Reflection of an Online Climate Change Course and Its Pedagogies: Retrospection and Prospect

Abstract

The impetus to raise awareness and impart positive attitude change toward climate action as one of the sustainability goals has catalyzed the introduction of climate change courses in universities, particularly in developing countries. An online climate change course has been developed and delivered as an elective to the first-year students of a university in China. A reflection of the course in terms of its teaching and learning and assessment was conducted based on the Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle with SWOT employed for evaluation and analysis of the experience. The course has the strength of incorporating abundant audio-visual elements, highlighting important points in slides, employing gamification, and simulating community projects in assignments. However, online teaching could be more time-consuming than face-to-face teaching in certain aspects, such as preparation of activities and games, and responding to students after office hours. Despite this, students felt that more interactions could be integrated, and teamwork might lead to advantage-taking and unequal task distribution in certain groups. This reflection calls for further improvement with the greater use of online interactive platforms and databases; interactions with experts and scientists in the field; delivery of community projects or talks to a real audience; and cross-varsity and cross-regional collaborations.

Gamification to Improve Participation in an Environmental Science Course: An Educator’s Reflection

“…A qualitative reflective approach was adopted to evaluate the effectiveness of the platforms for gamification of Pollution Science. The Gibbs' Reflective Cycle is popularly used to guide reflective practices by examining certain experiences in a structured manner to permit continuous improvement of the experiences due to its cyclic nature (Figure 1) [29]. Gibbs' Reflective Cycle is an established qualitative instrument that systematically and uncomplicatedly guides reflections.…”

“…It consists of six cyclical elements. In relation to this study, it started with the description of what took place in the class with the implementation of gamification, followed by the thoughts and feelings about those events (Figure 1) [29]. Subsequently, evaluation of the good and bad experiences was made, and, in this study, it was from the educator's perspective.…”

Student-centered Approach in Teaching and Learning: What Does It Really Mean?

“…This constitutes another feature of student-centered approach, namely project-based learning [13,19]. These projects can be community projects wherein students are required to identify community issues and analyze the issues through extensive research to propose and implement solutions [8]. Community projects allow students to take on the responsibilities to solve realworld problems, and through the process, they build rapport with the communities they serve.…”

“…This is especially true in many regions of the world where reticence is still prevalent as a demonstration of respect for teachers [2]. There are also different forms of knowledge transmission in between the two extremes characterized by expanding beyond syllabi to presenting more coherent information to students prior to helping students to learn and finally apply and synthesize knowledge [8].…”