A second lab section was added in 2009. Some new projects emphasize communicating biodiversity research to the college community, including a set of ecological trail guides and a Stockton Biodiversity website. New baseline studies are underway to prepare for new forest management plans. Other new projects, such as restoring native plants to roadsides and mapping invasive species, carry over from the fall Environmental Issues class. Senior research students have added tools like geodatabase to the projects.
The question is whether the website increases students’ integration of past studies into their research plans and use of past data in analyzing current results. The variable of interest is the proportion of reports that critically analyze previous studies and incorporate their data. This figure is supplemented by instructor and TA assessments of students’ awareness of earlier work while doing their projects.
Results/Conclusions Early efforts (1999-2008) gave highly variable results. Fewer than half the reports showed effective integration of earlier studies. Near the end of that time, an assessment indicated that students retrospectively valued the experience of conducting field research and reporting their results as a team, but it was unclear whether the use of earlier studies or the sense of being part of long term research was important to them. Although there is a high degree of year to year variability resulting from the makeup and group dynamics of the student teams, shifting to a web based approach has raised the proportion making significant use of earlier results to between 50 and 75%. Results from 2009 to early 2011 indicate that integration of data across years and classes via the website contributes to the overall success of the individual projects and to student learning. A further quantitative assessment will be included from the spring 2011 labs and is expected to show between 75 and 100% incorporation of previous studies, with at least some increase in quality.