EcoEd Digital Library (beta) (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 Ecology 101 Articles, Teaching Issues and Experiments in Ecology (TIEE) and Issues in Ecology. The holdings support the national Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education reform initiative. It is part of the LifeDiscoveryEd Digital Library (LDDL), which is a partnership of four scientific societies including Botanical Society of America, Society for the Study of Evolution and Society for Economic Botany.
Results/Conclusions
EcoEd DL continues to incorporate digital learning resources from faculty and researchers who have developed visual resources, learning exercises, and other teaching materials. The current number of archived files exceeds 400, covering topics in ecology that include population and community ecology, ecosystems, biomes, and human impacts. It also supports collections from the Animal Behavior Society. Associated with EcoEdDL and LDDL is the Life Discovery – Doing Science Education annual conference and the Resources for Ecology Education – Fair and Share (REEFS) workshop at ESA’s annual meetings to promote community building and a culture of publishing teaching resources. The third Life Discovery conference will be March 2016 in Baltimore, MD. Each conference has attracted more than 100 participants from high schools and colleges from across the country and Canada. The 8th REEFS workshop will be held at the 2016 ESA annual meeting. The workshop has grown from about 25 participants to >60 participants. Modeled on REEFS, the Life Discovery conference annually hosts the Education Share Fair, which encourages faculty to present teaching ideas at any stage of development for feedback. Ecology researchers and educators are encouraged to utilize and contribute to the EcoEdDL library, making it an increasingly valuable educational resource.