The LTER Education and Outreach Committee meets monthly to share resources, ideas and work on network-wide projects to increase the impact of LTER science.
On this page, the committee shares the most generally useful resources related to long-term ecology education and outreach. To suggest a resource for this page, contact nco-education@lternet.edu.
Organizations
Niwot Ridge REU students on a hike in Rocky Mountain National Park
Credit: Bill Bowman
Individual LTER sites collaborate with a multitude of local and regional organizations. In addition, the Network Office and the LTER Education Committee maintain connections with a network of national and international organizations that work to involve students from many backgrounds in ecological research and data science. These include:
- Ecological Society of America SEEDS Program
- Ecological Society of America Education Section
- National Council on Science and the Environment
- Ecological Research as Education Network
- Science Education Resource Center
- Environmental Data Science Inclusion Network
Informal Science Education Assessment
The Board on Science Education of the National Academy of Sciences convened a planning meeting on assessing informal and after school education in 2011. They commissioned a series of papers in on best practices in ISE assessment advance of that meeting, which are linked from their website.
ISE Assessment papers from the NAS-BOSE. Many additional assessment resources are available through the Science Education Resource Consortium and Qubes.
Informal educators at UC Boulder (including LTER’s own Alex Rose) pulled together this helpful matrix of evaluation tools and approaches. Please use it liberally and share widely.
Recruiting Educators
Although educator input and participation is essential for an effective K-12 program, many LTER sites struggle to recruit educators. This particularly useful set of suggestions emerged from a discussion on the LTER education listserv.
