InTeGrate Modules and Courses >Systems Thinking > Instructor Stories > Deborah Gross
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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 materials are free 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.
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Initial Publication Date: October 24, 2016

Deborah Gross: Using Systems Thinking in Climate Science at Carleton College


About this Course

An introductory course for students who have had one introductory science or math course previously. This course counts as an elective for the environmental studies major.

18
students
Two 70-minute and one 60-minute class sessions
per week for 9.5 weeks. ENTS 287 Fall 2015 Syllabus (Acrobat (PDF) 50kB Jun21 16)

A Success Story in Building Student Engagement

My Climate Science course is an introductory-level course, although it requires students to have one college-level math or science course as a pre-requisite. It is typically taught with a mix of lecture, discussion, and student-directed projects, so the activities in this module fit right in!

When I taught this course previously, my students and I had discussed the complexity of Earth's climate system throughout the course, but we had not taken the time to specifically develop the tools for describing complex systems through diagrams, as this module helped us do. The students were able to transfer these skills to all aspects of their course, and hopefully into other areas, as well.
In the offering of the course where I used this module, my students were always drawing systems diagrams and were specifically using the methods, vocabulary, and habits of mind that they developed through the material in the module, in all aspects of the course.

My Experience Teaching with InTeGrateMaterials

I used the module essentially as-is. The only way I changed things for my course was that I did not use the PowerPoint presentations in Units 1 and 2, but instead led discussions with the students, where I (or they) drew on the board to illustrate points.

Relationship of InTeGrate Materials to my Course

My course is 9.5 weeks long (28 class meetings), and I started the module right at the beginning. I did Units 1 and 2 on the second and third days of class. Units 3 and 4 were done about 1 month later, one week apart. Units 3 and 4 were done around the same time that we were learning to use EdGCM, a climate model, and working with simulation results from it. I introduced the bathtub models as a way to actually work with the individual calculations that are within a climate model, one at a time. Unit 5 was done just after Unit 4, right after we had a deep foray into the Carbon Cycle, because of an article that we had read and discussed in class. We developed our own (partial) model of the Carbon Cycle in that conversation. Thus, I chose to use the Carbon Cycle example for this unit, so that we looked at a complete version. Unit 6 was done on the second-to-last day of class.

Assessments

I used all of the assessments that are included in the module. The most engaging to the students was the photo collage in Unit 2 — they took that assignment to heart and spent a lot of time on it, making really wonderful diagrams. They solidified their understanding through each of the exercises, and I think they all went well.

Outcomes

I anticipated that the students in my class would have a more specific and more disciplined way of discussing the "system" part of the climate system — the topic of the whole course. This was in fact the case, as after Unit 2, drawing system diagrams, and explaining course material using appropriate systems language, was a natural part of their discourse. The ability to work with the STELLA models enhanced our introduction to a GCM, shedding light on the inner-workings of such a model, although I believe that all of my students would have been happier working in the full version of STELLA, where they would have been able to adjust the model, rather than just the inputs. However, given the software availability, having the free viewer was fantastic. Overall, my students were more sophisticated in their formal engagement of systems throughout the course.

Classroom Context

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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 »