Using the Assessing the Risk of Invasive Species Using Community Science Data
module in Introduction to GIS

Matthew Heard, Belmont University

This module helps student gain experience using community science data and GIS to examine the spread and distribution of invasive species. These are all important topics in the world of conservation biology and environmental science.

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Relationship of EDDIE Module(s) to my Course

This module was utilized in an Introduction to GIS course. Students had exposure to GIS software, but were asked to do pre-readings on invasive species to provide context for module.

Teaching Details

What key suggestions would you give to a colleague before they used the activity in their teaching?
I would suggest that they introduce GIS and the concept of community science to students prior to using this module.

How did you address challenges in teaching with the module?
The biggest challenge is making sure people understand how to use iNaturalist and QGIS. To help with this I took two main approaches. I had students compare their findings to each other. And then I individually helped students with issues that came up.

Student Outcomes

This module helped students to collect large amounts of ecological data and compare species distributions in both space and time.

This enhanced their confidence that they could easily navigate, download, and work with large-scale datasets.