DOI: 10.5061/dryad.jh9w0vtd6
title: Undergraduates' perceptions on emergency remote learning in ecology in the post‐pandemic era

description: The COVID-19 pandemic has strongly disrupted academic activities,
 particularly in disciplines with a strong empirical component among other
 reasons by limiting our mobility. It is thus essential to assess emergency
 remote teaching plans by surveying learners’ opinions and perceptions
 during these unusual circumstances. To achieve this aim, we conducted a
 survey during the spring semester of 2021 in an environmental science
 programme to ascertain learners’ perceptions on online and onsite learning
 activities in ecology-based modules. We were particularly interested not
 only in comparing the performance of these two types of activities but
 also in understanding the role played by learners’ perceptions about
 nature in shaping this pattern. Environmental science programmes are
 rather heterogeneous from a conceptual point of view and, thus, learners
 may also be more diverse than in traditional ecology programmes, which may
 affect their interest for ecology-based modules. We assessed connectedness
 to nature by computing the reduced version of the Nature Relatedness
 Scale. Here, we found that online activities systematically obtained
 significantly lower scores than onsite activities regardless of the
 wording employed, and that altruistic behaviours were prevalent among
 learners. Interestingly, scores for both onsite and online activities were
 strongly influenced by learners’ connectedness to nature, as learners with
 a stronger connection to nature gave higher scores to both types of
 activities. Our results suggest that an effort to improve the efficacy of
 remote learning activities should be the focus of research about teaching
 methodologies in predominantly empirical scientific disciplines.
description: Survey conducted among 49
 undergraduate students between 19 and 23 years-old enrolled in the
 Environmental Science programme of the Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
 (XJTLU) (Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, PR China) during the second semester of
 the Academic Year 2020-2021. The survey has three main thematic areas:
 perceptions on online vs. onsite teaching, the connection between concepts
 and practical activities of these two types of activities, and on
 altruistic data collection. We employed a five-level quantitative Likert
 scale to assess learners’ perceptions. We
 enquired undergraduates about to what extent they enjoyed online vs onsite
 activities (Q01-Q02, Q09-Q14, and Q17-Q20) and, additionally, to what
 extent these activities seemed connected to concepts and theories (Q01-Q02
 and Q11-Q14). Furthermore, we asked undergraduates on their perceptions on
 normative and non-normative activities, namely about altruistic and
 non-altruistic data collection (Q15-Q16). These questions were presented
 in pairs to elicit learners’ reflection and were shuffled to avoid
 stereotyped responses. Finally, we included the shortened version of the
 NRS questionnaire (NR-6), which consists of 6 questions, to assess how
 connectedness to nature interacted with perceptions on learning approaches
 and altruistic behaviours (Q03-Q08).
description: Please refer to ReadMe file. Note that there are two files: the
 questionnaire (ECE_EcologyOnline-Questionnaire) and the collected data
 (ECE_EcologyOnline-Data).