Teaching An Experiential Field Course Via Online Participatory Science Projects: A COVID-19 Case Study of a UC California Naturalist Course

Abstract

Experience and training in field work is a critical component of undergraduate education in ecology, and many university courses incorporate field-based or experiential components into the curriculum in order to provide students hands-on experience. Due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the sudden shift to remote instruction in the spring of 2020, many instructors of such courses found themselves struggling to identify strategies for developing rigorous field activities that could be completed online, solo, and from a student's backyard. This case study illustrates the process by which one field-based course, a UC California Naturalist certification course offered at the University of California, Davis, transitioned to fully remote instruction. The transition relied on established, publicly available, online participatory science platforms (e.g., iNaturalist) to which the students contributed data and observations remotely. Student feedback on the course and voluntary continued engagement with the participatory science platforms indicates that the student perspective of the experience was on par with previous traditional offerings of the course. This case study also includes topics and participatory science resources for consideration by other faculty facing a similar transition from group field activities to remote, individual field-based experiences.

Fieldwork during pandemic: Backyard bird survey and making student’s biological field practice works

“…Remote instructions must be clear and concise. There are also online participatory science platforms such as iNaturalist or Burungnesia which is publicly available, can also be used for students to conduct remote field observations (Winnasis et al 2018;Gerhart et al 2020;Unger et al 2020). (ii) Evaluate technology affordances and apply them during field practice (Kaviani et al 2020).…”

Of mudsnails, terrapins, and flukes: Use of trematodes as a field‐based project in parasitology research

“…Of course the pandemic has also disrupted other types of courses with field‐based components that are difficult to fully implement while social distancing (Gerhart et al, 2021; Hillyer, 2020). In particular, courses such as parasitology often require students to combine field collections with laboratory‐based work (e.g., dissections, microscopy) to identify and quantify hosts and their associates.…”

“…As suggested by recent authors (e.g. Angulo, 2020; Gerhart et al, 2021), we use the more inclusive term “participatory science” to avoid the multiple issues in using “citizen” science (see also Eitzel et al, 2017). This parasitology project involves hands‐on work in the field but does not require dissection of hosts, data can be collected with minimal direct instructor involvement, and the data have true research value.…”