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).