Promoting ecoliteracy in an introductory database systems course: activities for the first week

Promoting sustainability, critical thinking, and ethical awareness are goals that appear in the vision statements of the majority of universities in the United States nowadays. One way of achieving these goals is by increasing the ecological literacy (i.e., ecoliteracy) of our students. In order to be effective, ecoliteracy should be taught not only in environmental studies classes, but rather across the institutional curriculum. In this paper we present three activities designed to be used in the first week of class in an introductory Database Systems course. Our activities promote critical thinking, systemic thinking, ethical behavior, and an increased awareness of ecological problems -- building blocks that set up the stage for teaching ecoliteracy.