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AEC 400, Applied Ecology

After learning about PressBooks – and the prohibitive cost of textbooks – in the OP Incubator, I was inspired to redesign my class on Applied Ecology. In 2022, I was awarded a grant from NCSU Libraries to compile student-created materials into an open-access digital textbook.

Revising BioRender figure prompts in response to student submissions and need for concept clarification.

Collaborative writing assignments

I designed these assignments to give students an opportunity to write collaboratively, to build professional and science writing skills; and to co-create materials that would enhance student learning and build toward an open-access digital textbook.

Similar to the BioRender prompts, I revised the collaborative writing assignment each year to build on content from the previous year(s). In 2020 students created bulleted outlines. These were useful, but didn’t help them practice writing – a classic case of getting what I asked for, but not what I wanted – so in 2021 I changed the prompt to specify a blog-style narrative summarizing each topic. (I also wrote an example to show students what I was looking for, that is now the Introduction to the textbook.) In 2022 I refined the blog-style narrative prompt to focus on how each topic manifests in North Carolina, in alignment with North Carolina State University’s land grant mission. In 2023 I asked students to describe how to apply each ecology topic in a changing world. I hope that relating course materials to real-world applications not only increased relevance but also provided an outlet for eco-anxiety. By 2024, I didn’t want to infinitely extend the length of the textbook so instead of assigning a written assignment for each chapter, I drafted a blog-style summary for the last chapter of the textbook, on Global Ecology. (Since it’s the final week of classes, it didn’t seem fair or logistically feasible to require students to write content for that chapter on such a short deadline.) My blog-style summary gave students something to read ahead of class, enabling me to convert in-class “lecture” time to a collaborative writing activity for which students worked in groups to draft a narrative that expanded on notes and ideas drafted by the 2023 cohort in Jamboard.

Applied Ecology digital textbook

After collecting student assignments for four years, I used Alt-Textbook funding to hire Emily Rund, a Master’s student in Zoology who was interested in education, to help me curate and format student-created content into the Pressbooks platform. In addition to compiling chapter content, Emily took note of which topics would benefit from a BioRender figure to visually explain complex ecological concepts. She also drafted skeleton notes as an additional resource to guide student note taking.

The Applied Ecology Pressbook was published in August 2023, and is currently the 4th most accessed title out of 43 publicly available books on the NC State Pressbooks Network, with a total of 24,426 visits as of May 16, 2025. Usage increased from 10,884 visits in the first year to 13,627 visits in the second year; and Google Analytics tracked >1,500 views in >80 countries between May 16-June 14, 2025 alone, with hot spots in several cities suggesting that my textbook has been adopted by universities across the United States, Belfast, Pakistan, and Australia.

Most importantly, survey feedback confirms that the textbook enhances learning gains by increasing relevance as well as motivation. I partnered with David Tully, Hillary Fox, Will Cross, and Sam Winemiller to assess the efficacy of the textbook as a learning tool and identify topics for assignments to create additional student content – by asking the students themselves. Students confirmed that the Applied Ecology Alt Textbook Project enhanced their learning not only by increasing their motivation to complete high-quality assignments, but by providing a resource that delivers compelling education material while centering student voices. We included those results and other insights in a book chapter on Leveraging Open Pedagogy to Create an Authentic and Renewable Curriculum.

Pokemon digital exhibit at D. H. Hill, Jr., Library

While the Applied Ecology Alt Textbook Project was still in its infancy, I reached out to Jason Evans Groth (now at UVA) to curate a digital exhibit of Pokemon ecology profiles, which were displayed in NC State’s Hill and Hunt Libraries. In the first week of class, students work in randomly assigned groups to identify the distinguishing features of a Pokemon “species” and predict the adaptive purpose of each trait. The original activity was completed as an in-class assignment in Google Slides during the first week of class, which helped students to build community while reviewing and applying foundational concepts of Adaptation & Evolution in a novel creative context. I framed the assignment from the perspective of zoo nutritionists and animal keepers, who are often challenged to meet the needs of poorly studied exotic species. Jason originally curated submissions from fall 2021 for display on the 3rd floor of D. H. Hill, Jr., Library, where it has enjoyed regular viewership over the past 4 years. In fact, one of my students in 2024 told me he first found out about my course when he saw the exhibit as a freshman! Last year (2024) I transitioned the assignment from Google Slides to a poster-format in MURAL, replacing weekly quizzes with topical prompts for each group to apply to their Pokemon “species”. Students seemed to both enjoy the prolonged creative outlet and rally behind their Pokemon, even assigning Latin Genus and species names to their specimens. I’m excited to curate a large-scale Pokemon poster exhibit with the Libraries in the future!

AEC 245, Practicing Conservation Ecology

Conservation campaign poster project

I designed AEC 245 as a flipped gateway course so that students get experience using open tools like the IUCN Red List, Excel / Google Sheets, and Climate Explorer to collect, visualize, and evaluate data to inform conservation management decisions. In addition to inquiry- / application-based in-class activities, students work in teams to complete interdisciplinary, collaborative research to propose SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timely) strategies that address a specific conservation issue of their choice. Each student team designs a poster, which they present in the NC State Undergraduate Research & Creativity Symposium on the last day of class. This is most students’ first time curating data in Excel to either create and interpret graphs or to design and present a poster, making the course particularly important for building scientific and professional skills in addition to classroom community.

Op-ed for the Technician

For one of their take-home Mini-Projects (exams, rebranded to minimize anxiety), students are asked to “write an informative and persuasive Op-Ed for the campus newspaper, about a specific topic of conservation concern that you identify as acutely important. Your essay should be written for folks at NC State and make the topic relevant to campus issues and experiences.” (See full prompt HERE.)

After listing the specifications and explaining the rationale for the assignment, I note that students can submit their essay as a guest column for publication in the Technician. I don’t require submission because I don’t want to create additional stress or performance anxiety for students, though that could be a Future Opportunity.

Highlighting conservation icons for Project Biodiversify

For the last in-class activity of the semester, students create a profile to highlight a “Conservation Icon” who inspires them in some way. I provide a template for students to summarize their Conservation Icon’s research, contributions to conservation, and any compelling aspects of their personal or professional life, so that students can submit their assignments to Project Biodiversify: A repository of teaching materials and methods aimed at enhancing human diversity and inclusivity in biology courses.^[1]

AEC 437/537, Gut Microbial Ecology

I designed my Gut Microbial Ecology course (AEC 437/537) as a Course-based Research Experience (CRE) to collect and analyze novel datasets in partnership with experts from agencies and academic institutions across the country. Carnivores provide a compelling system for CREs both because they are disproportionately threatened by habitat loss and climate change, making gut microbial research important for monitoring environmental impacts on host health and directly informing management strategies; and because carnivores’ short guts, rapid transit times, and easily digestible diets drive high inter-individual variation that masks the effects of age, sex, parasite infection, and drivers of gut microbial diversity. (Think: high p-values.) As students interpret their results, they are first daunted, then excited and empowered to discover that statistically insignificant results can still have significant impacts on wildlife management and conservation. Since launching the class in 2022 I have engaged 43 undergraduate students, 18 graduate students, 10 faculty, and 5 staff from 2 state wildlife agencies and 3 academic institutions as co-authors on 3 manuscripts (1 submitted and 2 in prep as of July 2025).