From Humans to Ecosystems

Place-Based Education and Transformative Experience Theory provide frameworks to incorporate climate change as a key topic in university biology classrooms. Climate change is often psychologically distant, where it is perceived as far away in space, society, or time. Instructors are encouraged to find novel ways to personalize climate change in their curriculum to help reduce this distance. This study describes a short curriculum activity designed for undergraduate biology students to teach about climate change in local contexts. We tested this activity in several biology courses at two universities in Colorado and Georgia to examine its utility across contexts, and we describe patterns in how our different students responded to the activity. Pre- and post-open-response questions were administered to measure evidence of student learning from the activity. Generally following the activity, our students reported greater numbers of personal impacts of climate change compared with their observations prior to the activity. Our activity is available in three formats (in-person, hybrid, and online), allowing for wide classroom implementation in a diversity of undergraduate biology classrooms.