Invited by Science Unit of Lingnan University, during 2023-2024, we held several forest ecology field trips. We led the university students to visit Tai Po Kau Nature Reserve and Aberdeen Country Park. Students learned about local forest ecology, and realized the importance of nature to human.
In November 2023, we helped the students admitting the course “Ecology: The Science of Environmental Issues” to hold a forest ecology field trip. Students were able to learn about the important relationships between species and environment with educational games and tutors’ interpretation. The underlying operation and importance of forest ecosystem, like pollination mechanisms and nutrient cycles and even organisms’ niches were all covered in the trip.
Subsequently, in February 2024, we again organized forest ecology field trip for Lingnan University, with a total of 2 rounds.
The first round of field trip was organized for master students who enrolled in the course “Urban Ecology and Sustainable Planning”. Under the guidance of our instructors, over 40 master students went to Aberdeen Country Park, and experienced different games and missions. For example, in the “Biodiversity” game session, students were given different biodiversity cards, and they had to search for the animals or plants that were described on the cards. This activity could enhance master students’ observation of their surroundings, and absorbed different ecology concepts.
On the other hand, in the second round of field trip, we led over 20 non-Science major bachelor students to explore the ecology of Tai Po Kau Nature Reserve. Similar to the previous rounds, there were different missions during the field trip, enabling the students to learn about ecology knowledge through an intriguing way. For instance, in the “Countryside Changes” game session, students had to re-arrange different event cards according to the correct chronological order, so as to understand the history of the country parks in Hong Kong.
