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 laboratory-based courses in ecological curricula, this presents unique challenges. Fortunately, a diverse set of active learning techniques exists, and these techniques translate well to online settings. However, limited guidance and resources exist for developing, implementing, and evaluating active learning assignments that fulfill specific objectives of ecology-focused courses. To address these informational gaps, we (a) identify broad learning objectives across a variety of ecology-focused courses, (b) provide examples, based on our collective online teaching experience, of active learning activities that are relevant to the identified ecological learning objectives, and (c) 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: (a) Identification, (b) Application of Concepts/Hypotheses/Theories, (c) Management of Natural Resources, (d) Development of Professional Skills, or (e) 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.