Blending Technical and Creative Texts in Environmental Education for Undergraduate Students
Presentation Type
Long presentation (faculty/staff) 15-20 minutes
In Person or Zoom Presentation
In-Person
Campus
Daytona Beach
Status
Faculty
Faculty/Staff Department
Humanities & Communication
Presentation Description/Abstract
We wish to present a comparative case study on how a combination of technical and creative genres affects undergraduate students’ perception of environmental problems. Scholars and educators in environmental humanities often assume that students’ ecological consciousness would improve by being exposed to texts that provide cultural and historical perspectives on environmental issues. But few have looked into how students receive different genres in the classroom. For instance, how do students perceive the role of fictional and creative texts in representing technological solutions? How do genres interact and impact college students’ knowledge of environmental problems? To answer these questions, we designed environmental humanities courses that blend technical and creative readings; and we gathered pre- and post- survey data from two undergraduate courses that focused on environmental topics. This adds to the growing body of scholarship examining best practices in teaching environmental humanities courses, especially interdisciplinary approaches (O’Gorman et al, 2019; Le Rouge, 2023). Existing studies have not fully addressed how undergraduate students, especially students who major in STEM fields, are impacted by lessons from environmental humanities courses. Our results show some visible changes in student perception, but the shifts are not statistically significant most likely due to small sample sizes. We wish to present our methods and discuss the results as well as future research directions.
Keywords
Environmental humanities, pedagogy, education, sustainability, literature
Blending Technical and Creative Texts in Environmental Education for Undergraduate Students
We wish to present a comparative case study on how a combination of technical and creative genres affects undergraduate students’ perception of environmental problems. Scholars and educators in environmental humanities often assume that students’ ecological consciousness would improve by being exposed to texts that provide cultural and historical perspectives on environmental issues. But few have looked into how students receive different genres in the classroom. For instance, how do students perceive the role of fictional and creative texts in representing technological solutions? How do genres interact and impact college students’ knowledge of environmental problems? To answer these questions, we designed environmental humanities courses that blend technical and creative readings; and we gathered pre- and post- survey data from two undergraduate courses that focused on environmental topics. This adds to the growing body of scholarship examining best practices in teaching environmental humanities courses, especially interdisciplinary approaches (O’Gorman et al, 2019; Le Rouge, 2023). Existing studies have not fully addressed how undergraduate students, especially students who major in STEM fields, are impacted by lessons from environmental humanities courses. Our results show some visible changes in student perception, but the shifts are not statistically significant most likely due to small sample sizes. We wish to present our methods and discuss the results as well as future research directions.