Tier 1 Faculty Information
Thank you so much for your interest in teaching a Macrosystems EDDIE module in your class this year!
We are committed to helping you integrate our modules into your curriculum and classroom. As part of this, we wanted to give you an overview of what we were hoping for this year.
Fortunately, Virginia Tech and Carleton College (our partners at the Science Education Resources Center (SERC), who are leading Macrosystems EDDIE's assessment) have IRB approval for the project so that you will not need to apply for IRB permission from your own institution.
As part of our IRB agreement, we are asking you to:
- Provide a brief description of your course (course name, number of students, etc.) so we can plan how best to help you implement the module during the semester. Please click the button at the bottom of this section to provide your course information.
- Add the following text to your syllabus OR to the module student handout that reads:
"Virginia Tech was awarded a federal grant to study curricula that introduce macrosystems ecology concepts to students. This new curricula is being used as part of this course. Pre and post student questionnaires are part of the curricula. These questionnaires are not graded but you can receive extra credit for completion. As part of understanding whether this curricula is useful for teaching students, a research project is investigating student responses. Your participation in the research aspect is not required to receive the extra credit. I, as the instructor, will only be able to tell that you have completed the questionnaires, not whether you have consented to have your responses included in the research project."
To incentivize participation in the pre- and post-assessment questions, many Macrosystems EDDIE faculty offer a few extra credit points to students on midterm or homework grades; if you are not planning to offer extra credit in your classroom, that portion can be deleted. - Show a brief, 4-minute video introducing the project to your students a few weeks before you teach the module. This video will introduce Macrosystems EDDIE and is available for download here (opens in new window).
- Send your students a link to the pre-assessment questions a week before you teach the module. All questionnaires are online via a secure portal that is specific to your institution, and Tadhg will send you the link in advance. All student responses are anonymized in the SERC system. To match pre- and post- questionnaire responses, students will enter a university ID number before they enter their responses, as well as give consent to allow their responses to be analyzed by our team.
- Teach the module! We are happy to answer any questions you may have as you prepare for classroom instruction.
- Send your students a link to the post-assessment questions after you teach the module. These questions will largely mirror the pre-assessment questions, with a few additional questions soliciting their feedback on improvements that could be made to the module now that they have gone through it.
- Complete a brief faculty reflection in which you share any feedback on the module.
Again, we are very grateful for your assistance and recognize that faculty such as you are the foundation of our project! We look forward to working with you.
Click here to provide pre-module course information
Resources for implementing Macrosystems EDDIE Modules
Jump to Module 5 (Intro to Ecological Forecasting) Teaching Materials (opens in new window)
Jump to Module 6 (Understanding Uncertainty in Ecological Forecasting) Teaching Materials (opens in new window)
Jump to Module 8 (Using Ecological Forecasts to Guide Decision Making) Teaching Materials (opens in new window)
1) Introductory Video
Please use the following link to access the 4-minute video to introduce students to the Macrosystems EDDIE study prior to teaching the module:
2) Links for Student Pre- and Post-Module Questionnaires
Each Tier 1 course will receive a custom link for having students submit their consent, and pre- and post-module questionnaires. We will send your link two weeks prior to the date indicated on your pre-module course information form, along with text you can use and/or modify to share the links with your students. We recommend sending the link to the pre-module questionnaire to students at least one week prior to the date you'll use the module in class (ideally 1-2 weeks beforehand), with subsequent reminders as needed. We recommend sending the link to the post-module questionnaire the day after completion of the module. We ideally would like to have all assessments completed within one week of the module being taught. We appreciate your help reminding students to fill out both questionnaires!
3) Faculty Post-Module Feedback
After teaching, please complete a brief reflection on your experience using the Macrosystems EDDIE module in your class. Your feedback will help us improve future versions of this module, and is very much appreciated!
Thanks again for participating as module testers, and please don't hesitate to let us know if you have any questions.