Inside the Greenhouse:
Utilizing Media to Communicate Positive Solutions for Climate Change
ENVS 4100-01
Course Requirements
Overview
| Attendance & Participation (including involvement in ITG project & community fieldtrips) |
20 pts |
| Roundtable Discussion (5 pts - comment sheet*; 5 pts – co-facilitation; 5 pts – summary*) |
15 pts |
| Composition #1 (due Feb 20) | 15 pts |
| Composition #2 (due March 12) | 15 pts |
| Composition #3 (due April 16) | 15 pts |
| ITG Project Portfolio | 20 pts |
| TOTAL: | 100 pts |
* for late assignments we deduct 25% per day the item is late (starting from the class session in which they’re due [except that comment sheets are deemed late with the deduction starting after 5PM on the evening before the co-facilitation])
Attendance
All who are enrolled in the course must mindfully, productively and enthusiastically participate in each session. This is critical to the success of the class, and it requires that everyone is consistently present in each class, arriving prepared to critically engage with the class topics, concepts, activities and materials of the day. Our discussion inevitably will build upon previous sessions so if you accumulate more than three unexcused absences during the quarter, you will not be able to pass the course.
Class Participation
Participation will be evaluated through your engagement in the class discussions, contributions through class preparation, and involvement in class fieldtrips [TBA]. Site visits will be within the Boulder community, as part of the development of 'stories' in the programs, and as part of an important dimension of outreach beyond campus.
Roundtables: Comment Sheets, Discussion Co-Facilitation, Summary
During one of the Wednesday sessions during the semester, each student will work with about three others (groups of 4) to co-facilitate a roundtable discussion of the week’s readings and themes. We will provide a sign-up sheet in the week 2 sessions in order to pick the week and theme for facilitation. This co-facilitation will have three main elements:
- preparation of a Comment Sheet before the session
- Co- facilitation during the session
- a Summary after the session
Comment Sheets
Co-facilitators will prepare how they tentatively plan to guide discussions. They must coordinate and draw up notes to distribute, providing a set of potential discussion points. co-facilitators should target approximately 2 pages of comments/questions and send them to the other course participants over email by 5PM the evening before the session (To post a message to the class, send the attachment via email to envs4100-01@lists.colorado.edu) These comments will direct us all to what co-facilitators determine to be salient, important, and key themes as well as critiques and questions from the week’s material to discuss during the session. These must be prepared together.
Summaries
Based on the co-facilitated roundtable discussion, on the Monday following the session co-facilitators will each submit an approximately 1000-word summary on the content as well as the process of preparation for and activities in the roundtable discussion. When turning in the Summary, note the word count at the top of the page.
Summaries must include:
- Substantive treatment of what discussions and questions transpired in the session.
- Discussion of how the roundtable session may have or may have not furthered critical understanding of the themes for that week.
- Reflections on your facilitation role in the session: What worked in co-facilitating the discussion? What did not? What would you do differently the next time?
Compositions
In groups of 2-3, students will create three Compositions that will be introduced during the semester. These Compositions are original expressions that will take a variety of forms, from a video montage to a ‘choreopoem’. Selected ‘Composition #3’ will potentially be included in the Inside the Greenhouse program if the class decides they fit well with the themes established. We advise that you keep these compositions brief so you are able to attend to all details within the framework of the one semester and so that we have time to show them all in class.
The Three Compositions will involve two steps:
- An informal “Pitch and Feedback” session- you and your group will describe what you are intending to do for the class and will receive feedback, be prepared to refer to your research or source material or an idea already richly explored
- a ‘1st Completed Draft’, which will be a fully completed version of your composition
Composition #3 focuses on audience and involve two additional steps (w full details discussed in class):
- formation and showing of composition draft to a FOCUS GROUP comprised of a target audience - this is a minimum 3 people; we will provide feedback form templates to adapt for your focus groups, and you will need to pass these in when you present the composition April 16
- submission to a competition and/or film festival as a PSA, NGO, or website for dissemination
Compositions will be assessed using the following essential criteria [developed by Liz Lerman]:
- Was something revealed?
- Was it fully committed?
- Did the creator know why they were doing what they were doing?
- Did the content and the form work together towards effective communication?
ITG project portfolio
The class will work together to generate a 30-40 minute episode of a program entitled Inside the Greenhouse. This episode will include student-generated work and more formally produced interviews of high profile individuals who have made substantial contributions to towards solutions for climate change.
The centerpiece of this program will be an on-stage and live interview with a high-profile public figure who has been wrestling with questions regarding climate science, policy and the public. [There may be the need for some outside post production work to be done on these episodes depending on the expertise of the students enrolled in the course].
This team project is designed to build skills in collaboration and critique. It may be easiest to think of this as a Composition that you are creating collaboratively. However, this composition will require us to also consider not only the work itself, but how we will make it resonant, meaningful and appealing to an audience, both live and in its final recorded format. Thus, as part of this collaborative process, we will work on identifying our target market, outreach, promotion and other areas we identify as a class as essential for dissemination.
The same criteria for assessment that will be used for the Compositions will be applied here. This project is also set up so that course participants can creatively and uniquely engage with public-facing expressions regarding climate change and sustainability, in ‘real world’ environments.
More details will be discussed during the term.
From this collaborative work, each of you will assemble an ITG Project Portfolio containing 8 items:
- A list of the titles and collaborators for each of your Three Compositions (taking up to approximately 250 words here)
- Description of genesis for all three of your Compositions (approximately 150 words each)
- Description of research that went into all three of your Compositions (approx 200 words each)
- Justification for chosen media utilized, decision-making regarding your three compositions (up to 200 words each)
- Discussion of reflections on what was learned by engaging in these challenges through interdisciplinary approaches (400-500 words total)
- Recounting and interpretation of responses to Composition #3 from the selected focus groups (approx. 300-400 words)
- A note on which of the three compositions you presented in Week 16 (April 30 or May 2) and a short discussion of how your revisions, preparations and representation of this portion of your portfolio proceeded (as well as particularly useful/remarkable comments from the visiting panelists) (approx. 300-400 words)
- Possible additional reflections and critical analysis of these endeavors and compositions (up to 300 words)
Therefore, the ITG project portfolio will work towards a total word count target of 3500 words.
*** PLEASE number your sections as noted above for this final portfolio write up.
