The pressure to streamline curriculum at research universities has made it more and more difficult to provide undergraduate students in ecology with hands-on training of modern environmental instrumentation. The reduction in the number of laboratory sections offered throughout the curriculum puts exposure to these tools only in the context of research experiences activities in active laboratories. This reduces the total number and diversity of students who can take advantage of this type of learning. Overall, this enforces disconnects between developing a deep understanding of ecological theories and the technologies we apply to those theories. We have sought to expand exposure of our undergraduate students to instrumentation and ecological theory within the context of an internships program in a public setting where interpretation of technologies used to understand plant gas exchange strongly reinforces learning.
Results/Conclusions
Even after exposure of students to simple technologies associated with the measurement of plant photosynthesis and transpiration in a formal laboratory setting, many students do not develop an understanding of both the process and the measurement required to carry out independent research. In contract, when students are exposed to the technology where an aspect of learning requires interpretation in a public setting for a diverse audience, the students appear to develop an adaptive capacity for applying the technology novel questions. Public interpretation requires students to develop a wide range of techniques to explain both ecological theory and environmental instrumentation to a diverse audiences resulting in a deep understanding of the topics. Internships of these types also serve a second, important role for science undergraduates; it provides a link between informal and formal science education that makes them effective communicators.