Cornell University,
Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
RESEARCH
Project | 01
Personal reflections from field journals provide a window into students' affective responses to field experiences​
Student personal reflections offer a fascinating glimpse into the thoughts, experiences and emotions of students during field experiences. I worked with EEB graduate student David Esparza and ESS undergraduate, Jeannie Yamazaki to conduct qualitative analysis of a dataset of over 700 field journal personal reflections, from an introductory field biology course. We are particularly interested in better understanding student affect in the field so that we can learn about how to make field courses more inclusive and accessible to all students.
Project | 02
Exploring student attitudes towards collaboration in a project-based field courses​
Drawing on the framework of cooperative learning and social interdependence theory, we know that students working in teams can be an enjoyable, equitable, and effective way to learn and accomplish project goals. In this project, we used surveys and teamwork reflection assignments to learn about what attitudes our students have about teamwork, both positive and negative. From these responses, we seek to understand how can we can cultivate positive interdependence on student teams and encourage our students to practice teamwork and leadership skills, in order to prepare them for collaboration experiences in the future.
Project | 03
What can published research tell us about student outcomes of field courses? A scoping literature review​
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Fellow Active Learning Initiative postdoc Xoco Shinbrot and I lead a fantastic team of faculty, postdocs, and graduate students in a scoping literature review of literature on learning outcomes in undergraduate field courses in the US. We are interested in reporting on the status of research on field course outcomes (cognitive, affective, behavioral, and skills-based), and are working to make recommendations for future educational research publications on field course outcomes.