Toward an “Anti-Balance of Nature” Learning Environment for Non-Biology Major Students: Learning Objectives and Design Criteria

Abstract

This article reports on the design of a learning environment against the idea of the “balance of nature” (BON) for non-biology major students. Our focus is set on how we shaped and reshaped the learning objectives and design criteria for such a learning environment in the first two phases of our developmental research. In the exploratory phase, we first performed a thorough review of the ecological literature on ecosystems’ function, which led us to use the contemporary idea of the “resilient nature” for shaping our learning objectives (e.g., understanding multiple alternative states). Then, guided by the latter, we shaped our design criteria (e.g., using simulations of ecosystems that perform human-triggered or human-free shifts between alternative stable states) and used them to design the first version of our computer-supported, anti-BON learning environment, theoretically informed by social constructivism and problem-posing approach. In the first research cycle, we performed a pre/post design case study with 41 first-year educational sciences students enrolled for an optional ecology-course, to test whether the learning environment actually promoted the idea of contingency in ecosystems’ behavior. According to our findings, this was not the case. Most of the students (1) found even more appealing the idea that protected nature remains unchanged, and (2) moved from the idea of the “always-recovering” nature to that of the “never-recovering” one. Significant modifications of the design criteria and minor restatements of the learning objectives, as well as how these emerged in the light of our findings, are thoroughly discussed in the article.