Meena M. Balgopal

Decisions and Dilemmas: Using Writing to Learn Activities to Increase Ecological Literacy.

Researchers tested whether writing increases ecological literacy in undergraduate elementary education students. The authors asked students to write 3 guided essays addressing the cognitive, affective, and behavioral domains in response to news articles on hypoxia. Of the 22 students, 64% improved their ecological literacy from the 1st essay to the 3rd essay. The authors conclude that writing can be an effective learning tool for increasing ecological literacy. They also posit that ecological literacy is a continuum and not a discrete state. Authentic learners who can recognize dilemmas and potential decisions (and their ecological consequences) are on one end of this continuum.

Writing to Learn Ecology: A Study of Three Populations of College Students.

Being an ecologically literate citizen involves making decisions that are based on ecological knowledge and accepting responsibility for personal actions. Using writing-to-learn activities in college science courses, we asked students to consider personal dilemmas that they or others might have in response to how human choices can impact coastal dead zones around the world. We explored how undergraduate students (42 biology and 47 elementary education majors at a 4-year college and eight Native studies majors at a tribal college in the United States) identified their ecological dilemmas after reading about aquatic hypoxia. About 30% of the 4-year college students’s essays demonstrated a more ecologically literate understanding of hypoxia by the end of the study. The tribal college students improved their ecological literacy by 50%, albeit with a small sample size. Biology majors made more human-centered comments than the education majors. The Native American students often discussed trade-offs between quality of life and ecological consequences, and were classified as both human-centered and ecosystem-centered.

Writing-to-Learn, Writing-to-Communicate, & Scientific Literacy

ABSTRACT Writing-to-learn (WTL) is an effective instructional and learning strategy that centers on the process of organizing and articulating ideas, as opposed to writingto-communicate, which centers on the finished written product. We describe a WTL model that we have developed and tested with various student groups over several years. With effective instructor guidance (through prompts and in-class discussion), students demonstrated greater scientific literacy after participating in writing activities about engaging socio-scientific issues. We believe that WTL activities are underused in secondary and post-secondary biology courses.

Internet Blogs, Polar Bears, and Climate-Change Denial by Proxy

Abstract Increasing surface temperatures, Arctic sea-ice loss, and other evidence of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) are acknowledged by every major scientific organization in the world. However, there is a wide gap between this broad scientific consensus and public opinion. Internet blogs have strongly contributed to this consensus gap by fomenting misunderstandings of AGW causes and consequences. Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) have become a “poster species” for AGW, making them a target of those denying AGW evidence. Here, focusing on Arctic sea ice and polar bears, we show that blogs that deny or downplay AGW disregard the overwhelming scientific evidence of Arctic sea-ice loss and polar bear vulnerability. By denying the impacts of AGW on polar bears, bloggers aim to cast doubt on other established ecological consequences of AGW, aggravating the consensus gap. To counter misinformation and reduce this gap, scientists should directly engage the public in the media and blogosphere.

Linking Biophysical, Socioeconomic, and Political Effects of Climate Change on Agro-Ecosystems

ABSTRACT To meet the sustainability challenges of the future, we need leaders who are trained to work well in diverse, multidisciplinary teams and a populace that understands the biophysical and socioeconomic challenges facing humanity and how to meet the needs of its diverse stakeholders. With a goal of increasing climate literacy amongst college students, we developed a cooperative jigsaw activity to encourage students to explore the complexities of joint decision making when taking into account multiple perspectives. We found that undergraduate science (natural science and natural resources) students were engaged, drew on a variety of types of evidence to support claims about managing rangelands impacted by climate change, and referenced both complex social and natural systems in their postassessment.

Trail Mix Genetics: Protein Synthesis in Two Acts

ABSTRACT Protein synthesis can be a difficult concept to learn because the processes are difficult to visualize. As an alternative to relying only on textbook drawings, the author presents a role-playing activity that can help reinforce the processes of transcription and translation. Students play the roles of cell organelles and subunits and work cooperatively to synthesize the brazzein protein. This lesson is useful for both teacher and student self-assessment of understanding of content standard C of the National Science Education Standards: the molecular basis of heredity (National Research Council 1996). A general outline of the activity is described in this article, and student modifications are encouraged to make the role-playing more meaningful. This activity is engaging for students as a review of other inquiry laboratory activities. Because this activity involves eating, teachers should make sure to conduct it in a classroom or commons area where food is allowed.

Responses to different types of inquiry prompts: college students’ discourse, performance, and perceptions of group work in an engineering class

ABSTRACT Working in small groups to solve problems is an instructional strategy that allows university students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines the opportunity to practice interpersonal and professional skills while gaining and applying discipline-specific content knowledge. Previous research indicates that not all group work prompts result in the same experiences for students. In this study we posed two types of prompts (guided and open) to undergraduate engineering students in a statics course as they participated in group work projects. We measured student discourse, student performance, and perceptions of group work. We found that guided prompts were associated with higher-level discourse and higher performance (project scores) than open prompts. Students engaged in guided prompts were more likely to discuss distribution of labour and design/calculation details of their projects than when students responded to open prompts. We posit that guided prompts, which more clearly articulate expectations of students, help students determine how to divide tasks amongst themselves and, subsequently, jump to higher levels of discourse.

Corrigendum: Internet Blogs, Polar Bears, and Climate-Change Denial by Proxy

Jeffrey A. Harvey (j.jharvey@nioo.knaw.nl) is affiliated with the Department of Terrestrial Ecology at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, in Wageningen. JAH, Daphne van den Berg, and Jacintha Ellers are with the Department of Ecological Sciences–Animal Ecology at the VU University Amsterdam, in The Netherlands. Remko Kampen works in Gouda, the Netherlands. Thomas, W. Crowther is with the Department of Terrestrial Ecology at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, in Wageningen, and with the Institute of Integrative Biology, in Zürich, Switzerland. Peter Roessingh is with the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics at the University of Amsterdam, in The Netherlands. Bart Verheggen is affiliated with Amsterdam University College, in The Netherlands. Rascha J. M. Nuijten is with the Department of Animal Ecology at Netherlands Institute of Ecology, in Wageningen. Eric Post is affiliated with the Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology at the University of California, Davis. Stephan Lewandowsky is with the School of Experimental Psychology and Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol, in the United Kingdom, and with CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. Ian Stirling is affiliated with the Wildlife Research Division of Environment and Climate Change Canada, and with the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada. Meena Balgopal is with the Department of Biology at Colorado State University, in Fort Collins. Steven C. Amstrup is affiliated with Polar Bears International, in Bozeman, Montana, and with the Department of Zoology and Physiology at the University of Wyoming, in Laramie. Michael E. Mann is affiliated with the Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science at Pennsylvania State University, in University Park.

Conceptual change in natural resource management students’ ecological literacy*

Abstract Conceptual change in undergraduate capstone courses provides unique opportunities to examine how students draw from multiple courses and experiences to resolve conceptual confusion. We examined how senior-level natural resource management students revised their conceptions of ‘ecosystem’ throughout their capstone course. The concept of ecosystem is complicated by a lack of shared meaning across disciplines. Our grounded theory study analyzed student coursework and pre/post interviews. It was informed by socio-cultural and conceptual change theories and used an ecological literacy metric to examine how students’ conceptualizations of the relationships between natural, ecosystem, human, and human artifact influenced their conceptions of ecosystems. Students who did not describe ecosystems as natural struggled less with integrating human society into ecosystems than their peers that did. We conclude that it is important to explicitly create shared meaning of key conceptions at the start of a capstone course to facilitate shared meaning-making and desired conceptual change during the course.

Writing Matters: Writing-to-Learn Activities Increase Undergraduate Performance in Cell Biology

Biology educators need instructional strategies to improve student learning outcomes, especially in foundational science courses, in which students are presented vast amounts of content. Writing-to-learn (WTL) tasks in lecture courses can help biology students increase performance and use abstract concepts in writing-to-communicate (WTC) tasks. Our WTL interventions included the use of graphic organizers, iterative writing, peer evaluation, and self-evaluation administered in an introductory cell biology course for molecular bioscience majors. We tested three WTL treatments—lots of writing, some writing, and little writing—and compared them with no-writing control sections. We examined the effects of WTL on performance (essay-question grades on exams and total exam scores) and WTC (content analysis). WTL was associated with (a) increased performance, particularly for students identifying as first-generation college students and minorities, and (b) increased use of abstract concepts in WTC tasks over the course of the semester in two WTL interventions.