Engagement with authentic scientific practices is critical to learning about ecology. In this presentation, we focus on the specific practices of observation, modeling, and using evidence to support ecosystem explanations. In ecology, studies revealed difficulties in thinking beyond linear flow, single causality, and visible structure. To help learners deal with these challenges of understanding complex ecosystem processes, researchers suggest providing them with resources that enable conceptualization of multiple, dynamic, and interrelated system components. We argue that technology enhanced learning resources can be particularly well suited for this task.
We will present a suite of cyber-enabled learning tools that have been employed in various contexts. Along with these tools, we will present the conceptual representations, or cognitive frameworks, that we used to help learners organize ideas across. We will close with a discussion of how these tools are employed in field based research.
Results/Conclusions
CollaborativeScience.org is intended to help engage students and members of the public in using technology to conduct locally based, but regionally connected, natural resource stewardship projects. Within this web portal, tools are provided to support web-based modeling, making observations, and analyzing data. In particular, these tools support field observations, engaging in collaborative discussions, graphically representing data, and modeling the ecological system of interest. The goal of these efforts is to allow volunteers to engage in open-space land management.
To date, learners engaged in this program are in part, independently earning funds to support research, earning buy-in from local partners to engage in experimentation, and in the absence of a leading scientists, are collecting data to test ideas about how ecosystems function. We argue that this success is because learners are engaged in local, iterative, collaborative, and cyber-enhanced activities.