Ecological Society of America

Looking through the two different types of student reports, I found that neither one was useful, the short version didn't include near enough information, and the long form was way too detailed. I modified the rubric to be a nice intermediate for me. I hope it is useful for others too.

This is the a bare bones powerpoint introduction that I used to introduce some of the topics related to bald eagle biology. I taught this activity in an upper-level Ecology class. 

We completed this activity as part of our Earth Day celebration in one 60min lecture period in my Second Semester Majors Introductory Biology Course. The course had 5 sections of 20-24 students each.  We had already completed the HHMI Excel Tutorials and the TIEE Phenology and Climate Change Module in previous labs, so it was possible to complete the full guided activity (minus performing the regression analyses-we just used trend lines and R² values) and have a short discussion in 60 min.

I used this module at the end of an introductory Principles of Wildlife Management course (the course has no quantitative component).  The module was used to apply wildlife management principles to a real world case study.  The MSWord file has student questions that were modified from the original Guided Version of the module. Changes were made to attempt to make the questions less wordy and to add a question focused on wildlife management. I used it with freshman students who needed guidance with graphing in Excel. The class lecture time is 1hr 15 min, and there is no lab time. 

• Class 1 - Give an introduction to the module and Questions 1-3 were assigned as homework
• Class 2 - Meet in computer lab, review and check for understanding, and do Questions 4-5.    If time allows, start the discussion questions 1-4, otherwise they are assigned for homework. 
• Class 3 - Review the discussion questions.

This is the "condensed" version of the Eagle Lab that was done in a single lab period (~3 hours). We focused just on:

Part I: How does the bald eagle population at a winter stopover change over three decades?

Part II: How do salmon abundance and December temperatures influence bald eagle numbers?

This module was implemented in a 1^st year course (lab) designed for majors, but is also an option for non-majors to fulfill general education requirements. Before we started the lab, a PPT on quadratic regression and basic statistical analyses in Excel was presented (that PPT is available in this Collection). I then gave this brief PPT on Bald Eagles and I introduced the module. I cut the module to only the guided exercises and to work on the questions:

Part I: How does the bald eagle population at a winter stopover change over three decades?

Part II: How do salmon abundance and December temperatures influence bald eagle numbers?

The module still took about 3 hours and 15 minutes to complete, but it all fit in the single lab period we had allotted for this particular module. 

This is a PowerPoint presentation that I put together to get our freshman Biological Diversity Lab (4 hours) students up to speed for the bald eagle lab.  It covers how to determine which models and variables are statistically significant as well as quadratic regression.  This is a 30 minute presentation to be used in the 1 hour of lecture and 3 hours of lab (4 hours total) course that a biologist and I (mathematician) co-taught.  We have about 15 students in each of two lab sections.  Feel free to modify in any way to suit your needs.