Assignment task:
Write: Either while you are outdoors or immediately on your return, write about your nature experience. Use paragraphs and cover both what you directly experienced during your time outdoors and your feelings and reflections on that experience. Be sure to describe where you went and the time of day during your observation.
Research idea: During your time in nature, think of one question related to what you are observing. This should be a scientific question about the plants, animals, human impacts, or environmental phenomena being observed. Form a hypothesis that you could test with an experiment or observational study. Briefly describe how you would conduct the experiment or observational study to test your hypothesis.
Contemplate: Using your nature experience and learning throughout this class, think about the philosophical question of whether humans are part of nature or are somehow separate from nature. There is no right or wrong answer, but you must answer this question for yourself and provide your reflections on this debate.
Create: Choose a creative means of sharing your nature experience, and what you learned from it, with the class. This could be a series of photographs with captions; a poem; song; brief, personal essay; artwork; the design for a board game; video of some kind; or any other creative avenue you can think of. The work should be entirely your own product.
Share: Share your Nature Experience with the class no later than Day 3 of Week 5 by uploading it to the Nature Experience discussion board. Your submission should include the following components:
- a photograph of the view from your nature observation spot
- written observations and reflections about your nature experience
- your scientific question, your hypothesis, and a brief description of how you would conduct research to test that hypothesis
- your discussion of whether you think that human beings are part of nature or separate from nature and why
- your creative project inspired by your nature experience (or, if necessary, a link to your work)
Policies: Utilize the En-ROADS Assignment Section One Plan to address the following:
- Name of your plan.
- Screenshot of the main En-ROADS interface with results.
- Bullet points summarizing the most-important policies and outcomes.
Pasted text from Actions & Outcomes documenting assumptions and policy settings used.
Pasted URL of your scenario.
In your Section 1 content, you may also choose to share screenshots of specific graphs that caught your attention and are worth noting. Refer to the Illustrative Example included with the template for guidance on what your Plan should look like.