Q1: How does completion of Macrosystems EDDIE ecological
forecasting modules affect student perceptions and knowledge of data
science and ecological forecasting skills?
Completing one or more Macrosystems EDDIE ecological forecasting modules
improved student confidence in both their ecological forecasting and
data science skills (Fig. 2a, Fig. S1). Students gained the most
confidence from pre-module to post-module in their ecological
forecasting skills, such as generating a forecast (with 76% of students
reporting an increase in confidence), quantifying uncertainty (74%),
and communicating a forecast (71%). Among data science skills, the
largest percentage of students gained confidence in modeling data
(65%), followed by analyzing (52%) and graphing data (43%). Of the
students who did not exhibit a gain in confidence in their ecological
forecasting and data science skills, most (71-81%) reported no change
in confidence rather than a decrease in confidence (Fig. 2a).
Module completion similarly improved student understanding of ecological
forecasting concepts, regardless of which module was completed (Fig.
2b). We observed a significant increase in students’ ability to
correctly define an ecological forecast after completing any one of the
modules or multiple modules. Across modules, 31% of students could
define an ecological forecast before module completion, while 76% of
students could correctly complete this task after module completion.
Students also improved in their ability to define and describe other
ecological forecasting concepts, such as data assimilation and
uncertainty propagation; however, gains in student understanding in
these areas were uneven (Fig. S2, S3).