InTeGrate Modules and Courses >Mapping the Environment with Sensory Perception > Instructor Stories > Kate Darby
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Initial Publication Date: July 15, 2016

Kate Darby: Using Mapping the Environment with Sensory Perception at Western Washington University

About this course

An upper-division interdisciplinary course.

18
students
Two 110-minute sessions
per week
Non-traditional interdisciplinary college
within a large public, master's-granting institution
Syllabus (Acrobat (PDF) 126kB Jun15 15)

A Success Story in Building Student Engagement

The module was taught within Western Washington University's Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies, a nontraditional academic unit characterized by student-driven inquiry and curriculum and narrative assessments instead of grades, and it was taught over three weeks in an upper division Environmental Justice seminar course with 18 students. Most of the students enrolled in the class were pursuing majors or concentrations in Fairhaven, though a small number were environmental studies or science majors from Huxley College of the Environment. Most students entered the class with strong knowledge and concern for environmental and social issues, and little exposure to the natural or physical sciences. Our class met twice a week for 1-hour, 50-minute sessions, and we completed the module over six class sessions.

The module occurred near the end of the ten-week quarter and was linked to previous discussions about the limits of scientific data in representing and drawing attention to the experiences of environmental justice communities.

My Experience Teaching with InTeGrate Materials

Although my class moved through the module mostly as designed, I supplemented the module with short videos depicting environmental justice communities to further foster discussion around the nature of data, and the lived, sensory experiences of people living in environmental justice communities.

Relationship of InTeGrate Materials to my Course

Sensory mapping constituted a unit in the Environmental Justice course titled "The Lived Experience of Environmental (In)Justice)." Prior to this unit, students learned some theoretical frameworks associated with environmental justice, explored ideas of power and privilege, studied the history of the US environmental justice movement, and examined explanations for patterns of environmental injustice. We worked through these sensory mapping exercises starting during the fifth of a ten-week academic quarter. My hope was that after our more academic, theoretical discussions of environmental justice, the sensory mapping activities would make more real the experiences of those living in environmental justice communities while also giving students exposure to data collection and use. The sensory mapping module was followed by a series of teach-ins conducted by the students to connect the two parts of the course—the theoretical/explanatory and embodied/experiential—to local environmental justice issues by educating one another about these issues and providing opportunities for engagement.

Assessments

Utilizing the assessments as written was particularly challenging given the institutional context of the EJ course. Fairhaven College employs narrative assessments rather than traditional grades, and course structures and pedagogical cultures reflect this assessment practice. Consequently, students were resistant to the structured nature of the reflection papers, in particular, and to the rubrics. Many students also wanted more flexibility in the use of classroom time during the module; for example, they wanted to spend a great deal more time discussing alternative approaches to data collection and scientific inquiry. This was particularly challenging as I tested the module during my first quarter working within Fairhaven College. To combat these challenges, in any future use of the module within this context, I would provide students more agency in determining the assessment plan, perhaps by having them examine the module website before we begin and deciding as a class what we would like to emphasize.

Outcomes

At the beginning of the quarter, I had hoped that this module would provide students with a stronger understanding of the nature of data and data collection, especially as it relates to environmental justice studies. I hoped that their work in the module would further their scientific literacy, as this is one of the course goals. And I also hoped that the module content would help give more tangible meaning to the air, water, and soil quality data present in many of the empirical EJ studies we read in the course. The module was perhaps most successful in helping students understand and critique data collection and analysis that is often used in environmental justice studies. This led to productive and lively conversations about decolonizing the scientific process and citizen science within the environmental justice movement. I had not anticipated this application of the module, but will build in readings and discussions of these topics the next time I teach sensory mapping within an EJ course.

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These materials are part of a collection of classroom-tested modules and courses developed by InTeGrate. The materials engage students in understanding the earth system as it intertwines with key societal issues. The collection is freely available and ready to be adapted by undergraduate educators across a range of courses including: general education or majors courses in Earth-focused disciplines such as geoscience or environmental science, social science, engineering, and other sciences, as well as courses for interdisciplinary programs.
Explore the Collection »