Teaching Sustainability in an Interdisciplinary Environment
Presenters: Georgia Klein and Andrew Bergel
Friday, March 15
11:00 a.m. - noon
B400, Killam Library
The Environment, Sustainability, and Society double major at Dalhousie University began ten years ago as a new program for incoming undergraduates. This interdisciplinary program was designed to address “Wicked Problems” that help students become change-makers and leaders with a deeper understanding of complex connections between the Environment, Social Justice, and an innovative Economy.
This workshop will begin with a discussion on the curriculum development in the College of Sustainability. Obstacles and opportunities in the curriculum development led to an Experiential/Active Learning approach throughout the core curriculum. This includes various tools, such as: Problem based learning, Interdisciplinary Co-teaching models, Active Simulations. How these activities connect the core classes and their learning outcomes, along with how they complement each other throughout our interdisciplinary program structure will be presented to the attendees.
Our presentation will be followed by a workshop where we invite attendees to join groups in a short exercise/brainstorm session to identify barriers and opportunities to implement some of these tools in your classes/curriculum. We will then gather again as a group for a final discussion to share future possibilities for implementation.