Sustainability project
Initial Publication Date: July 19, 2012
Summary
The students work in groups to develop, implement and assess a project that will make our campus more sustainable.
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Learning Goals
The main goal is to teach the students to integrate knowledge, skills and methods from different disciplines by developing a sustainability project.
Context for Use
Undergraduate level. An intro political science course is required to keep enrollment around twenty students.
Description and Teaching Materials
To help the students integrate different disciplines, I show them that a sustainability project needs to take into consideration knowledge, skills and methods coming from four different fields, namely science, economics, political science and ethics, if it is to be completed successfully.
Sustainability on campus assignment (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 21kB Jun28 12)
Teaching Notes and Tips
It is very important to spend enough time on each of these four disciplines to help the students understand how each one looks at sustainability. If they do not appreciate the contributions of each discipline and fail to incorporate them to their project, they will fail.
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Assessment
Biweekly updates and a final critical review in which they have to reflect on their original goals, their successes and failures.
References and Resources
At the beginning of the semester we read the critical reviews that the students wrote in previous semesters.
http://www.beloit.edu/environmental/studentprojects/
http://www.beloit.edu/environmental/studentprojects/