Unit 1: "If an earthquake happens in the desert and no one lives there, should we care about it?" [How are human-made infrastructure lifelines affected by earthquakes?]
Bruce Douglas, Indiana University-Bloomington; Gareth Funning, University of California-Riverside
This unit initiates a discussion about the importance of recognizing faults in relation to modern societal infrastructure. Students consider the types of infrastructure necessary to support a modern lifestyle, ...

Unit 4: Anatomy of a tragic slide: Oso Landslide case study
Becca Walker, Mt. San Antonio College
Landslides can have profound societal consequences, such as did the slide that occurred near Oso, Washington in 2014. Forty-three people were killed and entire rural neighborhood was destroyed. In this unit, ...

Renewable Energy Virtual Field Trip
Evan Heeg, University of Wisconsin-Madison
This is a virtual field trip on the subject of renewable energy. The Google Earth slideshow will take you around the world to different key renewable energy sites across the world. Each site will have a quick ...

Sustainable Development: It’s as easy as F-E-W
Thushara Gunda, Vanderbilt University
The game was designed as part of a larger lesson plan on FEW systems that was developed during a SESYNC case study workshop (funded by NSF DBI-1639145). More information about SESYNC and the larger lesson plan can ...

Student-Generated Sustainability Short Stories Anchored in Science and Information Literacies and the SDGs
Laura Guertin, Penn State Brandywine
To build and improve upon their science and information literacies, students create a collection of short non-fiction stories that connect to at least one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). ...

Soil Ecology Lab
Becky Ball, Arizona State University at the West Campus
Students collect soil samples from places of interest around campus and run a series of basic soil analyses to make conclusions about how soil fertility relates to the biological community and human management.

Challenge and Persuade card game
Michael Mayhew, Science Education Solutions, Inc.
Developed by a team of scientists from two national laboratories, education researchers, gamers, and a professional game developer, Challenge and Persuade is a highly social, fast-paced, fun-to-play card game in ...

River of the Dammed
Kallina Dunkle, Austin Peay State University
This activity is designed to engage students in an active debate about land use and planning, human populations, ecosystems, and sustainability by assigning every student to a "community" along a ...

A River Runs Through It: an exploration in land use and water resource management
Robin Humphreys, College of Charleston
This is an in-class activity where students learn about the interconnectedness of land use, water quality, and water resource management. Students are assigned a river front parcel of land to develop, unaware that ...

Student perspectives on climate discussions from the UN Conference of Parties (COP) via audio narrative
Laura Guertin, Penn State Brandywine
This assignment provides students a storytelling structure that allows for their own voice and creativity to be applied. This is accomplished through the selection of an audience for a recorded voicemail and the ...