Network of Conservation Educators and Practitioners

The Network of Conservation Educators and Practitioners (NCEP) will present a faculty development workshop, Integrating Active Teaching and Measuring Learning Gains in the Conservation Biology Classroom, on 29 and 30 June 2006 in San Jose, California. Exact time and location will be announced soon.

The workshop organizers are Eleanor Sterling, Nora Bynum, and Christine Engels, NCEP, Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, American Museum of Natural History.

Workshop Description and Goals

At the last four annual meetings of the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB), the Network of Conservation Educators and Practitioners (NCEP) has organized workshops on teaching conservation at the university level. These sessions have been important in terms of generating feedback for the NCEP project, but also generated significant discussion among faculty and students on how to develop suitable resources for teaching biodiversity conservation.

This June, NCEP will be holding its fifth annual workshop immediately after SCB's annual meeting. The purpose of this workshop is for a group of faculty members experienced in using NCEP modules to provide mentoring to faculty members new to the modules and project. In addition, workshop attendees will participate in the review and refinement of draft evaluation tools designed to measure student learning outcomes from using the NCEP modules. The dynamic is active and participatory; faculty members who have used the modules in their classroom will share how they were able to fit the module components into their syllabi, emphasizing both successes and challenges in terms of content integration and the use of active-teaching techniques. Professors with previous experience working with NCEP modules will be paired with novice faculty to work directly with the materials. New and experienced users will then develop and share specific plans for NCEP module use in current or planned future courses. The second day of the workshop will focus on student assessment of learning gains through discussion and revision of draft evaluation instruments designed to measure student mastery of key concepts for several modules.

The workshop should be of interest to those who have participated in the NCEP project to date (module developers and faculty testers), those academics and practitioners interested in enhancing biodiversity conservation training in their institutions, and all those interested in the process of classroom evaluation.

We are particularly interested in new candidates from minority-serving institutions, but as always the most important characteristic is interest and enthusiasm in teaching about conservation. We have some funds to support participant travel, but also welcome participants already traveling to SCB with institutional support.

If you are interested in this workshop, or would like more information about the project, please email Christine Engels, Outreach/Evaluation specialist (cengels@amnh.org), or visit http://ncep.amnh.org/