discussion / Early Career  / 15 April 2020

Ways of developing skills and knowledge

Hi all,

I'm new to the community here and, coming from an engineering background, I am fairly new to conservation as well. At the moment I'm trying to get acquainted with the concepts surrounding wildlife and environmental conservation and have just found a blog post that I thought might be useful to some people in the same boat as I am, or anyone for that matter. It basically runs through a list of great websites that offer free courses with a focus on wildlife conservation:

https://stephintonature.com/blog/free-online-wildlife-conservation-courses?fbclid=IwAR3_D6AkqtzDoqoVz-aXYPG9m--635qPGOmzWYO3HLh1PZfAWXgdibR1o-E

With all that's going on with the virus I've found it's a good use of my time! Hope some of you find that as well. 

I made the title of the thread quite general, if anyone has any other ways of developing our skills and knowledge please share!

Harry




Hello!

Sorry for the delayed reply.

I did the National Geographic courses and found them to be pretty enjoyable with a broad, introductory focus. What I found really helpful were the extra links they provided at the end of each module.

This lead me to "Conservation Biology for All" which is a free textbook written on the subject. It can be found here.

I'm afraid I can't speak for the other courses. Hope this helps.

Harry

Thanks Harry, this looks super useful! I started the National Geographic course awhile back but never got through it. I think some of the other courses on that list look more promising. I wonder if anyone would be interested in doing a (weekly?) meetup, or a Slack group or something, to go through one (or more) courses together?

No problem. I think the book I linked earlier is great - detailed, lots of diagrams and maps and some technical stuff which is always good. 

I agree, the Nat Geo courses has nice graphics and is easy to understand but I didn't feel that much more knowledgable afterward. Great for motivation and a little intro though.

Unfortunately I am back at University now and very busy so won't be able to join in. Best of luck with it!