College courses often push students to think about the world’s grand challenges, but they do not always address the need to communicate solutions effectively. By asking students to reimagine the ways in which they communicate the world’s most pressing sustainability challenges, Gillian Clark is trying to bring audiences into focus.
Clark is an adjunct faculty member in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. Drawing on her background as an English teacher and instructional designer for the school, she created a course called SOS 494/598: Communicating about Sustainability. Her goal is to increase writing abilities among students in the program.
“This is an absolutely necessary skill,” she said. “Nobody is going to believe in you or support your cause if you don’t know how to write and communicate well.”
The online course draws on ASU’s rich history of innovation in remote learning, which includes over 200 online degree programs and countless additional course offerings. This established expertise helped the university transition, 70,000 students, to remote learning during the coronavirus pandemic. Read more…