Professor St. Edward's University Austin, Texas, United States
Background/Question/Methods
The Prairie Project, a USDA-NIFA-funded collaboration, explores changes in community composition of US grasslands. Through it, a case-study that focused on pyric-herbivory was used to introduce students to fundamental concepts in community dynamics in a senior-level ecology course. This research was designed to test the effectiveness of such a case-study approach, in lieu of a traditional lecture/textbook approach employed in this course for many years. Given the decline in textbook reading by contemporary university students, this research tests the effectiveness of such an approach in lieu of more traditional pedagogies.
Thirteen undergraduates enrolled in a course called “Population Biology and Ecology” participated. After an introduction to the US Great Plains by the course instructor, students produced written summaries of several research articles focused on fire and grazing treatments. In-class discussions critiquing those articles followed. Seven of the students participated in a hands-on trip to observe related field research sites in Oklahoma and Kansas. All thirteen students analyzed data from those sites. Changes in student comprehension of community level concepts were measured using pre- and post-course assessments. Three different instructor-blind assessment tools measured students’ understanding and comprehension of general community-level concepts, grassland ecosystems, and pyric-herbivory research, respectively.
Results/Conclusions
Using paired sample t-tests, each of those assessments showed a highly significant increase in student learning outcomes pre- and post-course. A fourth assessment did not lend itself to a similar type of analysis, but it did reveal very high increases in students’ understanding of the effects of subtle factors in grassland dynamics, such as the timing of prescribed fire and varying impacts of different grazing systems. It is noteworthy that other factors that might have contributed to these improvements outside of the class were not controlled. For example, the thirteen participants had extremely varied prior curricula, and that brought enormous uncontrolled variability to this study. Nonetheless, the observed student gains suggest that improved learning outcomes can be achieved using case studies in lieu of traditional tools such as textbooks.
