Teaching.IU

Context

Leveraging local context has been a successful teaching tactic for me.  Students love learning more about the institutions they are part of.  And they love going outside.   At an institution with as long a history and encompassing a campus as IU Bloomington, it’s inevitable that there is a physical space that resonates with teaching content; with a bit of creative thinking, the same can apply to wherever you find yourself teaching.

For this exercise, I dedicate several days of content to understanding how the natural environment plays into business ethics.  Instead of simply talking about the environmental initiatives of some faraway business, I have the class look inwardly at what IU is doing regarding sustainability as an institution.  I want students to gain knowledge as to IU’s initiatives, understand how such initiatives align with the ethics of the institution, and think creatively on how other businesses may be able to leverage resources to propel both ethical positioning and market success.

Though having led field trips with smaller classes, my current class sizes are often too large for successful group outings.  I instead choose to exploit technology to accomplish my class objectives while concurrently building the technological competence of my students.  I realized a relatively easy solution:  Send students to sites in smaller groups.  There, they record their experiences in a summarized content video, and share their experiences digitally with their peers in later classroom or asynchronous discussion.

Step-by-Step Implementation

1. Determine learning objectives: What do you want your students to learn for the day?  For me, I focus on my school’s goal to identify the ethical dimensions of business decisions, in this case looking at the ethics surrounding sustainability choices at my university as a sample institution.
2. Choose relevant sites: Pick out sites students can research, engage with, and learn from.  For this activity, I had reached out to my campus sustainability office and together we learned that a sustainability walking tour and walking tree tour were already in existence, so it is a breeze to provide maps and basic information to my students.
3. Brief your students: Explain to your students what you want them to do.  Mine are allowed to choose their own sites, do a bit of pre-trip research, are given encouragement to interview staff and members of the public onsite, given discretion over their recording medium – though I also provide a short example tutorial for any less tech savvy, and finally I send them on their way
4. Create videos: Students head out in teams to their chosen sites when ready, record their videos, edit their videos, then post their videos.  My students post videos to a Canvas discussion board.
5. Debrief: My next class period is largely reserved for video viewing and discussion.  Students have a fantastic time watching student-generated site reports.  Even though some students record at the same sites (which an instructor could disallow), the student groups inevitably take a different perspective on their visit, allowing for a fun compare and contrast.

Effectiveness

I chose to administer pre and post surveys for this particular site reporting activity in spring 2023.  On a 10 point scale, I assessed student familiarity with campus sustainability initiatives, their familiarity with physicality connected to these initiatives, and also asked them to rate their own ability to record and share video for peer reviewing purposes.  I received 118 responses via Google Forms, approximately the same number who were present for participation.  With this scale, increases occurred an average of 2.3 points on initiative familiarity, 2.9 points on physicality familiarity, and 1.4 points on video competency. 

Additional qualitative questions were asked specific to my learning objectives, but also to provide input on activity efficacy.  Activity efficacy remarks in part included:

“I personally really enjoyed interviewing people and seeking out sustainability in an exercise like this.”

“I think it’s a valuable assignment because I wasn’t aware of most of these sustainable sites and I think it’s important students know about stuff like that.”

“I think the activity was good getting out of the classroom to try and learn about real world ethical decisions.”

“I really like it and thought it enabled me to learn something that I wouldn’t have on my own.”

“I like ‘field training,’ experiencing things firsthand.”

“It was a fun activity!  Helped to get to know our groups as well.”

Inclusivity

Sustainability inherently includes discussions of environmental justice as an equity impact measure.  Students love debating on whether our campus’s steam plant bioreactor for instance goes far enough to help the environment, while simultaneously weighing increased costs of sustainable power against possible increases in student tuition dollars.

For the activity itself, student choice is an important component for me as a philosophically progressive educator.  Students have free reign choosing a site of importance and relevancy to themselves.  I want students to be able to go far and explore a new corner of campus off the beaten path, but also have the option to stay fully indoors to explore a local easily accessible site option if they choose.  Professionally speaking, students in my class come from different majors, even if all business-oriented.  My supply chain students may wish to explore how IU ethically sources raw materials.  My real estate students can check out one of IU’s LEED certified buildings, and my marketing students can evaluate how effectively IU’s sustainability projects are being communicated to the campus community.  In short, I want my students to think about the ethics of sustainability initiatives in a way that is most applicable to their lives and careers.