Abstract

This proposal from the Earth System Science Programme (ESSC) consists of two parts:

(A) teaching and learning development, and (B) sustainable enrichment of student’s experiential learning.

1. The current syllabus of most local schools descriptively introduces Earth System but lacks an interdisciplinary pedagogy, which is crucial for studying landscapes, natural disasters, environmental change and the mechanisms beyond. ESSC emphasizes a multidisciplinary approach to understand the Earth System. Many university first-year students thus take a long time to adapt to the new learning format, and some may lose interest gradually once lagging behind. Implementing e-learning modules in various ESSC courses have been shown to construct a positive influence on a student’s self-learning initiative. For the teaching and learning component, we thus further propose to develop a range of teaching materials, with a new production of 10 Virtual Reality (VR) apps, one series of Augment Reality (AR) apps, and one 3-D printed teaching kit. To further support intensive field studies and advanced ESSC courses, we suggest reforming the Minerals and Rocks Gallery that we developed earlier. All the teaching aids will not only raise students’ interest and awareness of the Earth System from a scientific perspective, but also provide quick and 3-dimensional illustration of complicated processes and structures of our solid Earth, as well as different aspects of natural disasters.
2. Besides, inadequate exposure to the scientific contents of the Earth System in the traditional education system results in a vast knowledge gap to understand the potential risks of natural disasters and environmental change. The current situation hinders the new generation from readily joining the environmental planning and consulting industry. To fill the gap, we hence propose (a) a Geoscience Ambassador Training Scheme; and (b) an Internship Networking for sustainability enrichment of students’ experiential learning. ESSC students can be equipped with sufficient knowledge background and skills to guide high school students to explore geology and geophysics via the Geoscience Ambassador Training Scheme. Meanwhile, in an Internship Networking, junior students can gain targeted advice about sustainability-related fields from the senior peers who completed the internships and ESSC alumni now working in relevant fields.

Given both internal academic support and external service learning, we believe that the project greatly benefit science students, and also contributes to part of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by allowing our students not only to gain industry-relevant experience in sustainability work, but also to actively engage themselves in awareness advocacy and education of the secondary school students and general public.