Ecology Education in Year 2 of the Pandemic

Water Cooler Chat
October 8th, 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic certainly has created challenges to ecological education. It has also created opportunities for innovation and new approaches. Come to learn and contribute to the conversation about how ecological education has been altered by the pandemic. Has it inspired new approaches that will persist beyond the pandemic? How have educators shown resilience to this disturbance? Will ecological education improve as a response? Grab your favorite beverage and join in the conversation about ecological education in the age of COVID-19.

Guest Host: David Bowne, Elizabethtown College, and Education Section Chair

Resources shared during the chat: 

• Simbio is a great resource for teaching labs online
• Global Vegetation Project developed at the University of Wyoming which is an interactive map of vegetation that allows for phenomena-based learning
• Site for recording lectures: https://www.panopto.com/
• Published teaching resources can be found on  TIEE and EcoEd Digital Library
• Here are some topical resources for teaching online field experiences
• There is an effort to provide access to field experiences across field stations: https://thevirtualfield.org/
• Here’s a place to help people convert to online field experiences
• UFERN has materials about teaching field online
• Align your teaching to the Four-Dimensional Ecology Education Framework
• Check out the Flexible learning projects that are working with NEON data: https://erenweb.org/all-projects/
• Library of Inclusive Field Technology (LIFT) – IAGD has resources for working with students with disabilities in the field that would work for ecology
• Here’s a set of teaching materials for teaching data skills by Cailin Huyck