Undergraduates' perceptions on emergency remote learning in ecology in the post‐pandemic era

The COVID-19 pandemic has strongly disrupted academic activities,
particularly in disciplines with a strong empirical component among other
reasons by limiting our mobility. It is thus essential to assess emergency
remote teaching plans by surveying learners’ opinions and perceptions
during these unusual circumstances. To achieve this aim, we conducted a
survey during the spring semester of 2021 in an environmental science
programme to ascertain learners’ perceptions on online and onsite learning
activities in ecology-based modules. We were particularly interested not
only in comparing the performance of these two types of activities but
also in understanding the role played by learners’ perceptions about
nature in shaping this pattern. Environmental science programmes are
rather heterogeneous from a conceptual point of view and, thus, learners
may also be more diverse than in traditional ecology programmes, which may
affect their interest for ecology-based modules. We assessed connectedness
to nature by computing the reduced version of the Nature Relatedness
Scale. Here, we found that online activities systematically obtained
significantly lower scores than onsite activities regardless of the
wording employed, and that altruistic behaviours were prevalent among
learners. Interestingly, scores for both onsite and online activities were
strongly influenced by learners’ connectedness to nature, as learners with
a stronger connection to nature gave higher scores to both types of
activities. Our results suggest that an effort to improve the efficacy of
remote learning activities should be the focus of research about teaching
methodologies in predominantly empirical scientific disciplines.