Center for Teaching and Learning

Popular media often reports on the carbon footprint of certain activities,
items or people. We were curious to explore how people make sense of
these news pieces, and specifically, whether and how carbon literacy
(CL) and quantitative literacy (QL) influences their reasoning. We interviewed and surveyed students of various backgrounds using simulated
news pieces of three carbon footprints: that of Facebook, that of the US
dairy industry, and that of the US chocolate industry. We found that
being highly carbon or quantitatively literate influenced participants’
reaction – but only while they were gathering information about the
prompts. The effect of literacies disappeared when they were asked to
decide whether the carbon footprint was worrisome or which they
would tackle first as a policy-maker. We describe and categorize the
strategies students used to make sense of carbon footprints, and link
the frequency of using particular strategies to their carbon and quantitative literacy. Implications for future research and environmental education are discussed.

A felsőoktatásban megjelenő változásokra reagálva a Budapesti Gazdasági Egy etemen létrehoztunk egy, a belépő oktatók számára kialakított programot, amiben mentoráltszakmai mentor-oktatásfejlesztő triádok dolgoznak együtt egy teljes féléven át. Az Üdv a fedélzeten elnevezésű program kerete az EPIC-modellre, az oktatói fejlődési modellre és a mentorálási szakirodalomra épít, elemei pedig nemzetközi gy akorlati példák helyi kontextusba való átültetésével kerültek kialakításra. A program háttere, szerkezete és eddigi tapasztalataink bemutatása után megfogalmazunk a magy ar felsőoktatás számára megfontolandó tanulságokat, kijelölünk fontos kihívásokat, és kitérünk jövőbeni terveinkre is.

Genetics instruction in introductory biology is often confined to Mendelian genetics and avoids the complexities of variation in quantitative traits. Given the driving question "What determines variation in phenotype (Pv)? (Pv=Genotypic variation Gv + environmental variation Ev)," we developed a 4-wk unit for an inquiry-based laboratory course focused on the inheritance and expression of a quantitative trait in varying environments. We utilized Brassica rapa Fast Plants as a model organism to study variation in the phenotype anthocyanin pigment intensity. As an initial curriculum assessment, we used free word association to examine students' cognitive structures before and after the unit and explanations in students' final research posters with particular focus on variation (Pv = Gv + Ev). Comparison of pre-and postunit word frequency revealed a shift in words and a pattern of co-occurring concepts indicative of change in cognitive structure, with particular focus on "variation" as a proposed threshold concept and primary goal for students' explanations. Given review of 53 posters, we found ∼50% of students capable of intermediate to high-level explanations combining both Gv and Ev influence on expression of anthocyanin intensity (Pv). While far from "plug and play," this conceptually rich, inquiry-based unit holds promise for effective integration of quantitative and Mendelian genetics.

Genetics instruction in introductory biology is often confined to Mendelian genetics and avoids the complexities of variation in quantitative traits. Given the driving question "What determines variation in phenotype (Pv)? (Pv=Genotypic variation Gv + environmental variation Ev)," we developed a 4-wk unit for an inquiry-based laboratory course focused on the inheritance and expression of a quantitative trait in varying environments. We utilized Brassica rapa Fast Plants as a model organism to study variation in the phenotype anthocyanin pigment intensity. As an initial curriculum assessment, we used free word association to examine students' cognitive structures before and after the unit and explanations in students' final research posters with particular focus on variation (Pv = Gv + Ev). Comparison of pre-and postunit word frequency revealed a shift in words and a pattern of co-occurring concepts indicative of change in cognitive structure, with particular focus on "variation" as a proposed threshold concept and primary goal for students' explanations. Given review of 53 posters, we found ∼50% of students capable of intermediate to high-level explanations combining both Gv and Ev influence on expression of anthocyanin intensity (Pv). While far from "plug and play," this conceptually rich, inquiry-based unit holds promise for effective integration of quantitative and Mendelian genetics.

A direct comparison of an open education resource (OER) and a traditional textbook by the same students in a controlled reciprocal design revealed that students spend less time answering reading questions from an OER textbook, while answering more questions correctly than after reading the commercial textbook. Student study behavior patterns are compared and discussed, along with their reasoning. Our results give evidence that OERs can be a viable, time- and cost-effective alternative to commercial textbooks, with identical learning outcomes

In January 2016, Georgia Tech launched a campus-wide academic initiative (“Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain”) aimed at preparing undergraduate students in all majors to use their disciplinary knowledge and skills to contribute to the major societal challenge of creating sustainable communities. The initiative calls for faculty members from all six Georgia Tech colleges to develop courses and co-curricular opportunities that will help students learn about sustainability and community engagement and hone their skills by engaging in real-world projects with nonprofit, community, government, and business partners. Affiliated courses address various aspects of the Center’s sustainable communities framework, which presents sustainability as an integrated system connecting environment, economy, and society. This chapter reports on one engineering instructor’s ongoing efforts that bring sustainability into the engineering classroom through sociotechnical project-based learning. This cornerstone design course is one of more than 100 Center-affiliated courses currently offered; the full set of Center-affiliated courses enrolls over 5,000 students per year across all six colleges. The sustainability activities introduced in the freshman design course pertain particularly to the Center’s vision that all graduates of the institute, a majority of whom will graduate with engineering degrees, are able to contribute to the creation of sustainable communities and to understand the impact of their professional practice on the communities in which they work. A situated knowledge and learning pedagogical theory is used in the Center-affiliated course, where concept, activity, and context are involved in student learning to produce useable robust knowledge. The sociotechnical project-based teaching model with contextualized design problems is used to engage students throughout the course by utilizing computer-aided-design problems that incorporate sustainability within both individual and team projects. In this chapter, the authors present the pedagogical approaches to learning, strategies, and challenges for implementation and assessment of intervention activities, and data analyses of both student reflection data and pre- and post-survey data.