This course was part of a three-semester introductory biology program for undergraduates at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. As an adjunct instructor, I taught three sections to a total of about 60 students, focusing on general (largely aquatic) ecology in the field and in the lab, as well as facilitating a solid foundation in understanding scientific writing and hypothesis formation/testing.

The course began with distinguishing between peer-reviewed and popular science literature, the anatomy of a scientific paper, and how to effectively interpret and extract key information. “Asking the right questions”—essentially, those that could be worked into testable hypotheses—became a recurring theme throughout the semester. This classroom discussion was paired with several trips into the field, where students got hands-on experience in collecting stream fish and invertebrates, and measuring physical and chemical stream properties (e.g., flow rates, tree cover, water quality parameters). Prior to processing our samples, I covered basic foundational concepts such as food web interactions, invertebrate functional feeding groups, Vannote’s River Continuum Concept, and predator-prey interactions (e.g., Lotka-Valterra). With this information, students were able to form hypotheses about what biotic community structures would look like at different reaches of our sample stream. In the lab, we processed fish and invert samples, generating species abundance and diversity data for each sample site. We also used the organisms collected to run microcosm experiments in the lab, which focused largely on animal behavior in response to the presence or absence of predators (e.g., tadpole shrimps’ responses to hellgrammites or darters). With data collected, I covered basic statistical testing (e.g., t-tests, confidence intervals) and stressed the concept of significance—”How sure can we be in making a statement about our results?”

Although I often steered things in a general direction, I heavily emphasized allowing students to decide which questions/hypotheses we would address, and how results would be interpreted. This direct involvement, rather than regurgitating facts and following strict protocols, really helped facilitate creativity and cement key concepts. I also regularly took the course beyond the basic curriculum, involving some of my own experiences conducting field research, showing many video clips during lectures, and allowing the discussion to flow into some of the “big questions” in ecology. Ultimately, this was a very hands-on course—in the field, the lab, and in our classroom lectures/discussions.