KE3005 - Understanding and Communicating Environmental Issues

In this module, you will learn through lectures, seminars and meetings with your allocated staff member. In addition to timetabled sessions, your independent study will be guided and supported through your engagement with a range of resources accessible on-line via the module eLP site, including an electronic reading list. Lectures will be used to introduce key issues and concepts across the environmental issues. Small group seminars will teach you what sources of information you can trust, how to find these sources, how to be objective, how to communicate with a primary school audience, how to make leaflets, how to make stunning graphics, how to identify the key information and how to reflect on your work. As you develop your leaflets, you will have four meetings with your allocated staff member. These meetings will help you focus your ideas, develop your leaflets and discuss the environmental issue.

You will be supported by academic staff throughout this module. Initially, this will be in the form of lectures and guided reading that you will need to have completed before each lecture. In the seminars you will be supported by academic staff to develop essential skills for success at degree level education and by outreach specialists from NUSTEM (Northumbria University Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) on how to communicate science to school children. By working in groups you will be able to peer support. You will have the opportunity to attend six workshops to help you find literature and develop your outreach leaflet. Your group will have meetings with a staff member, who will give you guidance in developing your leaflet.

All modules at Northumbria include a range of reading materials that students are expected to engage with. The reading list for this module can be found at: http://readinglists.northumbria.ac.uk
(Reading List service online guide for academic staff this containing contact details for the Reading List team – http://library.northumbria.ac.uk/readinglists)

Knowledge & Understanding:
• MLO 1: Understand the scientific background of contemporary global environmental issues.

Intellectual / Professional skills & abilities:
• MLO 2: Demonstrate an ability to search for, understand and use peer-reviewed literature in a collaborative group project.
• MLO 3: Develop communication skills to translate complex scientific evidence to a wider audience.

Personal Values Attributes (Global / Cultural awareness, Ethics, Curiosity) (PVA):
• MLO 4: Show evidence based and objective awareness for global environmental issues.
• MLO 5: Plan and develop communication skills for a target audience.

You will be assessed as a group (50%) and as an individual (50%).
Group assessments:
In small groups you will choose one of five environmental issues introduced in the lectures. From this you will engage with the peer-reviewed literature to understand your environmental issue. From your reading you will produce, as a group, an annotated and correctly formatted reference list (10%) (MLOs 1 & 2). From your reading you will then produce your group’s outreach leaflet that will be sent into a local primary school with a questionnaire for the pupils. A staff member will then provide a mark on the academic side of the leaflet (40%) (MLOs 1, 2 & 4).
Individual assessments:
Using the returned questionnaires, you will write an individual 500 word reflective report on how well the children understood your attempt to communicate the environmental issue (40%) (MLOs 3 & 5). Finally, all group members will evaluate the individuals in their group for their collegiality and team working abilities (10%) (MLO2).

For the assessment, written feedback, together with the mark awarded, will enable you to feed forward key aspects into assessments in other modules at both level 3 and above.

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This module aims to immerse you in current environmental issues from a research-rich perspective, where you will learn how to communicate these complex issues in an outreach based assessment. To do this we will explore three overarching questions:
1) What is the science behind environmental issues?
2) Why do you need to remain objective and engage with peer-reviewed research?
3) How do you communicate complex science to school children?
At the end of the module, your work is sent to a school and you receive the feedback as to whether it has helped the children to learn about the environmental issue. No pressure!
By the end of this module you will have the research skills to tackle the rest of your degree and feed your curiosity. You will also have the experience of a significant piece of outreach work that you might decide to pursue in future volunteering or career options.