Richter Christoph F, Lortie Christopher J, Kelly Tamara L, Filazzola Alessandro, Nunes Krystal A, Sarkar Raani
Department of Biology University of Toronto Mississauga Mississauga ON Canada.
Department of Biology York University Toronto ON Canada.
Ecol Evol. 2020 Nov 21;11(8):3616-3624. doi: 10.1002/ece3.7008. eCollection 2021 Apr.
Teaching ecology effectively and experientially has become more challenging for at least two reasons today. Most experiences of our students are urban, and we now face the near immediate and continuing need to deliver courses (either partially or wholly) online because of COVID-19. Therefore, providing a learning experience that connects students to their environment within an ecological framework remains crucial and perhaps therapeutic to mental health. Here, we describe how prior to the pandemic we adapted our field-based laboratories to include data collection, analysis, and interpretation, along with the development of a citizen-science approach for online delivery. This design is simple to implement, does not require extensive work, and maintains the veracity of original learning outcomes. Collaboration online following field data collection in ecology courses within the context of cities offers further options to adapt to student experience levels, resource availability, and accessibility, as well as bringing instructors and students together to build an open well-curated data set that can be used in ecology courses where no laboratories are available. Finally, it promotes an open collaboration among ecology instructors that can drive lasting conversations about ecology curriculum.
如今，要有效地且通过实践来教授生态学变得更具挑战性，这至少有两个原因。我们的学生大多有城市生活经历，而且由于新冠疫情，我们现在面临着几乎即刻且持续的需求，即要（部分或全部）在线授课。因此，在生态框架内提供一种能让学生与他们的环境建立联系的学习体验，对心理健康而言仍然至关重要，甚至可能具有治疗作用。在此，我们描述了在疫情之前我们是如何调整基于实地的实验室，使其包括数据收集、分析和解读，以及开发一种用于在线授课的公民科学方法的。这种设计易于实施，不需要大量工作，并且能保持原始学习成果的准确性。在城市背景下的生态课程中，在实地数据收集之后进行在线协作，提供了更多选择，以适应学生的经验水平、资源可用性和可及性，同时还能让教师和学生共同构建一个经过精心整理的开放数据集，供没有实验室的生态课程使用。最后，它促进了生态教师之间的开放协作，能够引发关于生态课程的持久讨论。
