Ecology Curriculum Reform: Integrating Innovative Teaching and Global Change Technology

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Biological Sciences (61) Our plan to reform curriculum in the Ecology Program Area within the Biology Department at San Diego State University (SDSU) focuses on providing biology majors and non-majors with a greater understanding of ecological concepts by fusing innovative teaching with cutting-edge technology. Three Ecology faculty are collaborating to bring real-time global change technology, scientific inquiry, and field studies into a non-majors' ecology course and six biology-majors' core and advanced ecology courses. Two dedicated teaching towers are being placed at two field stations, and one portable tower is being set up on campus. Our goals include enhancing the use of field stations in education, enhancing students' higher order thinking skills for understanding ecological concepts, and increasing students' understanding of Mediterranean ecosystems. This project adapts science educational methods that enable students to acquire and use atmospheric and related integrated data in classes, such as those used by the GLOBE Program (http://www.globe.gov) and the Unidata Program (http://unidata.ucar.edu), to take advantage of unique resources available at SDSU. The adaptation at SDSU involves using: (a) state-of-the-art technology established at SDSU for global change research, and (b) our two field stations located across an elevational gradient of Mediterranean habitats. With this instrumentation, students can measure atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, as well as microclimate, net radiation, and energy balance. As a result of this exciting innovation, we expect our students to understand the process of scientific inquiry, including hypothesis construction and data acquisition and analysis, and to make scientific inferences from their results and communicate information, both orally and in writing. This educational enhancement reaches about 650 students per year, including members of underrepresented minorities (about 50% campus-wide) and prospective teachers.