Read for the Earth: Connecting Formal and Informal Climate Change Education for First Year College Students

这是一个试点项目，旨在扩展和扩大现有教育资源的利用，这些资源是在五年前由美国国家科学基金会（NSF）以单独的大笔拨款支持下创建的。这种扩展是通过一种已经在美国高校普遍存在的课程来实现的：“新生研讨会”。现有教育资源的信息内容符合对我们社会的广泛范围重要和有趣的标准。支撑该试点的材料广泛多样，可适应当地环境，并随着新知识的出现而扩展。该项目的一个积极特点是，已有基础资源（书籍、视频、社交媒体、网站），有传播工具（新生研讨会课程），有一位公开露面的科学家有兴趣参与，该科学家的气候科学MOOC将继续提供，并可能成为当地课程的一部分。这个试点项目将测试教授环境科学课程的教师对有机会从丰富的材料中自由选择可用作课程构建模块的反应。它还将研究使用它们对在校生的影响。

This is a pilot project to extend and broaden utilization of existing educational resources created with support from the NSF to each of two PIs in separate large grants 5 years ago. The extension is through a type of course that has become ubiquitous across American colleges and universities: the "freshman seminar." The information content of the existing educational resources meets the criterion of being important and interesting to a broad spectrum of our society. The materials that underpin this pilot are broad, varied, and adaptable to local circumstance as well as extensible as new knowledge emerges. A positive characteristic of the project is that the base resources (book, video, social media outlets, web sites) exist, the delivery vehicles (freshman seminar courses) exist, a publicly visible scientist is available and interested in participating, and that scientist's MOOC on climate science will continue to be offered and could become part of local courses. This pilot project will test the response of faculty who teach environmental science courses to the opportunity of selecting freely from a rich set of materials that can be used as course building blocks. It will also examine the impact that their use has on enrolled students.