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Bring sustainability into your classroom.
Educating students about the importance of a sustainable future is crucial if we aim to maintain the natural resources and quality of life we have come to take for granted. Here you'lll find the resources you need to introduce important green concepts into your curriculum and lesson-plans as well as your classrooms, campuses and communities.Connecting the Curriculum
“ General education is not complete until the subject matter of one discipline is
made to touch another. Bridges between disciplines must be built, and the core
program must be seen ultimately as relating the curriculum consequentially to life.”
Ernest Boyer, 1987
Why Sustainability Is An Effective Theme For Weaving The Curriculum Together
1. Sustainable development seeks ecological integrity, social equity, and a healthy economy. Sustainability
issues can be addressed on a local and a global scale. They are multidisciplinary by nature, encompassing
science, economics, geography, history, philosophy, ethics, sociology, mathematics, wellness, business, the
arts, and literature to name a few.
2. Addressing how to achieve a sustainable future requires practicing critical thinking skills, collaboration,
holistic (systems) thinking, and creativity – all skills our graduates should possess.
3. Service learning opportunities which link our students and our college to the community abound for projects
related to the environment and to social equity.
4. Sustainability issues are relevant to students’ everyday lives and to their futures.
5. Raising environmental literacy of our students will empower them to effectively meet the challenges facing
the next generation of creating a sustainable society.
Assessing Ourselves / Educational Evolution
How is well are sustainable concepts and ideas incorporated
into and demonstrated within your teaching environment?
Find out by taking the SAQ Questionnaire developed by the University Leaders for a Sustainable Future.
Across the globe colleges are implementing sustainability-based approaches to craft assignments, lectures and even majors and degree programs.
In her essay, Environmental Literacy and Sustainability as Core Requirements: Success Stories and Models Debra Rowe Ph.D, Senior Fellow of the ULSF, outlines and expounds upon this. Read the essay by following the link above and learn more about how we can allow our educational institutions to evolve by examining successful sustainability programs at other colleges and universities.
Solutions for a Greener Classroom
Blackboard as a Green Initiative
While Blackboard is a staple of BC's online and blended courses being taught currently, Broward College is hoping for a 60% utilization of Blackboard in face-to-face course sections by 2012. Through Blackboard, students have access to syllabi, powerpoint class lectures, test guides, assignment descriptions, and electronic remittance of assignments. This significantly reduces college printing and the overall usage of paper.
In addition to recuding the amount of paperwork and handouts, the Blackboard interface also has the ability to incorporate electronic texts, much like e-books for the ipad or kindle, that would lessen or even replace the need for students to purchase physical copies of the required texts for the class. The best part is that these electronic texts are many times either low cost or free for students and the college itself, doing BC's paper budget and our students' wallets a huge favor. Other paper-based educational tools such as photocopied articles, images and even tests could be converted to digitally based forms to further reduce the college's paper waste.
While the prospect of reading off an LCD screen for long periods of time may not appeal to some, in the long run Blackboard and other computer-based educational tools available to professors (like WIMBA and Sharepoint) are extremely promising and environmentally and economically friendly alternatives to traditional, expensive and wasteful paper-based methods. As the world turns to digital information educational institutions and their educators must not fall behind in offering students technological alternatives. They already embrace it in their daily lives, so introducing it into the classroom is and can be easier than you think.
How Are You Spreading Sustainability?
Are you introducing sustainable practices and concepts into the classroom?
Let others learn from your experience as we begin to share our ideas, learn from our mistakes and move
forward toward greener classrooms and campuses. Send us your sustainability success stories!
Spreading Sustainability
Help your students go green.
Give them the BC Sustainability Pledge
Resources
Our collection of helpful online resources compiled
to keep you informed and inspired.
Want to learn more about how Sustainability
can be a part of or even drive your career?
Check out our full list of courses relating to sustainability, green business & the environment.
Think Tank | Ideas Are Power
Looking for fresh approaches to sustainability?
Discover ideas from some of the most forward
thinking minds of our time, as well as our CSR
and Point / Counter Point Blog.
Join Team Green
