Leveraging public data to offer online inquiry opportunities

Abstract Inquiry activities have become increasingly common in Ecology and Evolution courses, but the rapid shift to remote instruction for many faculty members in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic has created new challenges for maintaining these student‐centered activities in a distance learning fo...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Seth K. Thompson, Catherine Kirkpatrick, Maxwell Kramer, Sehoya Cotner
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2020-11-01
Series:Ecology and Evolution
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.6706
Description
Summary:Abstract Inquiry activities have become increasingly common in Ecology and Evolution courses, but the rapid shift to remote instruction for many faculty members in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic has created new challenges for maintaining these student‐centered activities in a distance learning format. Moving forward, many instructors will be asked to create flexible course structures that allow for a mix of different teaching modalities and will be looking for resources to support student inquiry in both online and in‐person settings. Here, we propose the use of data‐driven inquiry activities as a flexible option for offering students experiences to build career‐relevant skills and learn fundamental ecological concepts. We share lessons learned from our experiences teaching a two‐semester course‐based research experience in global change ecology that leverages publicly available datasets to engage students in broadly relevant scientific inquiry.
ISSN:2045-7758