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Authentic learning, defined as direct engagement with real-world problems, data, and professional practices, is widely cited for improving STEMM students’ knowledge, skills, and retention. Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) and research experiences for undergraduates (REUs) increase students’ understanding of scientific content and processes, and STEMM career interest. However, these experiences are often resource and time intensive. As a result, many students are unable to access these formative experiences due to differences in ability, financial constraints, or family and caregiving responsibilities. Open educational resources can broaden access to authentic learning, especially for place-based learning in tropical field settings. We introduce a new concept of free interactive research-based experiences (FIREs) as a category of instructional design that has many of the benefits of CUREs and REUs while removing many barriers. As a case study, we present the Online Content for Experiential Learning of Tropical Systems (OCELOTS) network and their open-access modules that are grounded in peer-reviewed tropical biology research. Hosted on the Gala platform, these modules are adaptable, multilingual, and integrative; they feature real data sets, visualizations, and simulations for instructors to implement authentic learning without specialized infrastructure. Instructor feedback from OCELOTS module implementations highlights gains in student engagement, conceptual understanding, and appreciation for real-world science. We argue that FIREs complement existing authentic learning frameworks and should be part of a diverse set of authentic learning opportunities used by educators. As a community, we should prioritize the assessment of short- and long-term impacts of FIREs on student outcomes to guide further adoption and funding support. 

Climate change and biodiversity loss require us to engage the next generation of scientists in addressing global ecological issues. Introducing undergraduate students to citizen science allows them to learn scientific processes and content while contributing to real‐world applications. We conducted a systematic review of literature to (1) identify what types of undergraduate courses and institutions use citizen science, (2) list the projects and platforms that have been implemented in online courses in undergraduate education, (3) examine how students participated in the projects through online courses, and (4) summarize learning objectives and reported benefits of student participation. In all, 44 studies about the use of citizen science in undergraduate online courses were found in 25 papers in the published literature. The most common projects consisted of classification of species or natural history (e.g., iNaturalist), which could be done mainly online but with data collection completed at a location available to the student. Citizen science projects were incorporated into multiple course formats (e.g., lecture, lab) and class sizes, and students were most frequently asked to collect and submit data. The most frequently reported learning outcomes included increased student interest/engagement, improved appreciation for the relevance of science to the “real world,” and practice using the scientific process, but rigorous assessment data were lacking in papers. The use of citizen science in online courses and institutions appears to be increasing, and we encourage faculty using these approaches with students to publish on their efforts, providing details about their implementation, assessment, and course context.