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Building a World View: A Course in Environmental Literacy for Undergraduates
Author(s) -
Nix Stephan J.,
Hirtzel Cynthia S.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
journal of engineering education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.896
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 2168-9830
pISSN - 1069-4730
DOI - 10.1002/j.2168-9830.1996.tb00203.x
Subject(s) - course (navigation) , centrality , literacy , quality (philosophy) , engineering ethics , scientific literacy , mathematics education , subject (documents) , scale (ratio) , energy (signal processing) , engineering , pedagogy , sociology , psychology , computer science , science education , mathematics , geography , library science , philosophy , statistics , cartography , epistemology , combinatorics , aerospace engineering
This paper presents a description and discussion of a course developed and implemented with an explicit objective of fostering technical literacy, on the subject of the environment, in non‐engineering students. The course, entitled “Energy, Environment and Ecology”, was an introductory‐level course designed for a diverse audience of non‐engineers. The course provides an exploration and investigation of some of the fundamental ways in which our sources of energy, our environment and ecological systems are related and interrelated. On a broader scale, we believe that this course presents one example of the ways in which engineering colleges and their faculty can help to raise the technical literacy of all students and contribute to the centrality and quality of the universities of which they are a part.