Whether you’re interested in species interactions, conservation, or marine ecology, there’s a course for you. We’ve done the research using Class Central, a search engine for online courses, and other sites to identify the best ecology courses. With over 250 ecology courses and more than 4,000 people following the subject in our platform, we’ve collated ratings and reviews to narrow down the best choices for this Best Courses Guide (BCG).

These courses are created by well-known institutions: Rice University, University of Leeds, the University of Queensland, the American Museum of Natural History, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. We’ve also thrown in a dynamic offering from CrashCourse for good measure.

Click on the shortcuts for more details:

• Top Picks
• What is Ecology?
• Why You Should Trust Us
• Courses Overview
• How We Made Our Picks and Tested Them

Here are our top picks

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What is Ecology?

Ecology is the study of the relationships among species and with their environment.

I grew up on a farm. Some of my best childhood memories are from the area of Australian bush at the back that wasn’t used for growing crops. I was fascinated by the giant ironbark and gum trees, the smaller shrubs, the caterpillars that ate leaves and turned into butterflies, the birds, and once or twice we even saw kangaroos hopping by. Admittedly, I wasn’t as keen on the spiders, mosquitos, and occasional snakes that were also part of the environment. As I compiled this list, I wanted to spend the next several weeks finishing all the courses I hadn’t yet done 🙂

Why You Should Trust Us

Class Central, a Tripadvisor for online education, has helped 60 million learners find their next course. We’ve been combing through online education for more than a decade to aggregate a catalog of over 200,000 online courses and 200,000 reviews written by our users. And we’re online learners ourselves: combined, the Class Central team has completed over 400 online courses, including online degrees.

I’ve personally completed over 200 online courses in a variety of topics including ecology.

Courses Overview

• All the courses in this BCG are free or free to audit
• 5 courses offer a verified certificate
• Coursera is the most popular provider with 3 courses.

Best Introduction to Ecology Course (Rice University)

Introduction to Biology: Ecology was released in Sept 2022. This comprehensive course includes resources such as excerpts from books and papers, and has worksheets to help you take notes for the lecture videos. The seven modules include topics such as ecological niches, species interactions, island biogeography, abiotic factors, and the future of the biosphere including the sixth extinction and loss of biodiversity. If you pay for the graded items and certificate, the final peer-reviewed assignment will give you the opportunity to study an organism of your choice and how it interacts with its living and non-living surroundings.

And if you enjoy the course, you can go on to the rest of the Biology: Ecology, Evolution, & Biodiversity Specialization by Rice University in Houston, Texas: Introduction to Biology: Evolution, and Introduction to Biology: Biodiversity.

Sofia FL, a Coursera learner, is enthusiastic: “Loved it!!! An amazing introduction to this perspective in life! Than (sic) you!”

Best Short Ecology Course (CrashCourse)

I’m a big fan of Hank Green of CrashCourse, so I was delighted to spot Ecology by CrashCourse in the catalog. Hank’s lively, upbeat style doesn’t suit everyone, but I love his simple explanations of sometimes complex topics, bolstered by slick images and quirky animations. Even though it was created in 2014, the material is still very relevant today. And with over 3.7 million views, it’s proven to be a popular course that will give you an overview of ecology in under three hours.

You’ll start with a quick run-through of the history of life on Earth, followed up by population ecology, community ecology and predators, economic ecology and ecosystems, pollution, conservation, and biogeochemical cycles.

Mateus Martins says, “Agradeço pelo curso e pelo seu conteúdo impecável…” (Thank you for the course and its impeccable content…)

Best Course About Conservation (American Museum of Natural History and Howard Hughes Medical Institute)

Ecology: Ecosystem Dynamics and Conservation takes a holistic look at the Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique, whose wildlife is slowly recovering after being affected by 15 years of civil war. You will learn about systems thinking and how changes in one population can affect others in sometimes unexpected ways. A later module examines coastal ecosystems. While this course is described as an intermediate level, you don’t need previous experience in ecology. You can access useful and interesting links such as a list of classroom resources from the American Museum of Natural History.

According to Diana Hamid, “This course is really more than amazing…”

Also Great Conservation Course (University of Leeds)

With 133 reviews on Class Central, Ecology and Wildlife Conservation from the University of Leeds features in Class Central’s list of Best Online Courses of All Time. Why and how can we conserve the natural world? You’ll take a look at various ecosystems and how they are affected by human activity, including offshore wind farms, coral reefs, the Galapagos Islands, and bees. And read about more populations and communities in the comments from other learners as you go through the course.

In the words of David Stuart Hinley: “This was a really engaging and enjoyable course with a diverse range of case studies from around the world. I learnt so much from the other course participants as well as from the course itself…”

Best Marine Ecology Course (American Museum of Natural History)

Added to the catalog in June 2023, Marine Biology already has over 15,000 enrollments. Since humans breathe air, it’s hard for us to explore the oceans, which contain only 13% of the species we know. Discover a range of ecosystems including river estuaries, coastlines, deep sea reefs and the ocean depths. We’ll learn about evolution, threats including destructive fishing techniques and how deep-sea organisms use biofluorescence and bioluminescence to survive. Several case studies cover a range of organisms and habitats.

A compact course with plenty of information.

“I really enjoyed this course. I think it was a good blend between essays and videos, and provided an in-depth dive into various fields in Marine Biology, and overall was very informative.” JJ, Coursera learner.

Also Great for Marine Ecology (The University of Queensland)

It’s not quite deep ocean ecology, but Tropical Coastal Ecosystems covers coral reefs, mangrove forests, seagrass meadows, and more, where an estimated 25% of marine species live. Explore the challenges these ecosystems face, with up to 500 million people living near the world’s tropical coasts. Dive into tropical coastal ecosystems with plenty of above-water and underwater images and videos. Learn about calcification and nutrient cycles, field research and experimental design in this comprehensive course.

Knowledge check questions are found throughout. If you’ve paid for the certificate, you can access the end-of-week assessments and the final tropical ecology project. For the project, you design an experiment set on and around “Paradise Island”, decide what data to collect, then analyze data provided by the instructor.

Suzan Hann says: “…Very nice course. I learned a lot, and it was presented in a way to keep the interest…”

How We Made Our Picks and Tested Them

Trying to find “the best” can be daunting, even for those of us who live and breathe online courses. Here’s how I approached this task.

First, I combed through Class Central’s Catalog and the internet to find a variety of free and paid open courses, some with certificates. You don’t need to enroll in a university to learn about ecology.

I extracted information from course syllabi and reviews, and compiled their ratings, leveraging the Class Central database with its thousands of course ratings and reviews written by our users as well as available course provider ratings. I watched some course videos to sample courses I hadn’t already taken.

Then, I defined the scope for these recommendations. An ecology course can cover various topics, so I chose top courses from a range of sub-fields.

Ultimately, I used a combination of data and my own judgment to make these picks. I’m confident these recommendations will be a reliable way to learn about ecology.