Instructor FAQ

You do not require any special permissions from Jim Proctor (EcoTypes PI) for using it in your course, and all use is free of charge. We request you be in touch with us if you use the survey in instructional settings, so that we can assign your students an institutional code.

If you wish to participate in the EcoTypes COIL, read this overview, then get in touch for further details and to register your students.

We also appreciate if you would be in touch with us on your experience after using the survey, or other EcoTypes learning materials, in your course, via the question form, or a direct email to Prof. Proctor.

Since 2017, the EcoTypes initiated has been fully approved by the Lewis & Clark College Institutional Review Board. The IRB code is HSRC #2019-40, typically approved annually (current expiration 02 Dec 2023).

Since 2017, instructors in nearly 100 institutions of higher education in the USA, and a few in other countries, have used EcoTypes. See the diagram at right for a summary of the options introduced below, and note that an instructor’s guide is available; just contact us to request one!

1. The EcoTypes website has some good starter resources we recommend to orient your students to EcoTypes, including:
   • The EcoType FAQ page, covering many initial questions they might have.
   • A page summarizing axes, themes, and EcoTypes, with links to detail pages on each.
2. Students can then take the survey, which takes them maybe 15-30 minutes total. Upon completing the anonymous survey, they will immediately receive a customized report. Instructors have done a variety of comparison and discussion activities in class based on the survey alone, though the resources below will deepen student understanding and improve the quality of these activities.
3. Following the survey, students can complete a followup reflection form, customized with data from their survey, and going into greater depth on their EcoType and how they might navigate difference between their and other EcoTypes, based on a rubric of counting between one and two. The form requires their email address to deliver a copy of their answers, thus is confidential but not anonymous like the survey. It takes about one hour and must be completed from start to finish. Please send a request if you’d like to view reflection form content in advance.
4. Following the survey or the reflection form are two EcoTypes COIL modules. These COIL (collaborative online international learning) modules are self-paced and interactive; please read details on the instructor overview page, and send a request if you’d like to view COIL module content in advance. COIL modules require login, and instructors will register participants in advance.
   • The “Understanding Your EcoType” module can be completed following the survey. It takes roughly 2-5 hours.
   • The “Navigating Difference” module can be completed after the reflection form. It takes slightly less time than Understanding Your EcoType, to honor time the student put into the reflection form.
5. As mentioned in the instructor overview, students who completed a COIL module have the opportunity to interact across distance with students from other institutions via the asynchronous EcoTypes forum. Like the COIL, the forum requires login, and is private, i.e., only students from institutions participating in a particular forum will have access to it.

Yes!…see the EcoTypes COIL, and get in touch if you’d like more information and for your students to participate.

The EcoTypes survey is fully anonymous and GDPR compliant: no unique identity information is collected, and the use of anonymous data disclosed. (If a student forgets the entry key they were provided with their survey report, there is thus no way to retrieve the report for them to view, nor to delete their data if requested.) Some optional demographic data are collected at the end of the survey, but these are of a nature most respondents will not find to be sensitive.

All terms of the survey are provided on the first page. (You may need to come up with an alternative assignment if you wish to give your students the option not to take the survey, given these simple terms.)

Important! if you wish to receive a copy of your students’ data—a popular feature of EcoTypes to date—they must enter an institutional code in the dropdown box at the end of the survey. Please contact us to agree on a code, and to specify a date by which your students will have completed the survey; we’ll then export your data into a .csv file and email it to you, and provide a guide to help you understand and use your data.

The original EcoTypes site was packed with resources for instructors and students—too many, we heard. We are currently expanding and updating these resources into a book (possible publication date 2024), which you can use as a supplement in your courses; if interested, check the book notification box on our question form.

We plan in the meantime to provide most resources from the original website to instructors in a packet; send us a request and we’ll provide you one.

I and cross-national collaborators have been presenting on EcoTypes in 2022. Here are links to some presentations that may be of value:

• “Exploring Place, Knowledge, and Action via EcoTypes: A Cross-National Collaboration,” American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, February 2022.
• “Environmental Heterodoxy via EcoTypes: Multiple Imaginaries of Place, Knowledge, and Action,” Interdisciplinary Social Sciences Conference, July 2022.
  • In addition to the overview presentation for that session, my own contribution was “Navigating Environmental Heterodoxy: Meta-imaginaries of Place, Knowledge, and Action between One and Two.”
  • Two collaborator presentations for the ISS conference included Aideen Foley, “Serious games & Environmental Imagination,” and Sailaja Nandigama, “Controversies Around Environmental Action among Undergraduates in BITS Pilani.”

You may also wish to read these two earlier publications; note that some more recent features of EcoTypes are not mentioned:

• Proctor, James D. 2020. “EcoTypes: Exploring Environmental Ideas, Discovering Deep Difference.” Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 10 (2): 178–88. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-020-00592-y.
• Caplow, Susan. 2020. “The Role of EcoTypes in Engagement across Difference.” Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 10 (February): 189–95. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-020-00587-9.

Please feel free to join our EcoTypes Google Group, designed for instructors using EcoTypes in their classes. As of late 2022, the group includes over 150 members, and offers a wealth of insight into educational applications of EcoTypes.