Experience with on-the-ground environmental projects is a powerful approach to empower students for building the team collaboration and project management skills needed to address complex ecological challenges through critical thinking and problem solving. However, undergraduate students rarely have the ability to address complex projects, instead tending to “jump in” and to do “do stuff” – sometimes described as the “Savior Barbie” complex – without learning about both the ecological system and stakeholder needs. Design thinking is a systematic approach which can be applied to environmental projects, providing a project flow beginning with understanding both the ecology of a system and human stakeholders, defining the project goal through preliminary exploration, testing ideas, implementing a prototype approach, assessing an outcome then repeating the cycle. We applied Design Thinking to teach the project based senior seminar, Environmental Assessment and Project Development, to Environmental Studies students at Elon University. Over two years, student teams addressed 13 environmentally relevant projects which were community based to include stakeholders and a range of environmental systems. Each project lasted one semester of 3 ½ months. Students were assessed for their ability to shape and manage the project as well as project outcomes.
Results/Conclusions
This class has been team taught for the past 8 years by the same two faculty, an ecologist and an English professor. Students taking the class in fall 2016 and 2017 (59 students, 13 projects) were compared with students taking the class in fall 2013, 2014 and 2015 (95 students, 22 projects). The earlier cohort of students developed community based environmental projects using similar techniques, but with a more linear approach based only on development of a project management plan and traditional literature reviews. Students were assessed on ability to work closely with stakeholders, development of appropriate project management plans, use of research and relevant literature, documentation, use of adaptive management, and project outcomes. Students using the design thinking approach scored higher on all assessment criteria. We propose that as we prepare undergraduate students to serve as professional ecologists, design thinking provides a teaching approach that can build skills and new ways to approaching projects needed in the ecological professions.