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With the growing availability and accessibility of big data in ecology, we face an urgent need to train the next generation of scientists in data science practices and tools. One of the biggest barriers for implementing a data-driven curriculum in undergraduate classrooms is the lack of training and support for educators to develop their own skills and time to incorporate these principles into existing courses or develop new ones. Alongside the research goals of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), providing education and training are key components for building a community of scientists and users equipped to utilize large-scale ecological and environmental data. To address this need, the NEON Data Education Fellows program formed as a collaborative Faculty Mentoring Network (FMN) between scientists from NEON and university faculty interested in using NEON data and resources in their ecology classrooms. Like other FMNs, this group has two main goals: 1) to provide tools, resources, and support for faculty interested in developing data-driven curriculum, and (2) to make teaching materials that have been implemented and tested in the classroom available as open educational resources for other educators. We hosted this program using an open education and collaboration platform from the Quantitative Undergraduate Biology Education and Synthesis (QUBES) project. Here, we share lessons learned from facilitating five FMN cohorts and emphasize the successes, pitfalls, and opportunities for developing open education resources through community-driven collaborations.
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Flexible and Inclusive Ecology Projects that Harness Collaboration and NEON‐Enabled Science to Enhance Student Learning
Abstract The COVID‐19 pandemic significantly impacted undergraduate education and fundamentally altered the structure of course delivery in higher education. In field‐based biology and ecology courses, where instructors and students typically work collaboratively and in‐person to collect data, this has been particularly challenging. In this context, faculty from the Ecological Research as Education Network (EREN) collaborated with the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) to design five free‐flexible learning projects for use by instructors in varied modalities (e.g., socially distanced in‐person, remote, or HyFlex). The five flexible learning projects incorporated the Ecological Society of America’s 4DEE framework and included field data collection, data analysis components, and an activity that incorporates existing NEON field protocols or datasets. Each project was designed to provide faculty members with a high degree of flexibility so that they could tailor the implementation of the projects to fit course‐specific needs. Collectively, these learning projects were designed to be flexible, inclusive, and facilitate hands‐on research while working in alternative classroom settings.
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- PAR ID:
- 10446426
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America
- Volume:
- 103
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0012-9623
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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