Recycling Service Learning Activity

Renee Faatz

This activity has benefited from input from faculty educators beyond the author through a review and suggestion process.

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This activity has benefited from input from faculty educators beyond the author through a review and suggestion process.

This review took place as a part of a faculty professional development workshop where groups of faculty reviewed each others' activities and offered feedback and ideas for improvements. To learn more about the process On the Cutting Edge uses for activity review, see http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/review.html.

This page first made public: Feb 17, 2010

Summary

Increase recycling on campus and in the community

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Context

Audience

Introductory Environmental Geology for non-majors and Survey of Geology for non-majors

Skills and concepts that students must have mastered

Understanding of resources and waste

How the activity is situated in the course

The project is semester long.

Goals

Content/concepts goals for this activity

Understanding of resources, waste

Higher order thinking skills goals for this activity

Other skills goals for this activity

searching the web, working on groups, formulating arguments, oral presentation,

Description of the activity/assignment

The recycling project begins with students learning about waste and resources. They complete background assignments about the energy and materials required to manufacture paper, aluminum, etc. They study landfills and the issues related to space, pollution, etc. They look at what is different if these things are recycled. The students work in groups of two or three and adopt and academic building on campus. They educate the staff and faculty about recycling - what can be recycled and where. They arrange to pick-up paper from each office. My hope is that the college faculty, staff and students will eventually recycle paper at common bins and that our project will progress to adding other recyclables to our project.

Determining whether students have met the goals

Students will have two initial assignments. The first one will be a discussion followed by a paper about the benefits of recycling. The second one is a brief "talking points" poster they will use to educate the campus community. The third part of the project is actually recycling. The students will be graded by peer reviews and completing pick-ups in their assigned areas. The students must also participate in one aluminum pick-up per semester and volunteer at the community recycling center once per semester (if functional)