Mississippi River Watershed Nitrogen Pollution

My BASICS activity followed the provided material and all achievables and learning goals mirrored those documents. My activity did not cover data set from environmental disciplines and thus was not a quantitative learning exercise. Students need only enter the course open-minded and willing to work independently and with other students in order to succeed and integrate the broader perspectives brought by this module.

My course is a 400/500 level course at a regional state university. Class sizes range from 15-25 students and is a mixed population of upper-level undergraduate and graduate students. This course is also cross-listed between Biological and Geological Sciences, and enrollment is consistently balanced, with additional undergraduates in our Environmental Studies major. Students enter the course with a wide range of backgrounds, so the introductory material is taught accordingly. As this interdisciplinary learning environment is inherent in this course, the BASICS module was a natural fit and students readily take to its broader interdisciplinary activities. The BASICS section covered roughly 4 lecture periods and a few weeks of calendar time and was implemented midway through the semester. The module does not require any skills beyond the basic knowledge inherent in upper-level students in these disciplines and should be easy to implement into similar courses.

All activities and teaching used the standard BASICS material. Verbal instructions were given regarding the flow and finer details of activities. Lucidspark was used to construct individual stakeholder maps and a combined course map. Student stakeholder groups prepared short presentations describing and defending their stakeholder group followed by a town hall where they brought questions and concerns to other stakeholders. Following this town hall, groups assembled a short summary of activities report and individuals completed the BASICS-provided group assessment forms. Prior to and following the BASICS module, students filled out the pre- and post-assessment, respectively.

As part of my evolving teaching philosophy, I have begun more and more verbal distribution of activity and assignment details, as I have noticed that students rely on written instruction at the cost of often ignoring verbal information. I feel that listening to and documenting verbal instruction is a critical life/work skill that we are ignoring under the auspices of documenting course practices, and as such much of my BASICS module instruction followed this method.

As I move toward more equitable and meaningful grading practices, I have begun the process of "ungrading" my courses. As such, much of the activity in my courses, including the BASICS module, was assessed on low-stakes and pass/fail assessment. This includes credit for in-class and group involvement and passing credit for completing requested documents. I communicated regularly with stakeholder groups, including individual meetings with each group midway through the exercise to assess progress. The final group summary documents with returned to students ungraded but with comments that I required to be addressed before resubmission and groups were assigned scores based on the completion/completeness of these revisions.

None beyond provided resources.