A Climate Change Course for Undergraduate Students

Abstract

For the past 10 years, a climate change course has been offered in a large Midwest university. This course has been focusing on improving college students' scientific knowledge of climate change and human interactions using historical evidence as well as improving their information literacy in science through a course project that requires students to prepare a group presentation and a paper about an example of historical evidence of climate change and human interactions. This study evaluates the course's impact on students' learning of climate change and human interaction and improvement of information literacy in science based on students' responses to several questionnaires and interview data collected through the academic year of 2009. Results show that even if individual students had a different level of background knowledge of climate change and human interactions before the course, their content knowledge improved through the course. The students agreed that the course positively affected their information literacy in science (climate change) and interest. However, they neither disagreed nor agreed that they learned science knowledge relevant to their everyday lives and current socioeconomic issues related to climate change. They also thought that their environmental behavior did not change much as a result of the course.