Biodiversity is an essential concept for undergraduate students in ecology and other natural science fields to grasp. It is increasingly important for undergraduate programs in ecology and related disciplines to provide students with experiences working with large ecological datasets to develop their ability to consider how ecological processes that operate at broader spatial scales (macroscale) affect local ecosystems. Learning activities using open-access ecological data collected help students understand biodiversity at multiple scales while gaining skills in working with big data. We formed an interdisciplinary team to design a learning activity to teach macroscale concepts related to biodiversity, including developing different levels of instruction and sufficient flexibility so that it could be incorporated into a variety of courses. We tested this module in six classes (109 students), ranging from mid-level ecology classes and GIS/remote sensing classes, to upper level conservation biology classes. We implemented a pre-test and post-test to assess if our module resulted in increased student understanding of macroscale ecology and biodiversity concepts, and increased familiarity with techniques, software programs, and NEON’s large spatio-ecological datasets.
Results/Conclusions
Students performed significantly better on the post-test than the pre-test in three of the courses, all of which were ecology-focused, and marginally better in two of the courses. Student performance was significantly better on the post-test than the pre-test on three questions: one about biodiversity, one about scaling, and the question about NEON. Student performance was not significantly different between the pre-test and post-test for the other seven questions. Students’ self-reported understanding of all concepts and self-reported technical skills in using R and ArcGIS increased significantly after completing the class activities. Our learning activity improved student understanding of biodiversity, biodiversity metrics, and patterns of biodiversity across several spatial scales – concepts that can be challenging for undergraduates. Students also gained a strong awareness of NEON’s support of macroscale science. We have demonstrated that learning activities that use authentic field data and multiscalar analysis methods can facilitate undergraduate understanding of macroscale ecology and allow students to begin to understand biodiversity at multiple scales.