Using IT-Based Distance Education for Global Environment and Development Learning

The political, social, economic, and ecological complexities evident at the dawn of the twenty-first century underscore the reality of “a dramatically changed, and increasingly interconnected, world”; one that is adjusting to “new forms of worldwide communication and collaboration that were, until recently, unimaginable” (Ford Foundation, 1999, p. xi).By 2025, projections are that almost two thirds of the world’s population will be urban or suburban, and already 60% live within 100 km of a coastline. To give just one example of the ecological and socioeconomic challenges, increased concerns regarding health of the world’s oceans and freshwater bodies highlight a critical need to share knowledge of water issues and solutions regionally and globally, and to raise awareness of this among the general population. The argument is made that any such diffusion of knowledge and awareness must be broadly-based. It should include civil society, the private sector, grassroots and non-governmental organizations, local communities, and academia, and must relate to real situations and action. Environmental problems and solutions transcend national borders. It is therefore important to communicate and understand a diversity of international perspectives on how these issues are interpreted and perceived at an individual and local level.Such concern for widespread dissemination of critical knowledge and resulting praxis is not new; arguably, what has changed radically is the form and reach of the tools by which these educational goals can be achieved. In 1980, the Belgrade Conference related to a New World Information and Communication Order, enshrined principles of “respect for the right of all peoples to participate in international exchanges of information on the basis of equality, justice and mutual benefit” and “respect for the right of the public, of ethnic and social groups and of individuals to have access to information sources and to participate actively in the communication process.” We have embarked upon the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014), a major tenet of which is the goal of allowing “students to develop the skills to understand and act on both the global and local nature of the wide range of issues that are included in sustainable development (SD)” (Combes, 2005). All well and good, but how is this to be achieved?The rise of IT-based distance learning courses and knowledge networks is well-documented. Increasingly, environment and development organizations and related learning institutions are looking to the use of instructional technologies (IT) in formal and informal learning as a tool for local and international knowledge-sharing and communication with particular regard to ecological and social challenges. There is a rich literature suggesting that the spread and reach of instructional technologies is shaping the development of new transnational networks across environment and development concerns (Albirini, 2005; Bracey & Culver, 2005; Rohrschneir & Dalton, 2002).Michael Totten is cofounder of the Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology, and senior director for climate and water with the Washington-based Center for Environmental Leadership in Business. In a recent interview, he recognized all too well the environmental challenges:Totten is one example of those who envisages the potentially positive educational and communicative role that may be realized through IT-linkages.The reach of IT-based distance learning also allows for the relative ease of inclusion of instructors and materials from a broad base of international learning institutions and perspectives. Especially since the promotion of Agenda 21 at the Earth Summit in 1992, (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, 1992), educational institutions worldwide are becoming involved with integrating environmental concerns and issues into a broad range of programs and course materials. The instructional technologies and reach allowed by computer-mediated distance learning is of particular value in environmental studies, the urgency of which require an integrated, cross-disciplinary approach reaching a diversity of learners across borders of time and geography.At the Oceanographic Center of Nova Southeastern University, we offer an online MS in coastal zone management, a graduate certificate in coastal studies and, together with Nova’s Fischler School of Education, an online MS in education with specialization in environmental education. The Oceanographic Center has also received approval to offer an online graduate certificate in marine and coastal climate change. Since the mid-1980s, I have taught a range of e-learning courses on environment and development issues to students ranging in age from undergraduates and graduates to “Third Age” (retirees) and every stage in-between (adult learners, working professionals). The students have been based primarily within the United States and Canada, but also within Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.As Pretorius (2004) points out,As an example of how e-learning allows for an immediacy of response across a range of borders and cultures, one of my online environmental policy courses included a student based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). At the start of a unit, she posted a message that there had been an oil spill off the Persian Gulf coast. Students pressed for more details, and she was able to provide little information. The UAE is a federation of seven emirates and not much was being said in official circles. She had heard rumors that the spill had come from a pirate barge associated with the embargo on oil from Iraq. A North American student asked her why she didn’t go to the library. She explained that as a female in the UAE, she was only allowed into a very restricted area of the library.Asynchronous questions and discussion soon came thick and fast, and in the process students explored gender equity, distributions of power, the reality of ability to influence policy and take action for non-governmental organizations in different parts of the world, a powerful illustration of the direct experience of an oil spill (as she sent us daily bulletins from progress “on the front”), implications of embargoes and blockades, and a host of related issues, sometimes with gentle prodding and guidance on my part to make sure that things stayed “on track” in terms of environmental policy perspectives. If this was a pirate barge, where was the oil going? What did the students use oil for in their daily lives? Could they trace its route to their homes? Another student had colleagues who had worked on the Exxon Valdez clean-up, and shared their experiences, insights, and suggestions with the student and her colleagues in the UAE. It made for very powerful and relevant learning, although quite different in content from what I had originally prepared at the start of the week.As I have become more familiar with the technological possibilities of online interactive linked distance learning, I have become increasingly excited and intrigued with its potential to help create formal, diverse, connected learning communities. Developing an ecological worldview in part involves a blurring of perceptual borders between where definitions of “local” and “global” begin and end, particularly in terms of environmental impact. Geographically and/or culturally disparate learners can use on-line technology to share their knowledge, experiences, and discussions; create perceptual immediacy and intimacy; and in the process actively contribute to course content.There are numerous examples of how this is being approached in formal and informal learning, with students of all ages, from K-12 to postgraduate. At the K-12 end of the spectrum, there is the Finnish-based ENO “Environment Online,” a global virtual school for sustainable development and environmental awareness. This can be found on the Web at http:eno.joensuu.fi/basics/briefly.htmAnother such example is iEARN (http://www.iearn.org), “the world’s largest nonprofit global network that enables teachers and young people to use the Internet and other new technologies to collaborate on projects that both enhance learning and make a difference in the world” (para. 1).TakingITGlobal is a relevant e-learning site that I recently used for e-linking groups of students from two universities internationally (NSU in Florida, and the University of Guelph in Canada). TakingITGlobal (TIG) is a nonprofit international organization founded and led by youth. It uses Web-based technology to connect a target-base of youth 13 to 30 from around the world (130,000 members in over 200 countries) to learn about cross-cultural issues and perspectives, so that they may be empowered to take “tangible action” (TakingITGlobal, 2006) to improve their local and global communities. Regional membership breakdown is notable in terms of equity of access and voice across the global North and South. For 2005, the highest percentage (28.9%) was North America, followed by Africa (22.2%), Asia (21%), Europe (13%), and the remainder.The organization’s simple mantra is to inspire, inform, involve. TIG promotes socially and environmentally responsible entrepreneurship and engagement through technology, communication, collaboration, and community. Its Web site is a multifaceted hub where members interact, learn and report at a local and global level. Information and communication technologies are explicitly recognized as a major resource by TIG. The organization is self-described as “led by youth, empowered by technology.” The use of the technologies is not passive, but mandated to be “meaningful” in terms of bringing about positive change. Educators can take advantage of the TIGEd site embedded within TakingITGlobal to create open or closed classrooms with the potential for asynchronous discussions, chats, file uploading, blogs, and the advantage of being able to collaborate easily with other TIGEd educators and the broad TIG member community.Professor and educator David Orr is chair of the environmental studies program at Oberlin College, Ohio. He is the author several books and numerous papers on environmental literacy in higher education, and renowned for his work in ecological design. In an interview in London, England in June 2005, he mused that:Orr’s allusion to a sort of nurturing Rolodex got me thinking that this may be a good analogy for the connectedness of e-learning, in which students in an online course or program can also build an extensive network of local and global contacts across their field of study, with whom they have interacted and “met,” albeit in a computer-mediated form. Once those connections are made in the virtual arena, they may continue beyond the time when the formal class period has ended. Unlike the F2F classroom, the students do not “leave” a physical space; the ethereal space within which they have been accustomed to interacting is still up and running. I was surprised and pleased to find that several of my international students who had got used to interacting within my formal online course on TIGEd were still interacting online within the virtual classroom space, some time after the formal class period had ended.Orr also sees potential with e-learning connectivity. To return to his interview, he elaborates that:The reach and speed of the movement of these e-learning connections “around the world” is not, of course, happening at the same pace everywhere, and there are valid and widespread concerns and discussions with regard to equity of access and the digital divide. IT-linkages are primarily an urban phenomenon, but perhaps this is not entirely misplaced given that, at least perceptively, we are on the cusp of inhabiting a primarily urban world, with all its resulting benefits and problems. Many of our socioecological problems originate here, and perhaps it is also within the urban world that the challenges need to be communicated and the solutions approached. Arguably, students worldwide who are engaged in formal environment and development studies programs represent an elite network; primarily urban-based, literate, with access to higher education and IT.Related academic debate over the last three decades has focused on concerns regarding equity of access to such technologies, but there is also concern about equitable patterns of exchange within this global network regarding what is communicated and shared (Pasquali, 2005).E-learning offers the promise of widespread capacity building and knowledge-sharing. Equity and transparency are underpinnings to concepts of sustainable development. Accordingly, some perceive that the “non-hierarchical architecture, interactivity and liberating nature imbedded in internet technologies have provided unprecedented opportunities for human development” (Jinqiu, Xiaoming, & Banerjee, 2006, p. 293).None of us experience life as a system or an institution or a nation or an economic bloc. We experience life as individuals. Ultimately, for environmental education to be effective beyond an academic level, the focus has to return to the aims and experiences and feelings and concerns of people. Fundamentally, progress can only come from individual actions and our relationships to one another and our communities. In approaching global problems, we need to make space for individual voices to be heard. My experience over the past few years is that the reach and potential of connected distance-learning courses offers a very powerful, timely, and effective means of doing just that.

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