Building an Ecosystem with a Semester-Long Lab Writing Project

 

Tested Studies in Laboratory Teaching, 2005, Volume 26

Abstract

One goal of our freshman ecology and evolution course is that students learn how external forces and inter–specific interactions form and shape ecosystems. Unfortunately, students may focus so much on understanding individual elements that they lose sight of ecosystems as a whole. Another goal of our course is to introduce students to the experimental methods and literature of ecology. The laboratory portion of the course includes three inquiry labs in which they design their own experiments, and summarize their results in short formal reports modeled on scientific papers. However, many of our students had never read primary literature before starting their first formal report. Without that experience many students struggle as they try to imitate the technical writing style, and to locate and incorporate appropriate references. We addressed these problems simultaneously with a simple semester–long exercise in which students identify and write about interconnections between organisms within a single ecosystem. The exercise reinforces that ecosystems contain many interacting species, and are shaped by multiple forces. Students learn to use online databases (Biological Abstracts, Zoological Record, Web of Science, etc.) and the library, as well as gain more frequent experience reading primary literature. The exercise also provides instructors an opportunity to critique students' technical writing skills before they complete their first formal lab report. Although it was not one of our original objectives, we have found this exercise also encourages students to reassess their earlier ideas and revise them in light of new information.

Keywords:  writing, ecosystem

Bowling Green State University, Ohio (2004)