PS 12-96
Using EcoEdDL to enhance student learning in undergraduate ecology courses
EcoEd Digital Library (http://www.esa.org/ecoed/) is ESA’s searchable online catalog of resources for teaching undergraduate ecology. Using EcoEdDL, faculty can find free teaching resources that are peer-reviewed for quality, scientific accuracy, and pedagogical use. Teaching resources include photographs and illustrations, graphs and figures, teaching guidelines, and learning activities for the classroom, lab and field. EcoEdDL also houses ESA publications including Teaching Issues and Experiments in Ecology (TIEE) and Issues in Ecology reports. EcoEdDL is a portal in the LifeDiscoveryEd Digital Library (LDDL), a collaborative project of the Ecological Society of America, Botanical Society of America, Society for Economic Botany, and Society for the Study of Evolution. Ecology researchers and educators are encouraged to utilize and contribute to EcoEdDL, making it an increasingly valuable educational resource. During the past three years, an ESA-sponsored initiative involving Cornell University's Science Pipes project (http://sciencepipes.org) developed tools to promote the use and analysis of large datasets in undergraduate classrooms. Science Pipes provides a framework that allows students to access datasets of various sizes and levels of complexity, analyze them, and visualize the results without using spreadsheets or statistical software. Four data modules applicable to undergraduate lab/ecology courses were developed with support from NCEAS.
Results/Conclusions
As of February 2014, we have 399 published resources, representing a growth of 48% over 2010 holdings when ESA switched to the new CWIS cataloging platform developed by the Internet Scout group of the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Faculty from LDDL partner societies developed Science Pipes modules that facilitated learning concepts including cemetery demography, forest species composition, evolution of Darwin’s finches, and historical reconstruction using pollen data. Instructions for learning activities for two modules are available through EcoEdDL. Other new features of EcoEdDL include resource folders that allow users to save and publish a personal collection of resources; the addition of metadata fields for Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education core concepts and competencies as well as from K-12 Next Generation Science Standards, and a module for peer-review within the system. Associated with EcoEdDL and LDDL is the Life Discovery – Doing Science Education annual conference to promote community building and a culture of publishing teaching resources. The inaugural conference was held in March 2013 in St. Paul, Minnesota with participants from 27 states from high schools and colleges. Ecologists are encouraged to utilize and contribute to EcoEdDL, making it an increasingly valuable resource.