User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
Throughout this course, I have come to appreciate the work that gets put into ecological research, and all the pieces that need to be put together in order to create just one study. It has been good practice to turn simple observations into a full project, and when I initially started I wasn’t quite sure how it was all going to work out in the end. Reading through all the research papers in this course helped alot, and I felt as though I was really able to grasp how a paper should come together. It has been interesting linking together all the natural processes that are occurring in the field and has been rewarding seeing all my work come together onto one report. Building and designing a study has been much more work than I expected. Not only this, but the time it actually takes in the field to build transects, quadrants, count specimens, and more, is much greater than anticipated. I can only imagine the time and effort large scale studies would take, and this helps me understand why research can take years and years to complete. Over this course I often changed my design slightly, up until the final report. There is so much to learn, and each module I learned new pieces of key information that helped build my final report. Looking forward to using all this new-found knowledge for future learning and research!
