Environmental Worldviews: Greece, Italy, Japan and the U.S.

​​​​​Project Summary : 

• This multicultural, sophomore seminar course provided DePaul students an opportunity to interact with virtual exchange partners in Japan, Greece, and Italy. This course was a two-part interaction among three international partners and DePaul students where participants shared their environmental worldviews. Students in Greece prepared and presented a sustainable brownfield remediation design poster and received input on environmental justice issues from DePaul students. DePaul students learned about the issues surrounding overburdened communities in polluted and abandoned sites in the US that can reflect communities from a diversity of race, income, and ethnic backgrounds not often found in Greece. Students completed a New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) survey on environmental worldviews and evaluated their scores in comparison to other countries. Students in Japan, Greece and Italy discussed these survey results in class, and DePaul students expressed their ideas on the comparison through a discussion board activity and a final paper.  This work will be published as more data is collected over the next five years.
  

Project Length:

• 6 Weeks
  

Technology Tools Used:

• Virtual Reality and 3D Lectures
• Green Screen
• Powerpoint
• Voice thread 
• Adobe Interviews
• Zoom
• Microsoft Suite
• Google Documents

Communication Type/ Interaction Mode :

• Synchronous
• Asynchronous

Learning Outcomes :

• Students will understand the historical debates and values of multiculturalism.
• The course compared at least three different dimensions of multiculturalism: ethnic, race, gender, class, language, and sexuality.
• Students will develop, through self-reflection and critical analysis, alternative perspectives on the historical roots of inequality along with an understanding of the lasting effects of oppression on marginalized groups.
• Students were able to critically analyze multiple sources of information (from, for example, relevant databases and other reference works, primary and secondary sources, community knowledge, etc.) in order to form clear, concise arguments about multicultural issues and to interpret evidence from a  variety of points of view.
• Students were able to advance collective intellectual understanding – through discussion, group work, active listening and speaking and use information to address problems and issues related to social inequality, conflict and diversity. 
  

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