Most non-STEM majors encounter biology only once during their undergraduate career in biology for non-majors courses. Yet these students (e.g. political science and business majors) go on to become influential decision-makers such as land-developers and policy makers. Their decisions influence biodiversity, nutrient cycling and climate change policies and should be based on sound ecological principles. Given the responsibility of teaching non-majors, how do biology instructors engage non-biology majors who are learning ecological concepts? How can we do this in a large lecture setting?
A 4DEE approach was taken to allow students opportunities to practice ecology skills (e.g. data interpretation) while learning crosscutting and ecological concepts (e.g. working across scales and top-down effects) within the context of ecosystem services. To increase ownership of learning, students were allowed to select the learning context: agriculture for biofuels, decreasing coral reef biodiversity or bee declines. To provide authentic learning environment, students took on the role of stakeholders and used knowledge from their disciplinary backgrounds, along with ecological concepts and data to discuss the scenario. To incorporate the 4DEE approach in assessments, students were asked to apply ecological concepts and practices in the context of the alternative scenarios.
Results/Conclusions
Our findings provide insight to instructors who wish to engage students who have limited exposure to ecology. Students showed high engagement with the learning activity. Students who previously had not participated in class felt comfortable contributing to discussion as they could bring their own disciplinary expertise to the discussion. Another factor that may influence engagement is allowing students to take ownership of their learning as they vote to select the scenario used. One challenge instructors may face is having to prepare multiple scenarios for instruction and assessment to encourage student engagement and ownership.
Assessments required students to apply ecological principles such as describing top-down and bottom-up effects and interpreting data. Students performed better where direct effects were investigated, and demonstrated difficulty with indirect effects. Future iterations will include more focus on indirect effects. Implementation of this 4DEE approach has demonstrated that the human-dimension of ecology is important for engagement and long-term learning by non-majors and has the potential to impact future decision makers in a wide range of fields.