Ecological literacy is essential for development of a productive and diverse workforce and for effective decision-making related to the environment. In November 2018, the ESA’s Governing Board endorsed the Four Dimensional Ecology Education (4DEE) framework developed by a task force appointed by the Society’s Committee on Diversity and Education. This curricular framework, the first ever endorsed by ESA, is established as a living document that can be utilized by educators world-wide. While aimed at introductory ecology courses, 4DEE provides guidance for all levels of ecology—from K12 through undergraduate courses to professional certification. Based on ESA members’ work in pedagogical best practices, 4DEE leads students to integrate ecological knowledge across four dimensions: ecology concepts regarding biotic/abiotic, population, community and ecosystem phenomena; human-environment interactions including human impact, ecosystem services, ethics, management and restoration, ecology practices such as field identification, statistics and data analysis, bibliographic, computer and research design skills, and cross-cutting themes such as evolution, biogeography, natural history, systems and scale. To promote efforts to implement the 4DEE approach in undergraduate level courses, this poster reports on case studies that exemplify how 4DEE can be used within undergraduate ecology courses, and provides criteria and examples for assessing student learning.
Results/Conclusions
We present three case studies of implementation of the 4DEE framework in different contexts with various levels of education: a large enrollment non-majors course, a Classroom Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) for majors, and a graduate ecology class. For each case study we present syllabi, lesson plans, and assessments of student learning. Each case study illustrates how to elevate the human dimension by considering major environmental issues and by showcasing hypothesis testing, field methods, and predictions of how current environmental changes affect plants and animals (humans, too). Course syllabi and lesson plan development is illustrated using backward design. We demonstrate how to use the framework to create assessments that elicit evidence of 2, 3 and/or 4-dimensional learning. Examples include assessing student understanding of how to predict species interactions following regional disturbance and global environmental change. Ecology educators are urged to develop teaching ideas that incorporate the 4DEE approach, and submit successful labs and lessons to ESA’s EcoEd Digital Library or Teaching Issues and Experiments in Ecology (TIEE) to build a collection of teaching resources that incorporate 4DEE.