I was rather surprised to see the high level of application that students were doing and that was required of us from this course, especially when it came to the research project. From what I read on the blog posts people did a great and in-depth job on their projects.
I on the other hand took a very light-handed approach on the matter as I had a lot of other priorities this summer while I worked on this course. I must say I did enjoy the textbook and the great information this has to offer; this is one I will be keeping for sure. As for the final research project, I did a very simple design and could have done it much better with a little more depth and forethought. I can appreciate how the course really wanted to apply the scientific method. My initial project thoughts were rather large at the beginning (ungulate occupancy and anthropogenic impacts to area use), so I chose a much different topic out of my realm, as I never work with or have done anything related to birds. Overall, I could have done much better on everything, but I appreciate the course layout.