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

August 03 - 09, 2013

WK 42

Ecological Inquiry in a Virtual World

Inquiry-based learning is especially desirable in the context of ecology education, given the field-observational and experimental orientations of the discipline. However, opportunities for field-based inquiries may be limited for introductory ecology courses that are large or have limited time or access to suitable field sites. A virtual learning environment called Virtual Ecological Inquiry (VEI) was developed in Second Life based on the ecology of the Wolong Nature Reserve to enable inquiry-based learning and assessment of student learning. Students can explore the ecology of Wolong in a virtual museum, formulate hypotheses on the pattern of vegetation and influencing factors and design their field investigation, “teleport” to a series of virtual field sites in Wolong to conduct field sampling, analyze their data in a virtual lab, and develop their ecological report. Main activities and spatial locations of individual students in VEI can be recorded for analysis of learning process and behavior. VEI has been implemented in a large-enrollment introductory ecology course in Fall 2011 and Fall 2012 and refined through the process. This workshop will explore the inquiry process in VEI and its potential implementations in various class settings. The participants will learn about the structure and inquiry process in VEI, review associated pedagogical design and instruments, examine the experience and research findings from our implementations, and explore possible use of VEI in their own classes and potential collaborations in multi-institutional research.