Using contemporary science and technology to transform how we teach ecological topics: a funding agency's perspective

Background/Question/Methods: Over the past several years, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has paid increased attention to broader impacts of its scientific projects. Many ecological researchers may not realize their cutting-edge scientific and technological efforts may be used (or adapted for use) in the classroom. In the past two years, the Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) within the Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR) has funded several projects and ideas that promote the use of new technology within ecological disciplines that also benefit student learning. With few exceptions, such proposals from the ecological community are a rare subset of the overall number of scientifically-focused proposals within the ecological discipline. In many cases, ecologists have expressed a lukewarm interest in adapting their science to fit within their classrooms. The reasons for the lack of interest are manifold and complicated but NSF-funded initiatives like Vision and Change (that espouses the view that the biology we teach should reflect the biology we do) have encouraged biologists to implement contemporary scientific activities that will engage their students.

Results/Conclusions: NSF continues to look for (and fund) innovative and potentially transformative examples of research-based ecological projects involving students. Recent awards described in the presentation will showcase how ecologists may bring their best scientific ideas and tools to the educational table. Some of these examples have been focused on innovatively crowdsourcing some of the most labor-intensive (but scientifically important) elements of the project to undergraduates who benefit from engaging in the process and wrestling with the scientific matter. Moreover, the presentation will describe some of the existing web-based tools that could be adapted by the ecological community to help actively tackle the process of adapting their scientific ideas to fit within the educational sphere (in and out of the classroom). As an example, many scientists (including many biologists) have been instrumental in developing assessment tools and evidence-based strategies that would allow ecologists to efficiently assess if their efforts are improving student learning. These (and other) educational tools have reduced the barriers that have prevented biologists from developing and using their technologically-based ideas in the classroom. These are among the many developments that have made progressive changes to our educational environment and have promoted scientific-teaching in the classroom. Funding technologically-based educational tools can (and should) precipitate more wholesale improvements in the learning of important ecological concepts if we can move the community to consider their use and assessment.