Creating undergraduate investigations using online ecological data

Background/Question/Methods The explosion of web-based ecological datasets presents an unprecedented opportunity for students to feasibly investigate their own scientific questions. Undergraduate research experiences currently tend to be reserved for upper-division courses or individually mentored students. With funding from an NSF Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement grant, a team of Cornell scientists, educators, and information scientists is creating curriculum resources designed to provide authentic research experiences in diverse class settings, including introductory courses, large lectures, and evening or online sections. Even in courses with no opportunities for fieldwork, students can engage in scientific investigations using biodiversity databases maintained by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The goal of this project is to provide faculty with organized access to appropriate databases and visualization tools for use in student research into the ecology, conservation and behavior of birds and other animals. Although classroom use of online data is a natural fit for today's undergraduates, faculty interested in engaging students in research face a number of difficult decisions regarding how much direction to provide. We are developing resources that introduce current topics of interest, describe the kinds of questions and analyses for which a dataset is best suited, and give examples of the types of decisions to be made and steps to be taken to carry out various types of investigations.

Results/Conclusions Ecological databases can be used either to teach specific concepts or theories in an experiential way, or to develop research skills and knowledge about these databases and their analysis tools. Citizen-science databases such as eBird, with its 21 million records, enable students to investigate how the abundance and distribution of bird populations relates to environmental variables such as average winter temperatures or land cover. We are also providing faculty with guidance on how students can use animal sounds and videos from the Macaulay Library, some of which date back to the 1920s, as sources of primary data in behavioral ecology studies. We will ultimately suggest ways to integrate visualization, statistics, literature review, and writing into student research projects, and provide example rubrics to facilitate peer review and consistent grading. We invite faculty from a wide range of institutions to provide feedback and pilot curriculum resources. Stop by our poster to pick up examples of curriculum resources and learn how to become involved in a network of faculty implementing innovative web-based research experiences in teaching.