Engaging undergraduate students in exploring ecological pattern and processes using large, public datasets: explaining the latitudinal gradients in species diversity

Background/Question/Methods   Ecologists study patterns and processes at many levels, so teaching ecology to undergraduates should include the analysis of patterns in nature and their explanation due to ecological processes. But the most common way of teaching is to show a pattern to the students, followed by the description of the related ecological process, or vice versa. This project aims to produce activity modules that help teachers to explore and analyze patterns using public datasets, and to contrast the data with existing theories and/or student's proposed hypothesis on the processes involved. I will present the development and implementation of an activity module on the following main question: what causes latitudinal gradients in biodiversity? The implementation of the project will follow the 5e approach: engagement, exploration, explanation, elaboration, evaluation. The activity will be implemented in two General Ecology sections (N = 50) this semester (Spring 2010), during two class sessions: (1) to set the question, formulate hypotheses, and guide students to find and process data from public databases, (2) students will statistically test their hypotheses and discuss alternatives. Finally, students write a report on the activity with a cycle of anonymous peer review.

Results/Conclusions   Results from a pre-test (N = 34) have shown that 79 % of the students can draw an acceptable graph on the hypothetical relationship between latitude and species richness, 56 % showed that there are more species in the Equator, 91 % did produce a written explanation of their graph (not evaluated for correctness), 56 % could identify an explanatory variable for the latitude-biodiversity relationship, and just 21 % indicated that a public database is a source of data to test their hypotheses. I will present the results and discussion on this implementation, along with recommendations to extend the activity to other ecological questions. This project is a component of an ongoing collaboration between the Ecological Society of America (ESA), the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) to improve undergraduate ecology education using large, continental-scale data sets.