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- Leire, Charlotte, et al.
(författare)
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Online teaching going massive: input and outcomes
- 2016
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Ingår i: Journal of Cleaner Production. - : Elsevier BV. - 0959-6526. ; 123, s. 230-233
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The proliferation of massive open online courses is a recent phenomenon in higher education. At the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics at Lund University in Sweden, emerging pedagogical approaches in e-learning have long been embraced, allowing for valuable experience with new educational technologies applied in education for sustainability. In 2014, the Institute was given a formal task to develop a massive open online course on “Greening the Economy: Lessons from Scandinavia”, thereby utilizing existing capacities and experiences while experiencing new challenges revealed by courses of larger scale. This article presents the background to the Institute's undertaking with massive open online courses and the range of expectations from the main stakeholders. The article discusses massive open online courses as a novel venue for e-learning in sustainability education as regards learning activities, design and content. It concludes that while the initial experience of such a course has been positive, in order to better cater to the learner groups, continued attention needs to be paid to course design, teacher capacity and in particular an examination of learner motivations.
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| 2. |
- Richter, Jessika Luth, et al.
(författare)
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Greening the global classroom: experiences using MOOCs to advance sustainability education
- 2015
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Ingår i: Global Cleaner Production and Sustainable Consumption Conference Proceedings.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The proliferation of massive open online courses (MOOCs) has been a phenomenon in higher education but only recently the subject of academic literature. MOOCs combine the traditional ideas of cohort and guided learning with open access and a truly global classroom. With over twenty thousand learners attracted to such courses, we argue that they can be a powerful tool in advancing sustainability education in terms of global reach. Like traditional education, the quality of the education delivered by MOOCs is influenced by their design and this is also integral to their success in promoting deeper learning of sustainability topics. However, designing a quality course and ensuring genuine learning experiences in this open and massive context is not without challenges. We describe our practical experience with curriculum design, production and delivery of a MOOC with a wide sustainability focus of "Greening the Economy: Lessons from Scandinavia". The background of students taking the MOOC, motivations and reasons for seeking this type of sustainability education and perceived benefits from this MOOC and other MOOCs with topics related to sustainability are discussed. Combining pedagogical approaches in the form of teacher-led lectures and quizzes for basic understanding with more constructivist forum discussions and peer assessment created the opportunity for the MOOC to not only disseminate knowledge about sustainability issues, but also encourage discussion, peer interaction, and deeper engagement with these issues. An interesting aspect of this reciprocal learning was the collected insights from learners in the form of case studies and survey responses. The promise, as well as potential issues, of MOOCs in contributing to the goals of sustainability education and lifelong learning are discussed and reflected upon.
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| 3. |
- van der Velde, Ype, et al.
(författare)
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Consequences of mixing assumptions for time-variable travel time distributions
- 2015
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Ingår i: Hydrological Processes. - : Wiley. - 0885-6087 .- 1099-1085. ; 29:16, s. 3460-3474
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The current generation of catchment travel time distribution (TTD) research, integrating nearly three decades of work since publication of Water's Journey from Rain to Stream, seeks to represent the full distribution in catchment travel times and its temporal variability. Here, we compare conceptualizations of increasing complexity with regards to mixing of water storages and evaluate how these assumptions influence time-variable TTD estimates for two catchments with contrasting climates: the Gardsjon catchment in Sweden and the Marshall Gulch catchment in Arizona, USA. Our results highlight that, as long as catchment TTDs cannot be measured directly but need to be inferred from input-output signals of catchments, the inferred catchment TTDs depend strongly on the underlying assumptions of mixing within a catchment. Furthermore, we found that the conceptualization of the evapotranspiration flux strongly influences the inferred travel times of stream discharge. For the wet and forested Gardsjon catchment in Sweden, we inferred that evapotranspiration most likely resembles a completely mixed sample of the water stored in the catchment; however, for the drier Marshall Gulch catchment in Arizona, evapotranspiration predominantly contained the younger water stored in the catchment. For the Marshall Gulch catchment, this higher probability for young water in evapotranspiration resulted in older water in the stream compared to travel times inferred with assumptions of complete mixing. New observations that focus on the TTD of the evapotranspiration flux and the actual travel time of water through a catchment are necessary to improve identification of mixing and consequently travel times of stream water. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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