AMES, Iowa – What do you get when you bring together tropical biology researchers, educators and software developers? Interactive and immersive learning modules for students!
Ann Russell, emeritus adjunct associate professor of natural resource ecology and management at Iowa State University, has spent the past five years leading an effort to create online learning modules students can use to study tropical ecology. Called the Online Content for Experiential Learning of Tropical Systems (OCELOTS) network, the group includes individuals from across the world who combine their expertise to create the modules.
Russell is the lead author of a paper, “A Network for Facilitating Online Content for Experiential Learning of Tropical Systems,” recently published in the British Ecological Society's Methods in Ecology and Evolution, that details the OCELOTS network’s efforts.
“Our work has been motivated by the fact that tropical ecology is underrepresented in ecology courses, and it’s important for students to have global perspectives to solve problems and be able to work with people from different backgrounds,” Russell said. “Authentic learning is important for students, and it’s hard to get that if students cannot travel to the tropics and experience those areas first-hand.”
That’s where the modules, considered open educational resources, come in. The OCELOTS network organizes workshops that teach educators and researchers to build modules and implement them in their classes. Software developers help researchers design the modules so content is delivered in a storytelling way.
The modules include on-site pictures, guided tour videos of the research sites and podcasts or audio narratives that engage students and create a sense of place for them. They also provide interactive data tools to give instructors new ways to teach quantitative skills.
“Students really want authentic materials. They want engaging materials and not the same old static content,” Russell said.
To date, 29 modules have been created. The modules have 26,500 unique views, with roughly 15% from places outside the U.S. More than 90% of the modules have been translated into other languages, such as Spanish, Portuguese and French.
While this collaborative approach to creating open educational resources is not new, Russell said the OCELOTS network is unique.
“What’s different about our approach is it’s completely community-driven. It’s sort of an organic, bottom-up process so that we bring together people who normally wouldn’t work together,” Russell said. “It’s scalable, it provides a new model for people to use across the globe, across all kinds of institutions, and it moves beyond that static content that students are really tired of.”
The next phase of the project will be collecting feedback from students who use the modules to gauge the impact on their learning. With Russell now retired from Iowa State, a colleague from a different university will take over that part of the study. Russell, though, still plans to coordinate this fall’s workshops.
Funding for the project came from the National Science Foundation.
Contacts
Ann Russell, Natural Resource Ecology and Management, arussell@iastate.edu
Whitney Baxter, Agriculture and Life Sciences Communications, 515-294-2314, wjsager@iastate.edu