Perspective: Catalyzing climate education with open resources and practices
MIT OpenCourseWare Director Curt Newton shares how open educational resources can spark climate literacy and engagement.
By Curt Newton
For years, open education has been delivering benefits for learners around the world, saving enormous sums on textbooks and creating more adaptive and culturally relevant learning through the dedication and creativity of open educational resources-empowered educators. This foundation of open educational resources and practices can grow in so many directions — and perhaps none is more important than building society’s capacity to respond to the existential challenge of climate change.
The accelerating pace and scale of changes, from developing transformational technologies to communities creating resilient responses, makes it imperative that all ages and all sectors of society, “from K to gray,” develop climate literacy and engagement. Open Educational Resources (OERs) about climate, plus the vital open practices of OER adaptation and inclusion that bring them to life for learners, set us on course to infuse climate considerations across all topics of study, and empower every job to become a climate job.
MIT helped give rise to the OER movement with its 2001 launch of MIT OpenCourseWare, an expression of the ethos of open sharing that runs deep here and keeps growing. At MIT, we’re developing an expanding range of open climate learning programs with a focus on or relevance to K-12 education.
While MIT OpenCourseWare is mostly college level, it also includes resources built for and relevant to high school-age learners. For example, Thermodynamics and Climate Change is an OER created for and used successfully in an MIT program for rising high school seniors. More generally on MIT OpenCourseWare, introductory college-level materials can inspire younger learners with interesting concepts and fields to explore. For instance, a Climate Justice Instructional Toolkit provides classroom materials, video lectures, and teacher guides to facilitate bringing climate justice content and related instructional approaches into courses across all disciplines. And, some of the short “Why This Matters” video excerpts from an introductory chemistry OER are being curated into this collection for K12 climate education. For more from MIT OpenCourseWare, see the four “MIT Environment and Sustainability” collections on the OER Commons Climate Education Hub.
The MIT Climate Portal is home to engaging resources for the “climate curious.” One highlight is a collection of short Explainers on key topics, written for a general audience. They have been adapted by a community of K-12 educators specifically to speak to their needs, exercising the “5Rs” rights granted by the Creative Commons license on the original Explainers.
Also on the MIT Climate Portal are the award winning TILclimate podcast with educator guides for some episodes, the Ask MIT Climate feature which provides expert answers to submitted questions, and a multimedia climate primer written by renowned scientist Kerry Emanuel.
Two MIT programs provide climate OER specifically designed for K-12 settings. Climate Action Through Education (CATE) is MIT’s modular interdisciplinary standards-aligned climate change curricula for U.S. high school teachers, including lessons in History/Social Science, English/Language Arts, Math, and Science. CATE is created by practicing high school teachers, and guided and supported by MIT faculty and staff. MIT Day of Climate offers hands-on lessons and activities for both formal and informal K-12 settings, ranging from the serious fun of Climate Change Charades to an exploration of networked geothermal energy for efficient decarbonized building heating and cooling.
One of the most pressing needs in climate education is to foster the learner’s sense of agency and empowerment. This calls for stretching beyond textbooks and traditional classroom materials. The free online En-ROADS climate simulator, from nonprofit Climate Interactive in collaboration with MIT Sloan School of Management, lets learners explore future pathways for climate action, testing how different solutions can deliver benefits for people and the planet. The free simulator is supported by an OER guided assignment, ancillary materials and trainings, and a vibrant community of facilitators.
We know that creating effective OER and building practices for adopting and adapting them takes commitments of time and resources. There are many programs about climate learning and producing some great materials, but all too often the materials are not shared as OER. Most likely, they don’t realize the catalytic benefits of good climate OER in the hands of educators and learners. I’m glad to report that people are often quite appreciative. Most recently: a few months ago, I’d seen a draft version of some great new climate learning materials, reached out to the team to ask if they knew about OER and might be open to a conversation…and so the Massachusetts Clean Energy Council’s brand-new climate careers curriculum for grades 9–12 is Creative Commons licensed and now in the OER Commons.
“What can I do?” is a common and understandable response to the immensity of the climate challenge. As we continue to refine OER methods and have tangible experience with their benefits, one thing we can all do is bring OER in service of building climate literacy and engagement. For all ages and for all settings, climate OER will make a positive difference.
This article was originally published on The #GoOpen National Network.
About the author: Curt Newton is catalyzing more engaged and equitable climate action through open knowledge practices and resources. Professionally, Newton combines two decades of open education leadership as director of MIT OpenCourseWare — part of MIT Open Learning — with serving on MIT’s climate education working group and convening an open climate learning community of practice. As a citizen, Newton is on the leadership team of the Boston Green New Deal Coalition, an active facilitator with the En-ROADS climate simulator, a national convener for the Council on the Uncertain Human Future, an improvising drummer who often performs in the service of climate engagement, and lives in a deep energy retrofit net-zero home.
