Biodiversity Education | Civic Ecology Lab

Biodiversity
Education

April 20 – May 17, 2026

Join the Cornell Civic Ecology Lab for a 4-week global online course to turn biodiversity concern into meaningful education, collaboration, and practical local action.

Duration: 4-week online course (Apr 20 – May 17).
Focus: Research-informed biodiversity education linked to action.
Certificate: Cornell University certificate (PDF), documenting 25 professional development hours.
Audience: Educators and teachers, sustainability leaders in organizations and communities, volunteers and biodiversity advocates worldwide.
Instruction: The course is asynchronous, new materials released weekly. Optional live meetings will be recorded.
Final project: Create a practical biodiversity education or stewardship activity plan for your settings.
Syllabus: PDF file.
Standard tuition: $90 (see more below).

Why take this course?

Biodiversity loss can feel overwhelming. At the same time, educators, organizations, students, and communities can understand, care for, restore, and advocate for the living systems around them. Biodiversity education can help people move beyond awareness toward stewardship, participation, and action. This course is designed for people who want to teach biodiversity in ways that are engaging, locally relevant, and connected to real-world efforts such as habitat restoration, community science, pollinator support, soil renewal, watershed protection, and place-based stewardship.

This course helps you:

Connect biodiversity concepts to teaching, facilitation, communication, and action.
Explore how to engage learners, colleagues, and communities.
Develop a project you can adapt to your own school, organization, campus, or local initiative.
Learn from Cornell Civic Ecology Lab instructors, invited speakers, and other participants.
Join a guided learning community that offers feedback, discussion, and momentum.
Earn a Cornell-affiliated credential that documents your work and professional learning.

What you will do

By the end of the course, you should have clearer ideas, stronger language, concrete examples, and a project that helps you move from intention to biodiversity action in your own classroom, program, organization, campus, or community. During this course, you will:

Learn from readings, examples, and discussions about biodiversity education and action.
Examine how biodiversity connects to place, stewardship, ecological systems, community well-being, and public engagement,
Reflect on biodiversity challenges and opportunities in your own setting.
Participate in live webinars, roundtables, and case study meetings.
Discuss ideas with peers from different sectors and countries.
Share early plans, questions, or drafts for feedback.
Create a biodiversity education and/or stewardship activity plan.

Possible course projects

By the end of the course, you will design a 2-page plan for a biodiversity education/stewardship action. Your project can be small or large, formal or informal, based on classrooms, organizations, or communities. Biodiversity education and stewardship projects can take many forms, such as:

Schoolyard habitat restoration

Design a learning experience around native planting, insect habitat, bird habitat, or small-scale restoration in school or community spaces.

Local species lesson sequence

Create lessons or activities that help learners observe, identify, and care about species in their own neighborhood, campus, park, or watershed.

Community bioblitz or biodiversity monitoring

Organize a community science effort that invites learners or residents to document local biodiversity and reflect on what those observations reveal.

Pollinator support initiative

Connect biodiversity education with action through pollinator gardens, native plantings, or public outreach about insects and habitat.

Youth stewardship and storytelling

Involve youth in documenting local biodiversity, interview community members, share stories of place, or communicate conservation concerns.

Soil restoration and compost education

Build programming around soil organisms, decomposition, composting, regenerative practices, and the role of healthy soils in biodiversity

Wetland or coastal biodiversity education

Help learners understand how streams, shorelines, wetlands, or marine environments support biodiversity and how people can contribute to protection.

Ecosystem connectivity mapping

Guide participants or students to explore fragmentation, habitat corridors, and the movement of species across campuses, cities, or landscapes.

Urban greening and community biodiversity

Develop place-based projects that link trees, gardens, vacant lots, greenways, or pocket habitats to biodiversity learning and habitat restoration action.

Business and biodiversity dialogue

Explore how supply chains, land use, restoration, and organizational practices connect business decisions to biodiversity outcomes.

Course experience

Biodiversity Education combines flexible asynchronous learning with optional live interactions.

Asynchronous weekly learning components that include readings, videos, discussion prompts, and practical reflection activities.
Optional live sessions each week that create space for dialogue, questions, and participant sharing. Online meetings will be recorded and shared on the platform.
Practical application tied to your own setting and final project.
Social learning through discussion, peer exchange, and case study conversation.
A flexible structure designed for participants working in different sectors and time zones.
Course materials hosted on the edX Edge online learning system, and Zoom for optional live meetings.
Total workload: 25 hours.

Is this course for me?

This course is designed for a wide range of participants. If you care about biodiversity and want support in translating that concern into education and action, this course is likely a good fit.

Nonprofit, museum, zoo, aquarium, garden, and park educators — Develop programs that connect biodiversity learning with visitor engagement, place-based interpretation, and action.
Sustainability and conservation practitioners — Improve your ability to engage people, communicate biodiversity issues, and design educational components for ongoing work.
School teachers — Bring biodiversity into science, social studies, humanities, arts, or interdisciplinary learning through lessons, projects, and local stewardship activities.
University educators — Strengthen courses, field experiences, community-engaged learning, or student projects related to biodiversity, sustainability, or conservation.
Community leaders and volunteers — Build or strengthen local initiatives related to restoration, stewardship, species observation, neighborhood greening, or public education.
Students and early-career professionals — Develop a portfolio-ready project, build confidence, and learn from a global cohort of practitioners and educators.
Parents, caregivers, and informal educators — Explore practical ways to support biodiversity learning and stewardship in families, neighborhoods, and community groups.

Webinars

This course includes a strong lineup of optional live webinars with guest speakers from leading organizations in biodiversity, education, conservation, and stewardship.

These sessions add practical examples and fresh perspectives that can help strengthen your own biodiversity education and stewardship efforts.

All webinars are recorded and shared within the course site.

Meet your course team

Biodiversity Education is offered by the Cornell Civic Ecology Lab, with support from instructors, guest speakers, researchers, graduate students, and teaching assistants who help facilitate discussions and support participants throughout the course.

Alex Kudryavtsev (Cornell University, Department of Natural Resources and the Environment). Alex is a sustainability education and urban environmental education researcher. His recently published articles describes a framework of nature education, and hydroponics-based sustainability science education.

Professor Marianne Krasny (Cornell University, Department of Natural Resources and the Environment). Marianne is a widely cited scholar in environmental education and civic ecology and the author of multiple books, including research articles that informed this course.

Fish Yu (Cornell University, Department of Natural Resources and the Environment) is the co-instructor. Fish received a Master of Science from Cornell University. He researches public participation and sustainability governance and has long worked with environmental educators in urban communities worldwide.

Hamid Nikzad (Cornell University, Department of Natural Resources and the Environment). Hamid is a graduate student in our department. He conducts research on agriculture, human well-being, and climate change. He serves as the course administrator, and will be happy to answer your questions.

Tuition

We use tiered pricing to keep the course accessible to educators worldwide while covering course development and facilitation costs.

$90 – Standard fee – Participants residing in the United States, Canada, European countries, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Mainland China, Taiwan, Israel, Australia, and New Zealand.
$20 – Reduced fee – Participants residing in all other countries.

In addition, a limited number of competitive scholarships will be available. Apply by 11:59pm ET, April 14, 2026 (awards announced on April 17, 2026). Complete this Word document before registering for the course. You will save this file as PDF, and upload it as part of the online registration.

Credential

Participants who complete the course requirements, including weekly engagement and the final project will receive a Cornell University certificate documenting 25 professional development hours.

Questions?

Contact our course administrator at civicecology@cornell.edu and include “BE” in the subject line.

We look forward to learning with you and to supporting your efforts to design educational and stewardship programs that create meaningful outcomes for individuals, communities, and the environment.