important ecotypes improvements & updates for 2024!

[James Proctor]

Dear colleagues, hello and hope you are having a good holiday break. I've now completed several EcoTypes tasks in preparation for 2024, and would like to share some important information with you.

• To get to your immediate needs: the EcoTypes survey and followup reflection form are now open; please give them a try to confirm! They have been improved in several ways:
• The survey includes two major changes. First, the group code (which some students routinely missed) is now at the beginning vs. end of the form, with the full group list visible. More significantly, I'm again testing a short version of the EcoTypes survey [see below], which has been inserted following axis statements.
• The reflection form is now shorter, with only one open-ended reflection question per page to help your students complete it more readily. The reflection form overview/access page has been updated too.
• The EcoTypes survey has, since 2017, been completed roughly 13,000 times. These data are sufficient to suggest that the factor-analyzed themes of Place, Knowledge, and Action are important. I would love for students and other participants to get through the survey more quickly, and to engage more over the differences suggested in these larger themes. One year ago I piloted a quick version of the survey, and am now trying a version of it again (see attached screenshot). It's now in the survey, the survey report, and followup form; let's see how it works, both empirically and pedagogically. [And if it strikes you as overly binary, please read on for a theory/methodology resource that may help clarify.]
• As a deeper resource for both you and your students, I've added to the EcoTypes FAQ two roughly 1000 word draft summaries of EcoTypes theory and methodology; please read them and be in touch with your thoughts. (They are admittedly dense, so you can decide whether or not to assign them to your students.) Since launching EcoTypes, we've had many opportunities to interact with instructors and hear their questions, which sometimes concern pedagogy, but often boil down to theory and/or methodology...I hope these extended summaries are useful. I'm committed to fully supporting instructors in helping students appreciate EcoTypes...just lmk how I might best help.
• You will also find small tweaks in conceptual language. "Counting between one and two," the important approach to navigating difference EcoTypes recommends, confused some as implying quantitative interpolation (say, 1.6), so I now call it counting beneath two. And I've removed the "worldview" language, common among those who use a major alternative to EcoTypes, the widespread NEP...since, well, that word has all sorts of problematic assumptions. "Frameworks" is back—and, in the EcoTypes volume I'm working on, a recommendation that we enliven frameworks as ideologically-informed environmental imaginaries.

I'm still addressing some images, and translation issues, for our participants working in French and Polish; and I'm sure the above will continue to be tweaked following your input. But I think we are pretty much ready to go. 

As a reminder, at bottom are the current group codes for early 2024; let me know if I need to add one for you! And be in touch as needed.

Happy new year,

Jim P.

***

[2024 group codes so far]

Not applicable
College of DuPage Sp24 (USA)
College of St. Benedict/St. John's University Sp24 (USA)
ESSCA Sp24 (France)
Gaston College Sp24 (USA)
Lewis & Clark College Sp24 (USA)
McMaster University Sp24 (Canada)
Saint Mary’s University Sp24 (Canada)
SGH Warsaw School of Economics Sp24 (Poland)
St. Ambrose University Sp24 (USA)
Tarleton State University Sp24 (USA)
Umatilla County Sp24 (USA)
Universidade de Lisboa Sp24 (Portugal)
University of Arizona Sp24 (USA)
University of Rhode Island Sp24 (USA)
University of Southern Maine Sp24 (USA)
Utah State University Sp24 (USA)

[James Proctor]

Dear all, happy 2024 and an update on the pilot summary narrative survey, with now roughly 200 completions. 

This short version of the EcoTypes survey seems to match the long version sufficiently for us to use it in situations where the long form, with its 24 axis-related statements, is not workable. One scenario for the short form might be in exploring similarities/differences with nearby communities, as in this example from fall 2023. I will produce this spring a standalone online version of the short form (together with SDG priorities and demographics), plus a set of cards your students might use for in-person surveys. Be in touch if interested!

As your students explore their EcoTypes survey results, they may benefit from a comparison of long and short form results; see the two attached images of simple XY scatterplots, ranging from -1 to +1 for the pairs of poles/attractors. [Given the way they are scored/averaged these data are not continuous variables, hence you may need to explain to students that many XY dots are stacked on top of each other.] 

Here are some stats/observations:

• Place/Knowledge/Action theme scores as derived from long form (axis statements) vs. short form (narrative summaries) are broadly similar, with simple correlation values of 0.44 (Place), 0.53 (Knowledge), and 0.66 (Action).
• But the Place score comparison differs from the two others in its Y intercept (-0.22), compared to roughly 0 for Knowledge and Action. What this means is that old vs. new Knowledge, and small vs. big Action, are scored roughly the same between the short and long form, but nonhuman vs. human Place is not. Overall, a significant fraction of students who are solidly in nonhuman Place in the long form will reside in human Place in the short form: thus they may be Technoprogress instead of Ecoscience, or Traditional Ways instead of Earth Spirit.
• A deeper examination of axis scores contributing to Place suggests that the Ethics and Nature axes are most closely correlated with the short form Place score; but here too the Y intercept differs. Significantly, quite a few students who lean toward the biocentric Ethics pole (one component of nonhuman Place) actually score toward human Place on the short form.
  
• So, as your students respond to the contrasting narratives in the short form, comprised of all axes contributing to each theme, they are largely reproducing the results of the long form, but with interesting shifts especially in the context of Place.

Thank you for your collaboration with EcoTypes, and be in touch as needed.

Regards,

Jim P.

[James Proctor]

Dear all, another quick update, this time on the EcoTypes followup reflection form; please see attached image. 

• I'm glad to see several institutions using the form, but strongly urge you to prepare your students before they complete it. Some responses suggest that students are a bit confused. This is understandable!: the form is customized with each student's survey results, and stretches them to think about these results in new ways. You can find an overview on the reflection form page, and the theory behind the ways of counting they encounter on the updated EcoTypes FAQ ("What is the theory underlying EcoTypes?"). 
• I also see some students attempting to shortcut the reflection process, by entering brief gibberish in text fields. Students are students!: some take assignments more seriously than others. To help a bit, I've coded a very minimum word length (10) expected per text field, and edited instructions accordingly; you'll see a typical error msg in the attached. Remember also that their answers are emailed to them upon submission, so you can check the quality of their reflections in that way.

Thank you again for your participation, and do be in touch if questions on the reflection form.

Regards,

Jim P.

On Fri, Dec 29, 2023 at 4:55 PM James Proctor <jpro...@lclark.edu> wrote: