Overview

In this module, you will explore how scientists classify life and how ecosystems work. You will learn about the importance of biodiversity and add to your understanding of systems thinking.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this module, students will be able to:

Evaluate information scientifically in the context of their own life.
Explain the importance of observation and hypothesis testing in the scientific process, and distinguish between science and non-science practices.
Perform scientific investigations in lab setting, gather, analyze and critically evaluate scientific data, and communicate scientific results according to appropriate academic standards.
Define basic principles used in community and ecosystem ecology, and compare the biodiversity of several different habitat types.
Use the concept of sustainability to critique global and local environmental issues, and identify the steps that can be taken to improve environmental conditions and actively participate in solutions to environmental problems.
Utilize academic research skills; such as evaluate the quality/credibility of information from various kinds of sources, narrow topics and discern the most important information from texts.
Employ strategies to build and retain vocabulary.
Identify how authors organize text both written and oral and use vocabulary for specific purposes and audiences, and apply these strategies to their own academic writing and speaking.
Utilize the writing process to write academic essays.
Improve sentence clarity and structure by addressing errors in the context of their own writing.

Why is this Important:

It is important for you to understand how ecosystems work and the important role biodiversity plays in sustainability to truly understand how the natural world works. It also provides a context to teach basic scientific concepts like energy cycles, classification, biological species, etc.