Socio-environmental synthesis: Introducing undergraduates to complex problems through a study of pollinators in local ecosystems

Background/Question/Methods

To help students understand the role of science and the process by which scientific work informs environmental solutions, we developed BSCI126 “Pollinators in Crisis.” This project was part of a multi-institutional teaching study supported by the NSF Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center to assess the effectiveness of teaching socio-environmental synthesis (SES) using different pedagogical approaches in a variety of undergraduate institutional settings. We developed a 6-week teaching module that challenged students to develop solutions/designs to the following prompt: “How can people living in urban and suburban areas [in/near Washington, DC] contribute to pollinator protection and increase local food security in their own or nearby gardens and farms?” We implemented a two-phase “jigsaw” design to simulate some of the epistemological challenges and benefits of interdisciplinary synthesis. Prior to the start of the module, students constructed concept maps of the systems potentially relevant to the prompt. For the first phase of the jigsaw, students assumed specialist roles (becoming “experts” on Plants, Pollinators, or People). Groups of each specialist type shared knowledge and resource libraries on a web site. For the second project phase, teams of students from each specialist type united to develop a final synthetic product addressing the original the challenge prompt.

Results/Conclusions

We conducted this teaching module in Fall 2012. The student-constructed concept maps created at the beginning of to the module showed a diverse range of ideas about the design prompt. Analysis of their revised concept maps generated after the module suggested that many students incorporated new or enhanced elements from both their own expert groups as well as their design groups, indicating the mixed design group experience influenced students’ perspectives about the complexity of the urban-agriculture-pollinator system. In addition to concept maps and their final products, we collected data on the students’ attitudes about their comfort and experience integrating natural and social science ideas in solving real world problems using a survey. Most students (81%) agreed or strongly agreed with the statements, “Complex, or ‘real-world’ problems, like the one we addressed in class, challenge me to refine my thinking about the learning process” and “I enjoy thinking about complex problems from different perspectives,” suggesting that the complexity and challenge of the module was not a drawback of our approach.