Learning the Landscape: An Active and Applied Lesson on Landscape Ecology for General Ecology Courses

Landscape ecology is an important subtopic of ecology. As a field, it is inherently interdisciplinary and provides opportunities to teach not only content, but transferable ecological and geographical skills. Given the broad spectrum of topics in general ecology courses, landscape ecology is often relegated to a single lecture or not covered at all, meaning that there is a need for concise, effective lesson content for teachers. Here, we present an adaptable, active lesson on landscape ecology that can be implemented to help address this gap and support student engagement and the application of content knowledge to local systems. Students are presented with an active lecture that introduces key concepts of landscape ecology, then presented with opportunities to apply and reinforce these concepts. First, students work in groups to solve applied challenges about a real environment. These group challenges support greater understanding, content retention, and engage students in collaborative creative problem-solving with their classmates. Second, students apply the concepts of the lesson to a natural space that they are familiar with to increase personal connections to the content and again reinforce the topics. This lesson has been implemented a total of three times in two courses across two universities with distinct student populations. Student feedback has been largely favorable, with students reporting increased understanding of the subject and enjoyment of the lesson, especially the group problem-solving challenges. We provide avenues for instructors to localize the content to help students connect to the topics using examples with which they are familiar. Primary Image: Group Problem-Solving in Practice: Resources (a map of potential purchase parcels, and a table with the price and a description of each of those parcels) given to students in a group problem-solving challenge that asks students to prioritize funds and maximize the positive impacts on the landscape by purchasing land for a nature preserve.