Here’s an Online Climate Change Course You’ll Actually Finish

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N2DYbGX9GM

If you’re like many other people and have started but never finished a few online courses about climate change, a particularly adventurous American professor may just have the answer for you.

There’s a catch however, it will take you four years!

Professor Aaron Doering has just completed a 170 mile (274 kilometre) trek across the Arctic in an effort to educate people around the world about climate change. This trip was the first in a series of eight expeditions that will take place over four years – four to the Arctic and four to the tropics – collectively known as The Changing Earth project.

Doering, an American explorer and educator with the University of Minnesota, said during a TEDx talk that “To truly understand our impact on the natural world you have to experience it first hand.”

Adventure Learning

Of course this isn’t possible for everyone, which is why Doering pioneers “Adventure Learning,” bringing it to classrooms around the world. Professor Doering and his team travel to remote locations to develop a curriculum which anyone in the world can follow in almost real-time.

As the team researches climate change on their trips they post pictures, videos and findings through their website and social media channels alongside lessons and activities.

They use solar panels and satellite internet service to keep their updates almost in real-time.

https://twitter.com/chasingseals/status/726959407578279937

Positive Solutions

Rather than teaching just about the effects of climate change Doering wants to highlight what people are actually doing to prevent or adapt to it.

“Instead of focusing on climate change, stuff that can be debated,” Doering told Minessota Public Radio, “what I’ve decided to do is focus on some of the positive solutions that people are doing in their local communities around the world.”

During their expeditions the team meet local communities finding out about the issues they face and how they are adapting and finding positive solutions to climate change. One of the main issues Doering says they found in the Arctic was food insecurity, according to the Mankato Free Press.

Local Communities

The communities rely mostly on fishing and hunting but as climate change alters animal migration patterns this becomes harder. Importing food can be hugely expensive with a can of soda costing around $5 and a gallon of milk going for $12.

The Changing Earth series hopes to “create an environmentally literate and socially engaged generation of learners”.

Through sharing their adventures, educational activities, and stories from communities around the world, the Changing Earth team hope to inspire people to take action and choose to care around the environment and their own communities and cultures.

If Adventure Learning with Professor Doering is not enough for you, also check out Climate-KIC’s free online courses. Take the “E-Waste Challenge” for example, this is a flexible course where you can mix and match and decide for how much of it you want to complete based on your own objectives.