Tara Holmberg: Using InTeGrate Materials in Introduction to Environmental Science - EVS 100 (Online) at Northwestern Connecticut Community College
About this Course
Lower division course for non-science, education, AND science majors.
22
students
Online, Asynchronous
Spring 2018 Syllabus: EVS 100 Online (Acrobat (PDF) 438kB Sep28 18)
This three credit, non-laboratory science course is designed to provide an overview of long-term effects on the well-being of the planet and its inhabitants. The course will examine ethics, attitudes and history; natural systems; population; global and regional environmental issues including: biodiversity loss, overconsumption of resources, food production and challenges, energy sources, pollution, waste, and urbanization; and economics, solutions, and attitudes, using current and historical topics as a lens to examine the complexities of these topics.
The goals of the course are to provide students with a basic understanding of major environmental challenges facing modern societies and understand choices and trade-offs these challenges pose; to help students grasp scientific principles underlying basic phenomena and environmental change; to provide students with an understanding of technologies associated with major environmental problems and those that may help solve these problems; to assist students in distinguishing environmental impacts of industrial vs developing societies; to provide students with a basic understanding of different societies perceive environmental problems and pursue different solutions; to delineate how issues discussed in the course are connected to decisions and choices students make in their personal lives; to help students appreciate that complexities and intricacies of environmental problems demand a holistic approach, manifest by team work and group communication.
As part of my second mentoring of the InTeGrate FMN for QUBES, I chose to focus on my conversion of several resources to an online course format. I've used InTeGrate materials in multiple onground and hybrid courses since Spring 2016. Student achievement gains in objectives related to soils, agriculture, mining, climate change, among others have been measurable through these resources. Beginning in the fall of 2017, and continuing through spring and summer 2018, I began to add InTeGrate modules to purely online courses (Intro to Environmental Science and Earth Science) with the same goals and outcomes.
The interactive and interdisciplinary nature of the InTeGrate modules bring richness to a course that should be available to students no matter what through which modality they are learning.
My Experience Teaching with InTeGrate Materials
I have been working with InTeGrate materials since the Spring of 2016 in multiple courses. In my first semester, I was a mentee in a QUBES/InTeGrate Faculty Mentoring Network (FMN) and began by incorporating one module into my Environmental Science course. Since then, I have adapted units and activities from 8 of the modules into a variety of courses I teach (Environmental Science, Ecology, Botany, General Biology, and Earth Science). I have also been a Mentor in two QUBES/InTeGrate FMNs in Spring 2017 and Spring 2018.
Relationship of InTeGrate Materials to my Course
My course is a full semester and the activities take place throughout the semester as the relevant topics are addressed. The activities are woven fairly well into the course so that they do not seem to be unusual to my students as I have them doing activities every week.
The units/activities I used were not originally developed for an online format, unlike two of the InTeGrate Modules specifically designed for online learning. While most of the InTeGrate activities were able to be incorporated smoothly with comprehensive planning and targeted student instructions, other activities proved to be a bit more challenging to adapt.
The starting point for this project was that I knew InTeGrate modules provide wonderful modules/units to modify! The activities I used within Climate of Change, specifically Unit 1, were easily incorporated online with few adaptations. The reading comprehension quiz was delivered through our LMS and reflection questions were included as extension.
As mentioned before, however, some units do not transition as easily to an online platform, especially with limited interactivity between students. I have found that explanations and instructions can never be too explicit! As an example, students had difficulty with the mapping of Unit 1 of The Wicked Problem of Global Food Security (we needed to use Google Earth as they were online students) and directions the first time it was implemented. For work with multiple levels of instruction or pieces, such as that within this unit, students need very clear, detailed instructions to make the project work for them. In successive iterations of the course, the directions have become more thorough and explicit so students are not bogged down with the activity but instead are looking into the concepts.
Assessments
Online group work, which is much of the formative assessment of the units I use in my onground classes, can be difficult in online courses. Students have widely varied schedules and my course, which is set up as a survey class, tends to be quite fast-paced, especially during the summer. Therefore, I've focused my attention on individual activities with group discussions and responses as extensions from those activities. Finally, I've incorporated the higher-level thought questions for online courses into my summative assessments where they are expected to integrate the knowledge from the course materials and the InTeGrate activities into a meaningful picture of the world's issues.
Outcomes
Overall, utilizing these resources in my online courses has proven to be just as rewarding as in my onground classes, although, as with most online teaching, it has taken much more forethought to get there. I encourage anyone teaching online that is incorporating sustainability or geoscience to consider adapting these resources for their own courses.
Show the catalog description of my course
Hide