Using student generated blogs to create a global perspective on climate change

Students in an introductory Global Climate Change college course develop a global perspective on climate change causes, impacts, and mitigation through the use of student generated content in the form of blogging. The students are from diverse backgrounds and mostly non-science majors. They each create a blog for an assigned country. They are immersed in active learning through daily activities that teach them to use numerical data to create and analyze graphs for their blogs. Students are familiarized with other science skills as well, such as how to critically evaluate their sources. This method of using student generated content and active learning encourages students to immerse themselves in the viewpoint of people living in other countries. This creates a tangible understanding of the global stakes of climate change and fosters an emotional involvement in what otherwise might have been an abstract or intimidating topic. The front page of the course blog opens with a world map and a feed from each student's blog. Upon clicking on a country on the world map, the reader is taken to the blog page created by the student in charge of that country. The United States is reserved as a sample page created by the instructor. Throughout the semester, students follow a series of assignments that build their knowledge of the geography, climate, and culture of their assigned country, and these appear as tabs, or informational pages, on their blog. Students are taught to use Excel and they each create temperature and precipitation graphs that compare the climate of a city in their assigned country to that of their home city. Students then write their first blog post on their country's contribution to climate change and how that compares to other countries in the world by importing carbon dioxide emissions data into Excel and creating their own graphs to be used as images in their blog post. The second blog post covers potential climate change impacts on their assigned country such as sea level rise or heat waves. Students then discuss what their country is doing to mitigate climate change, including its role in the Kyoto Protocol and any policies for alternative energy or carbon sequestration. Lastly, students write their final blog post on how their country plans to adapt to climate change. After each blog post, students are required to comment on their classmates' posts. This encourages them to recognize the interdependence of the countries they study, a connection often overlooked in simple paper writing exercises, but made visible through the use of the blogs.