Engaging online students by activating ecological knowledge

The current COVID-19 pandemic has forced the global higher education
community to rapidly adapt to partially- or fully-online course offerings.
For field- or lab-based courses in ecological curricula, this presents
unique challenges. Fortunately, a diverse set of active learning
techniques exist, and these techniques translate well to online settings.
However, limited guidance and resources exist for developing,
implementing, and evaluating active learning assignments that fulfil
specific objectives of ecology-focused courses. To address these
informational gaps, we (1) identify broad learning objectives across a
variety of ecology-focused courses, (2) provide examples, based on our
collective online teaching experience, of active learning activities that
are relevant to the identified ecological learning objectives, and (3)
provide guidelines for successful implementation of active learning
assignments in online courses. Using The Wildlife Society’s list of online
higher education ecology-focused courses as a guide, we obtained syllabi
from 45 ecology-focused courses, comprising a total of 321 course-specific
learning objectives. We classified all course-specific learning objectives
into at least one of five categories: (1) Identification, (2) Application
of Concepts/Hypotheses/Theories, (3) Management of Natural Resources, (4)
Development of Professional Skills, or (5) Evaluation of
Concepts/Practices. We then provided two examples of active learning
activities for each of the five categories, along with guidance on their
implementation in online settings. We suggest that, when based on sound
pedagogy, active learning techniques can enhance the online student’s
experience by activating ecological knowledge.