Bert Hölldobler Berthold Karl Hölldobler BVO (born 25 June 1936) is a German zoologist, sociobiologist and evolutionary biologist who studies evolution and social organization in ants. He is the author of several books, including '' The Ants'', for which he ...

, as well as

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

and writer

Paul Davies Paul Charles William Davies (born 22 April 1946) is an English physicist, writer and broadcaster, a professor in Arizona State University and director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science. He is affiliated with the Institute ...

. In 2008, the audio podcast program introduced a co-host contest that offered students in the Phoenix metro area the opportunity to meet and interview working scientists. In 2009, the

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

(NSF) funded the redesign of the Ask A Biologist website including the addition of

Web 2.0 Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture, and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, a ...

tools as part of the

National Science Digital Library National Science Digital Library (NSDL) of the United States is an open-access online digital library A digital library (also called an online library, an internet library, a digital repository, a library without walls, or a digital collectio ...

(NSDL). In 2010, Ask A Biologist released its new website developed using a Web content management tool

Drupal Drupal () is a free and open-source web content management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Drupal provides an open-source back-end framework for at least 14% of the top 10,000 websites worldwide ...

and adding Web 2.0 options. The new content management expanded website features including translations of content into French and Spanish and an improved interface for audio streaming. The website was officially accessioned by the NSDL in September. In 2011 two new sections were added to the website. Body Depot is a collaborative project with the Arizona Science Center funded by the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Service ...

(NIH). PLOSable is a project that links plain language and kid-friendly reviews to primary source publications in journals of the

Public Library of Science PLOS (for Public Library of Science; PLoS until 2012) is a nonprofit publisher of open-access journals in science, technology, and medicine and other scientific literature, under an open-content license. It was founded in 2000 and launched its ...

. In 2011 the first games are released, Monster Maker, Busy Bones, and Skeleton Viewer. In 2017 virtual tours using VR 360 still images are introduced. In 2019 all games and simulations are converted to

HTML5 HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language 5) is a markup language used for structuring and presenting hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It was the fifth and final major HTML version that is now a retired World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend ...

in advance of the retirement of

Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a mostly discontinuedAlthough it is discontinued by Adobe Inc., for the Chinese market it is developed by Zhongcheng and for the international enterprise market it is developed by Ha ...

. During 2020 the website passes 100 million lifetime visits. In 2023 virtual tours 2.0 are released including the use of an

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

text-to-speech tour guide named Bella.

Available content

Stories about BiologyStories about BiologistsGames and SimulationsBody DepotBiology BitsPLOSableImage GalleryPuzzles – Word Search & CrosswordColoring PagesMysterious World of Dr. Biology comic book adventure activityAudio PodcastsCo-host ContestUgly Bug ContestBird Finder ToolBiology Virtual Reality Tours

Awards

2010

Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE). American Association for the Advancement of Science ( AAAS). 2008 Silver Quill Award of Excellence. International Association of Business Communicators Southern Region. 2004 Digital Education Achievement Award. The Center for Digital Education. 2004 Exemplary Web Site Award. Arizona Technology in Education Alliance. 2003 President's Award for Innovation. Arizona State University.

References

External links

Ask A Biologist

Audubon Arizona

Arizona State University's School of Life Sciences
{{biology-footer Arizona State University Biology websites Internet properties established in 1997 American educational websites