The majority of learning activities that the U of M Global Change faculty use to achieve their goals are informed by the following teaching principles:

In regard to their first teaching principle, the faculty members believe that students learn most effectively not when teachers act as "authority figures,"^c: but rather when students carry out their own investigation and critical thought processes. Dave Halsing and Patrick Livingood, graduate student instructors (GSIs), articulated this difference by describing an activity that deals with ozone depletion. Dave explained that the students "look at real world numbers concerning CFC production and ozone depletion and we ask them to tinker with the percentage reduction after a certain year. They're told that they have to keep ozone at a certain level and then they run the model to find out what point it can't dip below." Patrick Livingood then contrasted this hands-on method with what would be a more passive one, saying, "Someone could have said in lecture, 'We're going to have to reduce ozone by 99.5% to keep skin cancer rates below this certain number,' and students would have forgotten about it five minutes later. It would have been a meaningless number."

Regarding their second teaching principle of enabling learning to occur in diverse ways, the bricoleurs feel that teaching the course in an interdisciplinary way is crucial. As Tim Killeen, professor of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences (now director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research), stated, an understanding of global change is shaped not by single, separate, tunneled view points but rather by a "panorama" of perspectives involving "a lot of complexity, a lot of issues."

To help students manage this complexity, the U of M faculty have incorporated interdisciplinarity in all of the Global Change learning activities, whether computer-dependent or computer-independent. The geographic modeling programs that students use in labs entail both social and scientific variables. The lecture sessions feature guest professors whose fields of expertise range from economics to geology. According to Lisa Curran, professor in the School of Natural Resources and Environment, the eclectic range of student interest can vary from those concerned with "community development" to those concerned with "international policy."^d:

See Discussion 1 for a student discussion of the interdisciplinary format. Having students run computer-based STELLA models is one of several activities that the U of M faculty use to create a learning environment that implements their teaching principles. These learning activities fall into three separate categories:

Computer-dependent activities are activities that would not be possible, or at least not feasible, without computers. In the University of Michigan Global Change course, these activities include labs in which students:
• conduct hands-on analysis with real-world data and geographic information models
• research and critically assess an array of global change issues using on-line literature and data.

Computer-improved activities are activities that faculty believe work incrementally better with technology, but can still be implemented without it. In this course, these activities include web-based lecture notes, simple animations, and other aids that give students material in a uniform format and help them manage the amount of content presented to them.

Computer-independent activities--that is, activities that do not involve the use of computers, include:

• group work
• lectures
• homework

A. Computer-dependent Learning Activities

The U of M faculty employ two learning activities in ways that would not be possible without computers. These activities are:

• Hands-on application of real-world data with dynamic modeling programs like STELLA^e and geographic information systems like ArcView^f

  This software allows students to extract global change information from data banks (for example, from the World Resources Institute, using the Internet), and, using this data, to "model global change phenomena and understand the human consequences of environmental change.^g Dave Allan, Professor of Natural Resources and the Environment, noted that, "the STELLA program is a terrific enabler of critical thinking about dynamic processes and the GIS software is a terrific enabler in thinking about patterns on the globe." As George Kling, biology professor, explained, the two interactive software programs allow students to experiment with the dynamic, interrelated factors that affect global change in a computer-enhanced, environmental "test tube."^h This research gives students first-hand training in managing what one central administrator calls "an information explosion," a skill that is essential to the future of evaluating global change policies.

• Research and critical assessment of an array of global change issues using on-line literature and data. After analyzing this literature and data, Global Change students create their own website on environmental issues. This activity gives students training in managing the information explosion. It also provides them with insight about the credibility of on-line information by showing them how easy it is to put information on the World Wide Web.

The U of M instructors explained that having students use computer-dependent learning activities like STELLA models and ArcView geographic information systems enable students to:

• engage in hands-on application of real-world data analysis,ⁱ a process that is crucial if students are to understand global change issues in a meaningful way
• focus more on learning concepts rather than on doing calculations; and
• receive training in the use of tech-enhanced research tools

They described three advantages of having students use technology to collect and analyze data:

• It helps students develop a better understanding of how different phenomena are related (for example, CFC emissions and skin cancer rates) because they investigate the relationship in a hands-on fashion.
• By shortcutting the need for students to focus on technical details of calculations and graphing (a form of cognitive overload), it enables them to focus their attention on the deeper concepts.
• They gain first-hand knowledge of the tools used to achieve this understanding.

Patrick Livingood and Dave Halsing, graduate student instructors (GSIs), describe a lab that encapsulates these three advantages of technology. Students were asked to run a model concerning the real-world reduction in CFC emissions. Because the students themselves calculated the amount of reduction necessary to keep the death rate at an acceptable level, they truly understood the process they were studying. According to the GSIs, merely hearing these same statistics in lecture would not have had the same meaningful impact. Simultaneously, the technology performed mathematical and graphing tasks, thus allowing students to concentrate on the conceptual focus of the exercise.

Dave Halsing: They look at real-world numbers concerning CFC production and ozone depletion and we ask them to tinker with the percentage reduction after a certain year. They're told that you have to keep ozone at a certain level and then they run the model to find out what point it can't dip below. And of course you first try 50% reduction and that doesn't get it, 75% reduction doesn't get it, 90% reduction didn't get it. And you keep pushing up and you end up having to put 99.5% reduction to keep skin cancers below a certain level. It was to teach them the difference between emission-based standards versus health rates standards.

And that was a really cool concept for a lot of the students, because they're mostly freshman and sophomores who haven't thought about how policies are written. And so you present everything in emission-based standards. This is how many tons of CFCs you can emit per year. And all of a sudden you come out on the other side and go, "Okay, three hundred thousand skin cancer deaths per year in the U.S. is acceptable, get there." And for them to think of it that way, it was like the whole world flipped over. It's much more powerful. Someone could have said in lecture, "We're going to have to reduce ozone by 99.5% to keep skin cancer rates below this certain number," and they would have forgotten about it five minutes later. It would have been a meaningless number.

Jean-Pierre (interviewer): When you say, "seeing the results," what are they seeing?

Dave Halsing: They can put in a value and then see a graph where skin cancer cases per year are plotted, for example. And then they say, "Okay, at the end there are still too many deaths." So they have to change the percentages. . . Without the technology, it'd be a lot more challenging. You certainly wouldn't get through as much material. You'd be spending a lot more time calculating numbers and producing graphs on your own, assuming you have students with the mathematical expertise to do that.

See Discussion 2 for a faculty discussion of computer-dependent learning activities.

On their part, the students we interviewed explained that these computer-based activities helped them understand global change systems better by:

1. helping them visualize a working picture of global change processes
2. learning through tinkering
3. providing real-world contextualization
4. helping them develop information management skills

For example, Sally and Amy, Global Change Students, told us that by using STELLA, they got a "working picture" of geographical and chemical processes that is superior to a static representation of those same processes. STELLA, they explained, animates the complex "connections" and "interactions" upon which their understanding of global change issues hinges.

Amy: If you can draw a picture of how all these systems work together--which is essentially what STELLA does--it's like a working picture, and you can get a graph from it. That helped us understand so much more, like the connections between the different chemical systems or elemental systems, like the carbon cycle. I understood so much better after the lab.

Sally: Without the technology, I don't think you'd have been able to see the interactions in the lab. It would have been something that was still kind of vague and that you didn't understand.

See Discussion 3 for a student discussion of computer-dependent learning activities.

B. Computer-improved and Computer-independent Activities
The U of M Global Change bricoleurs use three computer-independent activities to achieve their teaching goals. These activities consist mainly of group work, lecture, and homework.

1. Group work
   The U of M Global Change instructors use group work for both computer-dependent and computer-independent activities. According to the students we interviewed, group work is encouraged in the lectures and discussion sections but is demanded in the computer labs (see What goes on in the Global Change I course for a description of the key course activities). In the first two settings, group interaction allows students to get feedback on global change issues from a variety of perspectives. In the latter, it allows students to develop both technical and non-technical skills when using the modeling software. In both settings, group work facilitates independent learning. One student, Sally, told us about the importance of having peers in the class who could often explain a concept in a way that "made more sense than what the professor or GSI said." Because of this, she said it was often unnecessary to ask the graduate student instructor (GSI) or professor a question.^j

   Amy, also a Global Change student, concurred with Sally's assessment of the importance of group work. She emphasized the way that the eclectic backgrounds and academic interests of the students mirror the interdisciplinary framework of the course. She said that the purpose of group work for her and the other students was not to collaborate with students who had similar majors but to team up with students majoring in anything from pre-dentistry to music, thereby taking advantage of the vast array of viewpoints that were represented in the class.^k

   In the computer labs, the U of M faculty use group work to ensure that every student gets equal experience with the various facets of a given activity. For example, while doing group work with the geographic modeling programs, some students feel more comfortable working on the research aspect of the activity while others are more at home managing the technical factors involved. According to the students we interviewed, the instructors and GSIs require them to split up these tasks.^l

   
   

2. Lecture
   While the collaborative activities mentioned above are aligned with the instructors' teaching principles that teachers should shift major responsibility for learning from the faculty to the students, other course activities, like standard lectures, are not yet aligned with that principle. However, even when describing their lectures, the faculty signaled a desire to construct a more "discussive framework," suggesting that they are considering ways to proceed with the ambitious attempt to consistently implement active learning strategies in the large lecture courses.

   One way the U of M bricoleurs have tried to improve upon the more traditional lecture is by providing students with online lecture supplements, which comprise a "computer-improved" learning activity. The Global Change home page provides students with on-line lecture summaries and also provides hyperlinks to websites related to particular lecture topics.^m Eric Dey, a professor in the School of Education and member of the U of M Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, explains that by using the "exact same web material in the lecture that shows up on the web page" they are creating a much "more smoothly organized course."ⁿ The students told us that information on the Web provides a good complement to the lecture material^o because it offers a more dynamic version of a textbook and allows them to explore questions that lead to other questions.^p

   See Discussion 4 to read a faculty and student discussion of Global Change lectures.

   
   

3. Homework
   The U of M faculty also use homework as a way to foster active learning. We talked with two students who told us about homework activities that forced them to analyze and critically assess the global change phenomenon of oxygen reduction. They were asked to calculate the harmful effects that cutting down the rainforests would have on global oxygen levels and were amazed to find that, contrary to the message conveyed in the popular media, the loss of the rainforests would have a very small impact on oxygen levels. This epiphany gave them a vivid and new appreciation for the role of science in public policy, an appreciation they might not have gained had they not worked through the answers on their own.q

q. Amy: "When we are asked the question, 'Why would cutting down the rainforests be harmful to us?' The answer seems to be, 'because of the oxygen we would lose.'"
Beth: "And you would think, because there are so many tropical rainforests, that if you cut them all down, you would lose a large percentage of the oxygen [supply]."
Amy: "That's what we're told. That's the media representation."
Beth: "But when we actually calculated it, it was such a small percentage."
Amy: "We thought we did it wrong."
Beth: "People were emailing their GSIs, 'What am I doing wrong? What's going on here? This isn't right.' When I did it, I was confused. We thought, 'No. This is just so wrong.' I thought well, 'we're plugging in the right numbers,' and [the instructor] said, 'Well, when you did it and the number showed you, why would you think you're wrong?'"
Amy: "And then in the next class, he said, 'See? It's really not important. It's important, but not because we're going to lose the oxygen.' I didn't understand that it was chemistry- and science-based, and I thought, 'I don't get these formulas.' I didn't know what a mole was. I didn't take chemistry in high school. So I was like, 'Whatever.'"
Beth: "I felt like I had returned to sophomore year, and I thought, 'I don't know what this stuff means anymore. How am I supposed to use it?'"
Amy: "Exactly. So I wrote a paragraph [on the assignment], and I said, 'Well, I don't know, but these numbers seem pretty small... So I think that [the loss of the rainforests] wouldn't be a big deal... I think we should be more concerned about loss of species and possible medical [effects].' I received almost full credit because that was the point-to see that the numbers that you hear are [meaningless] unless you have something else to compare them to."