Grant Recipients
Simon Courtenay, School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability
Shefaza Esmail, School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability
(Project timeline: January 2021 - December 2022)
Description
- A novel film course was offered through the School of Environment, Resources, and Sustainability (SERS), as was offered in the Winter 2021 term.
- The course aims to provide a cross-disciplinary evaluation of undergraduate students' emotional and cognitive engagement with the complexities inherent to environmental issues, portrayed through films.
- This project aims to investigate the effectiveness of films as a pedagogical tool within an online teaching environment, and their level of impact on students emotional awareness and communication skills.
- This metric will be assessed via viewer-response strategies.
Questions Investigated
- Can films be used as a core pedagogical tool for online course delivery?
- Can viewer-response strategies enhance student engagement, improve communication of complex themes, and foster collaboration across different disciplines?
Findings
- Students who participated in this research had strong emotions related to climate change.
- Participants reported many feelings within the context of the course, in which include:
- Feeling guilty about their own actions regarding climate change
- High levels of concern and motivation regarding climate change, but low levels of confidence
- Emotions that reflect those of the sentiment of the films analyzed in the course
- While films alone are not effective at cognitively and emotionally engaging students, they were still able to convey complex messages in an engaging and enjoyable experience, whilst allowing the students to reflect on their feelings.
- Participants reported responding emotionally to the provided films, and enjoyed questioning their prior knowledge on the covered subjects.
- Although to get the most out of this experience, students required guidance to identify biases in the content, and recognize their own preconceptions of the material.
Dissemination and Impact
- Students who participated in the course (regardless of study participation) gained firsthand exposure to the research goals, which included engaging with films in an online environment and exploring their feelings and thoughts through reflection and discussion.
- The tools used in this study are tools in which students can apply to future projects of their own, especially those related to environmental topics.
- The study and the results were presented at a SERS Salon on November 29, 2021, which is a departmental gathering to share ongoing research.
- A proposal for the 2022 University of Waterloo Teaching and Learning Conference was submitted.
- A journal article situating the research findings with the context of transformative learning has been submitted to 'Frontiers in Education', and is currently under review.
Implications
- Through this research, the applicants were able to learn that students' sentiments are strongly impacted by the content to which they are exposed to, and students tend to reflect in "thinking" terms, rather than "feeling" terms.
- It can be extrapolated that students have a tendency toward building cognitive awareness more than emotional awareness with respect to the content that they learn.
References
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Vijayarajoo, A. R., & Samuel, M. (2013). Reader-Response Pedagogy and Changes in Student Stances in Literary Texts. The English Teacher, 42(3), 174–186. http://www.melta.org.my/ET/2013/109 Angeline.pdf