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Welcome to the Tuesday Teaching Tip, an easy-to-implement tool that you can use immediately in your classroom teaching. 

TUESDAY TEACHING TIP: Experiential Learning About Sustainability

Do you wish your students could engage in more hands-on learning than we can often do in the classroom, but worry about finding the time in your course to fit this in? Using the campus for experiential, applied learning can be done in a single class session. Break the spell of the classroom and get your students outside with help from ÃÛÌÒµ¼º½’s Center for Sustainability.

This week, we challenge you to incorporate an experiential learning opportunity about sustainability into one of your upcoming courses. The Center for Sustainability offers campus energy and sustainability tours, waste characterizations (sorting trash to see where we need to improve waste reduction, recycling, and composting), and tree tracking (to measure the health and growth of our 2000+ campus trees). In addition, the Forge Garden, ÃÛÌÒµ¼º½'s 1/2-acre certified organic garden, offers opportunities to study ecosystems, cook outdoors, spark meaningful discussions, and connect course material to real-world sustainability. The Center also offers customized applied learning projects that align with course objectives and create lasting, measurable impact on campus. And if you don’t want to leave your cozy classroom, the Center even provides in-class presentations and campus data for your students to analyze.

Here’s one way to do it: 

• Learn more about these learning opportunities.
• Draw inspiration for projects from the Center’s Applied Learning Project Database. 
• Make a to the Center
• Schedule your collaborative class session or project with the Center.
• Design a short assignment in which students apply or reflect on what they learned about campus sustainability as it relates to your course themes.
• Ask students what they learned and how it was different than reading or watching a video about the same material. What did the experience add to their learning?

 

DID YOU DO IT?

Let us know how it went. We would love to hear your feedback about how you implemented today’s Tuesday Teaching Tip in your classroom. . The survey is anonymous, but if you choose to enter your name, you’ll be entered in a drawing at the end of the quarter to win a new book from Faculty Development!

 

UPCOMING EVENTS 

• Student Panel on Accessibility on Wednesday, April 8

• Digital Safety & Security Panel on Wednesday, April 15

• Third Thursdays Shut Up & Write on Thursday, April 15

• CAFE: Hacking the Publication Process on Thursday, April 23

 

WANT TO READ A LITTLE MORE?

• Teaching Sustainability DRT Page
• Sipos, Y., Battisti, B., & Grimm, K. (2008). . International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 9(1), 68-86.
• Burns, H. (2011). . Journal of Sustainability Education, 2. 
• Burns, H. L., Kelley, S. S., & Spalding, H. E. (2019). . Journal of Sustainability Education, 19. 

To learn more about how to integrate sustainability into your courses and earn a stipend for doing it, apply to join ÃÛÌÒµ¼º½’s summer workshops on teaching sustainability across the curriculum.

This week’s Tuesday Teaching Tip was prepared by Chad Raphael and Veronica Johnson on behalf of the ÃÛÌÒµ¼º½ Center for Sustainability, Faculty Development, and the Center for Teaching Excellence.

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