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Evaluating the Integration of Technology and Economics Poster Assignment. Christina Wells

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Here's a video featuring four students at Montgomery College (Rockville campus) describing their projects related to UN SDG #3.

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Video of Students Describing Their Projects

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Here's the assignment.

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ELAI 990 Presentation Directions and Rubric Fall 2024 Satrom

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Here's the playlist of student presentations.

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Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

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The highlight of my experience in the UN SDG fellowship was collaborating with Dr. Fauziya Ali, a nursing professor at Norquest College. The students in my program, English Language for Academic Purposes, are non-native speakers of English, many of whom plan to major in the health sciences. Working with Dr. Ali on developing projects related to UN SDG Goal #3 (“Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”) helped me create assignments that not only helped students develop the language skills they need to succeed but also content knowledge. I truly enjoyed my conversations with Dr. Ali, who helped me see project development through the lens of her discipline. The result of our collaboration was a project that my students found both engaging and motivating.

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UN SDG Assignments Student Interview  CSN - Brendan Shapiro

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This video features Dr. Jennifer Brown's Social Psychology class of Paradise Valley Community College

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This video features Dr. Jennifer Brown's Social Psychology class of Paradise Valley Community College

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In this video, students of the class collectively discuss their experiences of our Open Pedagogy Mock Trial assignment, which had three parts to it. They also happen to be incredibly entertaining! Enjoy!

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24.12.09 Alana Reflection on Open Pedagogy Fellowship

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Reflection on the Project:

The project was a magnificent learning experience for me and my students. The two selected classes did a wonderful job in the selection process and creation of the content. We became world explorers who navigated the world map and the world of the UN SDG information to come together and create solid and valuable projects. The various components allowed the students to have a multi disciplinary experience and learn not only about the functions of the UN, the goals, the ranking of the countries but the process of migration. As I teach at a primarily Hispanic serving institutions, I was delighted to celebrate the selection and accomplishment of my students as well as their parents who were the primary decision makers of the migration journey. As an immigrant woman myself, the project felt very close to my heart. We explored how inequities can shape and color our collective experiences in every aspect of life. The project therefore functions as a bridge that brought all of us together to communicate and learn from one another's experiences. Thank you so much for this opportunity.

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Evaluating the Integration of Technology and Economics: Malda Sarayji and Anusha Venkataraman

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Evaluating the Integration of Technology and Economics: Malda Sarayji and Anusha Venkataraman

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Reflection:

Creating these assignments was a wonderful journey for me. At the very beginning, Anusha and I had a difficult time creating an assignment that combines physics and economics. It was hard for us to imagine how those two disciplines can be combined. Finding out that sustainability was a common goal for both of us helped us mesh the two disciplines in a stackable assignment that considers the production costs as well as the disposal cost. Often ignored, the cost of disposing of electronics is ignored and is harmful to the environment. Combining the technical aspects, along with the explicit and implicit costs of production led to this multidisciplinary assignment.

Collaborating across institutions located in two different countries was a very enlightening experience. Learning about the college culture in Canada taught me how to make sustainability a priority.

For students, when writing up their posters, they were surprised and engaged with the assignments. They did not expect to write about physics and sustainability in an economics class. Comments such as "we never thought the environment is taken into account in economics" were widely repeated. They were also happy to learn about the Creative Commons and how they can share their work using CC licenses.

In conclusion, this Fellowship experience has been a very exciting one for me and for my students.

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Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing, Webinars, Screen Sharing

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Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars across mobile, desktop, and room systems. Zoom Rooms is the original software-based conference room solution used around the world in board, conference, huddle, and training rooms, as well as executive offices and classrooms. Founded in 2011, Zoom helps businesses and organizations bring their teams together in a frictionless environment to get more done. Zoom is a publicly traded company headquartered in San Jose, CA.

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Fauziya Ali ( NorQuest College: Edmonton)

The exposure to collaborate with another University and to work with the faculty who belonged from another discipline to develop a common assignment focusing on United Nations Sustainable goals was empowering experience. The three assignments developed covered concepts which were critical and relevant for students to survive in the society. Thus, the assignments are universal applicable for students across the discipline.  The assignments covered topics such as nutritional needs across the life span integrating with budget, caloric intake and availability of food in different geographical area. The second assignment looked into stigma or cultural implications of certain health conditions in the society. The third assignment reflected on the concept of empathy to communication with the elder clients in the society.

I am fortunate to work with my partner Heather who shared her knowledge of “English Literature” to develop these assignments. We had discussion on every aspect of assignment to ensure it is aligned with rubric. The question was what do we went our learners to learn from these activities keeping in mind the English and Nursing aspect into course objectives.  There was a purpose and background attached to each assignment while developing assignments. The experience was motivating and rewording from students’ feedback. It was nice to see how same assignment implemented by two different disciplines could have impactful learning outcomes. The learning partnership developed during this period is cherish and will continue in future.

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additional videos

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Fauziya Ali ( NorQuest College: Edmonton)

The exposure to collaborate with another University and to work with the faculty who belonged from another discipline to develop a common assignment focusing on United Nations Sustainable goals was empowering experience. The three assignments developed covered concepts which were critical and relevant for students to survive in the society. Thus, the assignments are universal applicable for students across the discipline.  The assignments covered topics such as nutritional needs across the life span integrating with budget, caloric intake and availability of food in different geographical area. The second assignment looked into stigma or cultural implications of certain health conditions in the society. The third assignment reflected on the concept of empathy to communication with the elder clients in the society.

I am fortunate to work with my partner Heather who shared her knowledge of “English Literature” to develop these assignments. We had discussion on every aspect of assignment to ensure it is aligned with rubric. The question was what do we went our learners to learn from these activities keeping in mind the English and Nursing aspect into course objectives.  There was a purpose and background attached to each assignment while developing assignments. The experience was motivating and rewording from students’ feedback. It was nice to see how same assignment implemented by two different disciplines could have impactful learning outcomes. The learning partnership developed during this period is cherish and will continue in future.

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More videos to share...

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sharing more learning

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Reflection: My experience with the fellowship has given me insights into integrating sustainability across the disciplines. I teach primarily graduating seniors while my partner teaches incoming freshmen, which gave us the opportunity to brainstorm on appropriate learning outcomes.

The fellowship's emphasis on renewable assignments has been particularly rewarding as it helped me better understand how to integrate the SDG content into coursework in a way that connects to student needs. Collaborating with my partner from the English and Reading department at her college while I teach in Interdisciplinary Studies at mine helped us create assignments that bridge theoretical frameworks with practical applications. We developed projects that allow students to see how their personal values and decisions impact ecological systems and vice versa. This interdisciplinary approach has yielded student work that demonstrates deeper understanding than traditional single-discipline assignments. For instance, one of our three our joint projects on sustainability had students choose either SDG 14 Life Below the Water, or SDG 16 Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions for the focus of a social media campaign they created. Students in my course used all they learned in Interdisciplinary Communication during the semester to create a comprehensive social media campaign proposal and reflection paper that issued a call to action that resonated with their own personal values and experiences. My students used the interdisciplinary and integrative communication practices learned in my course to demonstrate innovative social media campaigns that reflect intercultural understanding, appropriate rhetorical context, and common ground based on the use of perspective-taking.

The opportunity to work with colleagues across multiple institutions has broadened my perspective on open educational practices and their implementation in different academic contexts. Perhaps most importantly, this fellowship has taught me that true interdisciplinary work, while challenging, creates authentic learning experiences that mirror the complex, interconnected nature of real-world sustainability challenges our students will face in their future careers.

The renewable assignment is located here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PSMjoMi--CMN2fa22tVYa_uQI9tuBH9g/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=108645795878186485524&rtpof=true&sd=true

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Participating in the faculty fellowship for sustainability has been an enriching and illuminating experience. The opportunity to collaborate with colleagues from across North America has provided valuable insights into diverse approaches to sustainability education. Learning about others' innovative teaching methods and projects has broadened my perspective on what's possible in the classroom. The collaborative environment fostered meaningful exchanges of ideas and best practices, creating a supportive network of educators committed to advancing sustainability education.

The process of developing and implementing a renewable assignment proved to be both challenging and instructive. While I designed the assignment with three distinct levels of engagement, I discovered that the first two levels didn't generate the depth of student involvement I had anticipated. Students' engagement with these initial components was more superficial than intended, suggesting a need to recalibrate the difficulty and incentive structure. However, the final component of the assignment emerged as the most successful, eliciting more thorough and thoughtful work from students. This experience has highlighted the importance of carefully calibrating assignment demands and incorporating stronger motivational elements throughout all stages of the project. Moving forward, I plan to restructure the earlier components to create a more consistently engaging and challenging learning experience.

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Final Deliverable for UN SDG Open Pedagogy Fellowship

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Verifying you are human. This may take a few seconds.

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Student from the Early Learning and Child Care Program sharing their experience of using Open Pedagogy and planning for Early Childhood Curriculum using renewable resources.

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Fellowship experience at NorQuest College in the Early Learning at Child Care Program 

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Fellowship experience at NorQuest College in the Early Learning at Child Care Program 

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I am really grateful for this experience, as it provoked me to think more mindfully of the ways in which we use resources within Early Learning Programs. Often things like paper, and paints, and craft materials are used once by children within their creations, taken home, and eventually disposed of. This led to some very enriching and insightful conversations between some of my students and I, in regards to thoughtful consumption when educating young children. Instead we talked about how children can use open pedagogy materials like blocks, as they can used in a multiple variety of ways. Students found that renewable resources in early learning supported aspects of open pedagogy, as there were no limitations as to how they could use and manipulate the materials. Amongst our classroom discussions the physical geography of early childhood classrooms and the ways in which they should be set up, to be conducive to children's exploration and learning experiences. This providing students opportunities to engage in assignments mapping and planning the design of Early Childhood classrooms while using renewable and sustainable maters, ex, blocks, lego, etc. instead of the typical pens, pencils, and papers, which are typically of one time use and lead to wasteful byproducts. Our goal was to think of ways to reduce or eliminate the wasteful byproducts. This address the United Nations Goal of Quality Education, as we co-constructed knowledge and ideas in our classroom about the ways in which we can provide children with high quality Early Childhood Education while still being mindful of incorporating sustainable resources.

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Link to my video

https://youtu.be/38sJGiV59cI

Though drawn from different disciplines and institutions, I witnessed a high camaraderie among the fellows during the summer meetings. With no prejudice or chip on the shoulder, all the members quickly shared information. I benefitted from their profound contributions and scholarly discussions. Also, I feel privileged to have participated in all the intellectual meetings I had with my two cohorts [Marc Farrior and Cory Jobb] from other colleges and disciplines over the past summer and fall semesters.

The UN SDG Open Pedagogy Fellowship benefitted my students in researching and learning about Climate Change/Action using open educational resources and combining the projects with their fields of study. Students of the general education Film 110 class from political science, social science, environmental studies, film, and history were excited that their project embraced their areas of study. The Video Editing TVRA 140 students from graphic design, photography, animation, and media arts research and involvement made their music video project intellectually challenging and technically stimulating since they combined the varied software they learned from their major coursework with the editing software. This fellowship enabled me to steer students to plunge deeper into this topic and explore the effects of climate change and their role in taking action to help rectify the situation. I intend to introduce the two renewable assignments in the forthcoming semesters. I humbly and proudly say that the students and I achieved the goals of this undertaking.

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Community Connections: Exploring Social Issues through Engagement and Action (Dr. Tanya Manning-Lewis)

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Community Connections: Exploring Social Issues through Engagement and Action (Dr. Tanya Manning-Lewis)

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Participating in the UN SDG Open Pedagogy Fellowship has been a transformative experience. Collaborating with two incredible faculty members from different disciplines and institutions—Alana Hoare from Thompson Rivers University (Education) and Elsa Olson from the College of Southern Nevada (Psychology)—was both inspiring and enriching. Together, we designed interdisciplinary renewable assignments aligned with SDG 4: Quality Education, specifically Target 4.4, focusing on equipping youth and adults with technical and vocational skills for employment, decent jobs, and entrepreneurship.

These assignments were deployed in my course, WEBD 1000: Website Development, at Nova Scotia Community College. Students critically evaluated online websites and created mockups for websites ensuring that they adhered to accessibility standards, user-friendly features, and key design principles. They also developed demonstration videos to showcase their work. These tasks highlighted students' creativity and their ability to apply interdisciplinary concepts in a practical context, integrating insights from IT programming, education, and psychology.

This fellowship demonstrated the power of collaboration across institutions and disciplines, fostering a learning environment that encourages innovation and prepares students for real-world challenges. It also reinforced the value of renewable assignments, as student-created resources now contribute to a repository that can serve future learners.

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Monica Mellini - Montgomery College (Engineering)

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Monica Mellini - Montgomery College (Engineering)

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I am currently marking my second assignment – an infographic -- related to the UN SDG Open Pedagogy Fellowship. This has been a challenging yet rewarding interdisciplinary experience working with a professor teaching English writing and another teaching environmental engineering. Our common interest is UN SDG #11 – sustainable communities. We initially brainstormed assignment topics which the three of could pursue together. The colleague who teaches English writing was interested in the urban homeless crisis whereas the engineering colleague was interested in solar power. My spouse actually suggested tiny homes with solar panels to help solve the homeless crisis as a starting point for a possible topic. The three of us agreed with this idea, and we then developed three assignments: an annotated bibliography, an infographic, and a technical/policy proposal related to tiny homes with solar panels as a possible solution to the homeless crisis.

I teach a first year course on environmental geography and sustainability from the perspective of a human geographer. I have a diverse class with several students from Africa and South Asia with diverse academic backgrounds. The intention of the annotated bibliography was to prepare the students for the infographic assignment.

The next time I teach these two assignments I will give the students more structured instructions on creating annotated bibliographies and, in particular, infographics. In the past, I have taught students how to make academic posters but not infographics. I am grateful for having read my English colleague’s reflection and watching his video in which two of his students give their feedback. I concur that I should carefully choose reading material for these two assignments and perhaps not emphasize peer-reviewed literature as much in the future.

I want to thank both my colleagues Professor Brendan Shapiro at the College of Southern Nevada and Professor Monica Mellini at Montgomery College for their patience, flexibility and collegiality while working over multiple time zones and among differing schedules last summer. I look forward to working with both of you in the future.

Tom Waldichuk, Geography, Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, BC

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David Kalebik, professor of biological sciences at the Thompson River University in Kamloops, was my partner in this project. Our project was for students to find and translate scientific literature about the relationship of environmental factors to mental health outcomes, and share their work in an open access book. While we addressed sustainability issues relating to the topics, I had to deal with the fact that I was teaching an english literary theory class. We stipulated to students that the topic must involve some sort of environmental effect on mental health. The effect can be developmental (taking place during prenatal periods, or childhood) or it may occur during adult life.

Environmental is a broad category, and may involve a multitude of variables including social interactions, sensory stimuli, chemical exposure, nutritional regiment, sleep, exercise, etc. The environmental effects on mental health of any factor may be either positive or negative.

Because I was teaching an English Literary Theory class, I narrowed the subject to the impacts of language exposure (or lack thereof) on psychological development. The goal is to report on research about this topic since the time of Dr. Itard’s study of Victor, the “wild boy of Avignon” in Wild Boy of Aveyron: An Historical Account of the Discovery and Education of a Savage Man, which was published in 1802. In the study, Dr. Itard assumes responsibility for educating a 12 year old boy who was without language. Dr. Itard was only partially successful in teaching Victor language. But his method of teaching was critical to our understanding of how language works. Dr. Itard realized that before he could teach Victor to identify words with things, he first needed Victor to understand the distinctions between phonemes and the distinction between different things. Most interestingly, he encountered a problem in which Victor associated the word "book" with only a single book - the one used for the lessons. He had to teach Victor to distinguish between the particular and the general.

Dr. Itard also had to deal with Victor's wild mood swings. What we now know is that language learning occurs in a "window" of brain development and that window closes well before age 12. By that age, the language centers of the brain, if not exposed to language, will atrophy. We also know that language development (or lack thereof) can deeply affect a person's mental health and emotional well-being.

I asked students to update our knowledge about the relationship of language acquisition to mental/emotional health.

Students used a search engine to find a relevant paper. Next, they were to “translate” their chosen paper for their peers. They did so by answering the following questions. We noted that some papers may have a different organization, such as a combined results and discussion section, or the methods section integrated in another section, or condensed at the end. For each, students selected 1-3 sentences in the methods section, and then summarized what those meant in their own words. They answered these questions: What was found? What was done? How was it done? What are the implications of the results? What future research should follow up on this work? What did they not understand about this paper that someone else can help with? If they understood everything, then what did they find most challenging to understand?

Part of the missive of this goal is to increase training of the health workforce in developing countries. Student contributions, and those of others who will follow-up your work, can genuinely assist others in their reading of scientific research papers, especially if they do not have as strong of a scientific background as the student, or if they do not have a strong proficiency in the English language.

Then students read another student’s chosen scientific paper and their translation of the paper’s contents.

I was joined in this video by one of my students, Thomas Klem. He explains his project and his reflections on it.

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UN SDG Interview with Barry Mauer and Thomas Klem

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Reflection for UNSDG fellowship participation

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P Clark, UNSDG Reflection Note Thompson Rivers University

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Kevin Nicholas Student Reflection UNSGD 

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Kevin Nicholas Student Reflection UNSGD 

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Student from Algorithms course sharing his experience on UNSDG assignment from Fall 2024.

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Fellowship Experience at NorQuest College in Machine Learning Analyst Diploma Program

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Fellowship Experience at NorQuest College in Machine Learning Analyst Diploma Program

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During my fellowship with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDG) program, I had the privilege of designing an assignment for the Algorithms course that directly addressed the principles of sustainability and systems thinking. This project aimed to engage students in real-world problem-solving while fostering data literacy and programming skills, all within the framework of SDG Goal 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure.

The assignment encouraged students to explore critical aspects of Goal 9, focusing on developing sustainable and resilient infrastructure and increasing resource-use efficiency. Divided into four comprehensive parts, the task required students to research and summarize Goal 9, analyze sustainability data, and implement algorithmic solutions using Python. Key activities included collecting and analyzing data related to infrastructure and resource consumption, developing custom sorting algorithms, and evaluating their efficiency using Big O notation.

By integrating real-world challenges with academic learning, the assignment allowed students to see the tangible impact of algorithms in addressing global issues. It provided an opportunity for them to apply theoretical concepts to optimize sustainable practices, analyze data effectively, and consider the broader implications of their technical decisions.

The students' enthusiasm and innovative approaches reaffirmed my belief in the power of education to inspire meaningful change. This experience demonstrated how blending computational techniques with sustainability goals can cultivate a new generation of problem-solvers committed to global well-being. Designing this assignment was not only an academic exercise but a profound opportunity to contribute to a sustainable future through education.

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UNSDG Assignment for Geog 103 students - Fall 2024

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My initial upload did not work. Hopefully this one does!

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Verifying you are human. This may take a few seconds.

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A faculty reflection/testimonial (1-2 paragraphs), discussing your fellowship experience, including your experience deploying your interdisciplinary renewable assignments, working with students, collaborating across institutions, collaborating across disciplines, etc.

Our group was assigned Goal 13: “Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.”  We eventually decided on three assignments, with each of us more or less developing one and then coming back together as a group to finesse them for a more interdisciplinary approach. The first assignment involves a comparative analysis of climate-related artifacts, while the second encourages students to conduct interviews with community members to understand the local impact of climate change. The third assignment focuses on creating a Public Service Announcement (PSA) related to a specific climate issue. These assignments prioritize interdisciplinary approaches and open pedagogy by allowing for remixable content, and require students to demonstrate locally responsive knowledge.

Our group faced several challenges, in particular trying to develop multiple assignments that could work in a specific course (the ones we were teaching in the fall) and trying to expand the applicability of the assignments so that they could function in a range of disciplines. We were all in different time zones with different institutional requirements, but in the end I think we were largely successful in meeting the goals of the fellowship. In terms of implementing the assignments, I found that for my courses this actually worked really well and it also caused me to look more carefully at how the class was scaffolded, and I made some changes there. Student feedback was largely positive and I am currently teaching the course again with some minor adjustments to the assignments. -marc farrior

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Swaying Toward SDGs: Digital Stories, Lasting Impact

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Swaying Toward SDGs: Digital Stories, Lasting Impact

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Through the UNSDG Teaching Fellowship, I collaborated internationally with Dr. Malda Sarayji, faculty from Pima Community College, USA, to co-design interdisciplinary assignments engaging students from both TRU and Pima in real-world explorations. These initiatives reflect my active engagement with the broader teaching community to enhance course content using open tools and resources. Students connected electronic device physics with economic and environmental considerations such as cost, e-waste, and pollution through shared project-based learning experiences. The fellowship also supported the development of three interdisciplinary assignments integrating technical and socio-economic perspectives, fostering curiosity, critical thinking, and social responsibility.

This experience strengthened my commitment to open, inclusive, and interdisciplinary teaching. Collaborating across institutions and disciplines allowed me to explore alternative assessment formats and Open Educational Resources to host student posters for accessibility and continued learning. The student-led research showcases at TRU highlighted how embedding sustainability within physics education can inspire deeper engagement with community and global issues. Overall, the fellowship enhanced my professional growth, enabling me to design adaptable, sustainability-focused learning experiences that connect scientific understanding with real-world challenges and societal impact.

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Examples from Research Showcase (Dr. Anusha Venkataraman)-01

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Examples from Research Showcase (Dr. Anusha Venkataraman)-01

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Examples from Research Showcase (Dr. Anusha Venkataraman)-02

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Examples from Research Showcase (Dr. Anusha Venkataraman)-02

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Examples from Research Showcase (Dr. Anusha Venkataraman)-03

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Examples from Research Showcase (Dr. Anusha Venkataraman)-03