In the capstone, Unit 3, students are provided a real-world example of local community action to address the challenge of "healthy food access." The 2015 Leon County (Florida) Sustainable Communities Summit highlights the results of communities working together to promote environmental and food justice. By the end of Unit 3, instructors can deliver a call to action to empower students to be participatory citizens in their communities. The summative assessment will evaluate the students' ability to synthesize the module learning objectives and demonstrate the use of science practices.

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Students will identify potential stakeholders and assess the importance of communication and interaction among these groups to make recommendations on how to define and develop prepared communities.

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Landslides can have profound societal consequences, such as did the slide that occurred near Oso, Washington in 2014. Forty-three people were killed and entire rural neighborhood was destroyed. In this unit, students consider the larger-scale tectonic and climatic setting for the landslide and subsequently use lidar and SRTM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) hillshade images, topographic maps, and InSAR (interferometric synthetic aperture radar) to determine relationships between landscape characteristics and different types of mass-wasting events. They conclude by considering the societal costs of such a disaster and ways that communities in similar situations may mitigate their risk.

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Online-adaptable: The exercises in unit are completely digital and thus at a logistical level it can be switched to online fairly easily. However, due to the relative complexity of the data investigations and group discussions, there will still be a fair bit of instructor support needed and/or extended small group that should be arranged.

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Building on the work they did in Unit 3, students will perform an "ecocritical" rhetorical reading (the theoretical lens for examining the way that literary texts engage with climate and climate issues) in order to analyze a short story chosen from several provided by the instructor. They will utilize literary terminology in discussing this text and generating a rhetorical analysis of it.

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In this unit, students construct and present a standards-based, K -- 8 Soils, Systems, and Society Kit that consists of lessons and supporting materials around a locally and broadly relevant societal issue that involves soils. After learning about the Kit assignment and choosing their societal issue, students have at least two weeks outside of classwork time to develop a kit that integrates soils content with interdisciplinary systems taught through scientific practices. After completing their Kits, students present them to the class for review and final summative assessments.

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Units 3 and 4 of this module explored how water resources are used for agriculture in the United States and how this can vary depending on location. In Unit 5, students explore how agricultural practices can affect the water quality in streams, rivers, lakes, and coastal areas. Important concepts in this unit include processes that transport suspended material (e.g., sediment) and dissolved material (e.g., nutrients) away from crop fields and into regional water bodies. The effects of dissolved nutrients on the health of the water ecosystems will be presented with examples of hypoxic zones in coastal areas and lake eutrophication. This last unit is well-suited to foster student advancement in systems thinking.

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In this unit, students will learn about the dynamic movement of nutrients among and within ecosystems primarily through the reading and discussion of scientific literature. This unit is generally subdivided into three sections: (1) allochthonous inputs (2) the role of organisms in biogeochemical cycles and how ecological theory can be applied to biogeochemistry and (3) how biogeochemical processes can assist in creating solutions for humanity's grand challenges. This unit is designed to provide students with the opportunity to develop their reading and interpretation of scientific literature. Students will also become familiar with the utility of isotopic techniques and their use in biogeochemistry through readings and data analysis of carbon and nitrogen isotopic data sets. Chosen scientific articles are provided, each with their own set of reading questions. Additionally, short introductory materials are provided to introduce students to some of the general concepts and processes in the study of biogeochemistry.

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This unit is the module's capstone project: developing a conceptual model of the climatic and societal effects of a catastrophic volcanic eruption occurring in modern times. Through independent research and in-class collaboration, students explore the climatic and societal effects of past volcanic eruption events. Students are then introduced to the large Toba eruption event, review concept maps, concept sketches, and system diagrams, and are are given examples and guidelines for conceptual model design. Students complete their written summary outside of class.

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Students watch a video and read about past evacuations, including a premature or unnecessary evacuation, a late or botched evacuation, and about people determined to stay put no matter what. Students participate in a role-playing exercise about making the decision to evacuate in the face of uncertain predictions.

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Unit 6 provides an opportunity for students to present their action plans and exchange knowledge about what they have learned in their team case study work. This unit builds on food security and Earth system science covered in the first three units. It can be taught in any course discussing food security or it can be modified to fit a variety of courses of in the sciences and social sciences. The activities included in this unit are appropriate for introductory-level college students or as a basis for more in-depth class discussions on food security for upper-level students.

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This in-class exercise is an alternative to standard review sessions and models the systems thinking students need to do when working on complex, interdisciplinary issues. Students quiz each other on course material and then find authentic (and often creative) connections between seemingly disparate topics in the course. This approach challenges students to use holistic thinking when reviewing, and can be readily customized for any course.

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Humans are agents of change in the Critical Zone. This unit focuses on the land/water connection and on how human-induced land use change affects local hydrology. Students will apply what they learned in the previous Hydrology Module about how hydrologists use data (land-cover type, soil texture, and slope) to predict the amount and destination of water as it moves through a built environment. Students will use the Generic Model from the Model My WatershedR application to evaluate the impact of human alterations to the landscape and will also investigate how best-management practices can lesson those impacts. While doing so, students will also be asked to consider impacts to society both from the increased runoff and from some mitigation measures.

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Peer review is an important process in determining priorities for scientific research. Students will participate in a panel review of proposals for new CZOs and as a class decide on the proposal most worthy of funding. Students will read proposals, craft a detailed review of the merits and limitations of the proposal, and then discuss the proposals during an in-class panel review. Proposals will be evaluated on how well the proposed CZO would help address global challenges and advance Critical Zone science and require students to use knowledge gained in previous modules to assess and communicate which proposals meet these goals.

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Open-ended, field, inquiry projects can be very useful in sedimentary geology courses to explore dynamic relationships in sedimentary systems. I have used this approach to allow students to "do" their own science in a small stream near our campus. These projects generally involve studying relationships between the nature of stream flow, stream dynamics, geometries of the channel, and characteristics and rates of movement of bedforms. The small-group inquiry project begins with students observing a section of the stream (located a couple miles from campus), followed by brainstorming questions about the features observed in the stream and on its bed, then to designing and implementing experiments to answer specific questions that they have formulated, and concluding with data analysis and student presentations of their research. Approximately a dozen steps comprise the complete inquiry approach.

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These assignments are adaptations of field labs to incorporate writing. For each field lab, students write a partial geologic report, consisting of a description (or "Structural Data") section, an interpretation section, and appropriate supporting figures (potentially including stereonets, field sketches, maps, cross-sections, etc.).
Handouts given at the beginning of lab list: the goals to be accomplished in the field (measurement of foliations and lineations, measurement of bedding around a fold, description of structures, field sketches, etc.),
the figures expected in the write-up (stereonets, field sketches, etc.),
a list of information to include in the description section, and a list of questions to address in the interpretation section. Depending on the field area, students may be given two or more competing models to test in the field or may be asked to relate descriptive analysis to kinematic or mechanical analysis. This adaptation can be used for field labs at all levels, from labs designed to review field techniques and identify basic types of secondary structures to labs that simulate research experience. This type of write-up improves student writing by giving students practice using terminology and describing spatial relationships, and improves critical thinking skills by requiring written interpretation of structural data.

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Using Internet Communication enhances students' theoretical understanding of electronic communication and their ability to communicate as professionals, scholars, and citizens using the Internet. Participants learn core communication theoretical models and principles, and apply them to electronic communication methods that enhance interpersonal, small group, and public interactions. These methods include electronic meetings, discussion forums, co-authoring tools, audio, and video.

Students work in small groups to record interviews capturing public attitudes on various types of waste. Students then edit shorter videos into a larger film that incorporates student analysis and synthetic commentary on waste in our society.

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Nowadays, among all the online dating sites and apps, Tinder is one of the most innovative apps because link users’ contacts from Facebook and the apps’ algorithm immediately gives them an endless photos of potential mates with no questionnaires or forms –as the previous traditional dating sites and apps do-, only faces, and then users need to swipe right if a user likes a person, and by the contrary swipe left if not (Bertoni, 2014).  Tinder is the biggest player in the online dating market. In the last three years, the newest app has reached 30 million users representing one fourth of the total market. But, to our knowledge, the research on addressing what makes this online dating app more or less interactive and how the communicative affordances offered by this online dating app may have an effect on the subsequent romantic outcomes is scarce.

This material was created by Steven Ginley at Morton College. He argues “the purpose of an introduction to public speaking course should be to provide a human communication overview. It should use independent study, textbook readings and exercises, group work, class discussions, library research, oral presentations and lectures to prepare students for successful lives by improving their oral and written communication skills. It should stress personal responsibility, ethics and the ability to understand and follow written and oral directions.” The all-inclusive site includes a textbook, workbook, presentations, practice quizzes and tests, motivational aids, and more.

This video is geared towards folks using PowerPoint and Zoom to give speeches in academic courses. It uses the "reveal/conceal" method of showing and hiding slides. If you are looking for a more basic tutorial of using PowerPoint with Zoom, see my other tutorial : Giving PowerPoint Presentations on Zoom (Remote Instruction Series) --https://youtu.be/RagDree80-Y