Year 2 Biological Sciences students visited Natural History Museum and a Botanical Garden

A field trip was arranged for Year 2 students in Biological Sciences in the School of Science. The students studying BIO101 (Biodiversity of Animals, Plants and Microbes) visited Shanghai Natural History Museum and Shanghai Chenshan Botanical Garden in December 2023. Eighty-five students joined the trip.

At the Natural History Museum, the students visited various exhibits such as “Mysterious Beginnings, River of Life, Ways of Evolution, Ecological diversity, Colourful Life, Earth Treasures and Exploration Labs”. Through these exhibits, the students learned about the origin of life, extinct and extant (surviving) animals, fossil records, various insects and evolution of human and other mammals.

At the Botanical Garden, the students explored a huge collection of live plants in the conservatory including seedless plants, naked seed plants (gymnosperms) and a variety of flowering plants (angiosperms). Particularly, the students were able to see many endemic and endangered plants at the garden. The greenhouses in the botanical garden exhibited collections of "plants with colourful flowers, tropical plants, and plants that normally grow in dry regions", which provided a rare chance for the students to observe plants from various geographical regions in one place.

Botanical Garden

The trip was organized by the module leader, Dr Sekar Raju with support from the Department of Biological Sciences, School of Science at XJTLU. Dr Raju commented that “The field trip was very relevant to BIO101 students as they study the diversity of animals, plants and microbes in this module. The visit provided them with the opportunity to connect the contents they learned in the classroom to the real world”. “It was not possible to arrange similar field trips in the last few years due to epidemic control regulations and it is good that the current cohort of students had the opportunity to join the field trip’, Dr Raju added.

Yueqi Wang, a student from the BIO101 class commented that “The field trip is fabulous. I solidified much knowledge learnt in the module through the actual fossils, models and animations in the museum. In the Botanical garden, we were able to see various plants with Dr Sekar Raju explaining the key features for us”.

Natural History Museum

“It's such a wonderful trip that I have seen lots of things studied in lecture with a different new perspective. It's also a perfect way to release the pressure in the end of semester”, Jingxi Zhang, another student from the same class, commented on the trip.

Dr Raju thanked the Department of Biological Sciences and School of Science for the financial support provided for the field trip and Shuang Liu, Xinhe Qi, Yueqi Wang, Jingxi Zhang and Zixun Wang for their support with the field trip arrangements.