ENHANCING STUDENT ENGAGEMENT AND LEARNING OUTCOMES VIA INTERACTIVE MAPS FOR SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION

Sustainability is an emerging area of education which aims at preparing a new generation of students, teachers, and school systems with the new knowledge and ways of thinking to address the pressing concerns of energy, agriculture, society, economy, climate and environment. Biosystems Engineers study one important aspect of sustainability: the three elements of the food-energy-water nexus and develop biofuels and bioproducts from renewable resources. These contexts align well with the priority areas in sustainability and tie with the education needs on how to achieve economic prosperity and responsible citizenship while restoring the health of the living systems upon which our lives depend. To deliver the best learning outcomes for sustainability, there are crucial needs for developing and implementing transformative learning processes that engage students in the learning activities. This paper reports our experiences of using interactive maps as a platform for enhancing student engagement and learning outcomes under the scope of sustainability education. We applied two interactive map tools: the Biofuels Atlas and the Story Map. The Biofuels Atlas is an interactive map created using the Google Maps API by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (USA). This map allows the students to view and compare the locations of biomass feedstocks, biofuels production facilities, bioenergy plants, biofuels stations, and densities of vehicles that can run on biodiesel, or E85. The students can also download and analyze state-level data or specific user-selected geographic areas for the potential of biomass-to-biofuels conversions at various locations and scales. Story Map, a tool developed by the Environmental Systems Research Institute, allows students to create compelling multimedia narratives by combining narrative text with maps and other embedded content and will be used in an Education Abroad course. Based on feedback from students and the assessment outcomes, we found that interactive maps greatly enhanced student engagement in sustainability-related learning activities.