Professor Morgan Peach’s first-year seminar, Nature-Based Solutions, helps students learn to communicate through a variety of forms, including written, spoken, graphical, and built mediums. Students will build knowledge of nature-based solutions as socio-eco-techno systems thinkers. Nature-based solutions leverage ecosystem processes to help humans adapt to global change. The course will develop students’ understanding of entangled social-ecological problems (e.g., climate change, food and water security, environmental justice), to then imagine plausible nature-based solutions that could contribute to just, sustainable futures.
To support students’ imagination of nature-based solutions and to supplement writing exercises, a design-thinking approach was integrated with all three units of the class. This approach involved weekly “design labs” in which students workshopped their nature-based solution designs with peers.
The unit-by-unit design projects helped students develop their thinking about nature-based solutions, leading to stronger papers and deepened understanding of course content. The iterative design process also cultivated their ability to communicate to different audiences in different modes of composition, as progress towards this learning objective was evident by the end of the term.
“It was challenging to push students to think ‘outside the box,’ as many would emulate prior work or work of their peers… but the pedagogical outcomes were rewarding.” - Professor Peach