Creating a Learning Community for Solutions to Climate Change

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Climate Change Education In response to the Climate Change Education program the National Council for Science and the Environment's Council of Environmental Deans and Directors (CEDD) is creating a nationwide cyber-enabled learning community called CAMEL (Climate, Adaptation, and Mitigation e-Learning). CAMEL engages experts in science, policy and decision-making, education, and assessment in the production of a virtual toolbox of curricular resources designed for teaching climate changes causes, consequences, and solutions. CAMEL looks to the needs of the future workforce and citizenry in general as discourse on climate change has shifted from whether such change is occurring to the challenges of dealing with the ongoing impacts. This project acknowledges the interdisciplinary nature of climate change and challenges educators to curricular content based on the best available research and on the appropriate pedagogical methods for enabling students to tackle complex problems. Specific objectives are: - To assist faculty at institutions of higher education across the United States as they create, generate, test, and share resources for teaching students not only how to diagnose climate change problems, but also to identify and effect solutions by presenting a multi/interdisciplinary treatment of climate change; - To ensure that materials developed and shared are founded on the best available scientific information and follow the most appropriate educational practices; - To build a community of researchers, educators, and students engaged in teaching about climate change causes, consequences and solutions through face-to-face and online networking; - To develop cyberinfrastructure that will support and promote the creation of materials and community; and - To evaluate the determinants of successful community building using cybermedia. In order to develop and disseminate innovative undergraduate education that addresses these objectives, CAMEL's implementation strategy has five interrelated components: content development, faculty development, community-building, cyberinfrastructure, and program evaluation.