98th ESA Annual Meeting (August 4 -- 9, 2013)

August 03 - 09, 2013

WK 36

Got data? Visualizing and Manipulating Ecological Data Sets to Support Undergraduate Learning

As biology becomes increasingly quantitative, the need for quantitative literacy among biology graduates grows. Indeed, the abilities to reason with and communicate data are key learning outcomes for undergraduate biology education, as articulated by both Vision and Change and Scientific Foundations for Future Physicians. However, embedding quantitative reasoning in undergraduate courses remains challenging for several reasons, including time constraints to both develop and implement modules and identifying appropriate data sets to support quantitative learning goals. This workshop will support the development of teaching activities that target quantitative literacy using existing ecological data sets (e.g., LTER, NutNet, GenBank, PalDat) that can be deployed across a range of classes, including large lectures. We will focus on how to design activities to help students learn basic quantitative skills, including data visualization, descriptive statistics, and data interpretation. Through this workshop, participants will work collaboratively to (1) identify existing data sets (both small and large) that can be readily used in the undergraduate classroom, (2) identify the cognitive skills needed to collect, analyze, and interpret data, and (3) develop an activity using existing data that targets a range of quantitative skills. Armed with data sets, participants will leave with the foundational knowledge to integrate data and predict common undergraduate errors in data representations and manipulations in their classrooms. We invite faculty, postdocs, and graduate students to join us as we explore quantitative literacy in the undergraduate classroom.