Abstract: Restoration practitioners and educators have recognized the potential for collaboration that uses students and their learning activities to contribute to long-term restoration goals. However, many restoration projects occur individually with specific, place-based goals, making it challenging to incorporate students in educationally meaningful ways that are also useful to the restoration project. The goal of this work is to show how ecology educators can adapt their curriculum to locally accessible restoration projects in a way that is meaningful and useful for both students and restorationists. We illustrate specific action steps educators can take to develop curriculum that will meet learning goals and provide long-term data and maintenance to the specific local restoration project. The action steps are supported by an example from a riparian restoration project that took place on Ahtanum Creek in Yakima County, WA. Students measured woody vegetation stem density along 50 meter transects in restored and unrestored reaches of the creek. The example assignment was designed using the 4DEE framework. Student-collected data is shared with the Yakama Nation Fisheries Project Restoration Biologists.
The educator action steps are as follows: 1) Identify the specific restoration opportunity, then develop partnerships with local restoration stakeholders. Restoration projects often suffer from a lack of long-term support, and students can act as a workforce in both data collection and maintenance to increase the success of the project. 2) Match the restoration goal to the ecology content goal. We show how timing the curriculum sequence to match with the timing of the restoration work is critical to successful learning. 3) Engage students with local issues. Students are motivated to participate in activities that they know will help their community. 4) Ensure validity of data and quality of work. Grading rubrics and project procedures communicate how students will be assessed for the quality of their work. Valid data can be contributed directly to the restoration managers. 5) Connect multiple content areas to the same restoration project. A single restoration project can serve as the “living-lab” for an entire ecology course. Student-collected data shows woody vegetation establishment downstream of a floodplain restoration project. In conclusion, our example projects suggest implementation of these action steps by educators both enhances student learning and can help achieve restoration goals in quantifiable ways.
