Enhancing student engagement and learning via the optional Biodiversity Challenge

• The Biodiversity Challenge asks students to submit slides on taxa they choose.
• Challenges offer examples of concepts and are easy to integrate into lectures.
• Students enthusiastically use and enjoy the optional Biodiversity Challenge.
• The Challenge increases student learning, participation, and value for species.

Many of the world’s species are unknown to the public, which potentially hampers support for conservation. Conservation ecologists often identify the need for better educational tools to train students to recognize these knowledge gaps. Here, I describe the optional Biodiversity Challenge that I use in my Conservation Biology course. It asks students to submit slides on taxa they find interesting; I incorporate slides into lectures and students are rewarded with chocolate and possible extra credit. Students reported that the Biodiversity Challenge increased their participation in the course, increased the value they had for conserving poorly known taxa, and enhanced their knowledge of conservation biology as well as making them deeply aware of the knowledge gaps we face in the discipline. This simple but versatile optional assignment could easily be adapted to other courses, such as evolution, animal behaviour, ecosystem-based courses, or restoration ecology.