Culminating Project

Overview	Students will select an environmental issue that is personal to them or their community and design a solution to that issue. Students should explore opportunities for nature-based solutions, but ultimately, as long as they are able to defend their solution they can solve the issue in any way they see fit.
Standards	SEV5. Obtain, evaluate, and communicate information about the effects of human population growth on global ecosystems. d. Design and defend a sustainability plan to reduce your individual contribution to environmental impacts, taking into account how market forces and societal demands (including political, legal, social, and economic) influence personal choices.

Design Thinking

Students will work through the steps of the design process for this challenge. Below is an example of the steps of the design process that you can use with your students. You may choose to have students use a design challenge notebook, or keep a design challenge blog to record their process during this project.

Ask

In this first step, students will need to brainstorm environmental issues that are in problem in their community. You can choose to do this in small groups, or as a whole class.

Ask students to think of different groups that they are a part of; family, school, city, clubs or sport teams. Encourage them to think of environmental issues that they would feel empowered to tackle at home, school or in the community. This could be an issue related to climate change, food systems, water pollution or any other issue that is relevant. This could be anything from the dependence on single-use plastic, food waste, urban heat island effect, stormwater runoff, lack of healthy local food options, decrease in pollinator populations to even school buses idling while they wait for students to be dismissed. Encourage them to think of as many issues as possible.

Students will need to work in groups for this design challenge. You may let them group up however you like, with different groups working on different issues, or the class could choose one issue and all work together to solve it, with different groups taking different approaches.

After choosing an issue have students think about the following questions and record their answers in their design notebook/blog:

• What is the issue your group has decided to focus on? Make sure to consider the amount of time you have for this challenge.
• What is going with this issue?
• Who is involved?
• Reflect on what you have observed regarding this issue and what concerns you.
• What do you already know? What do you need to find out?
• What interview questions do you need to ask the stakeholders?

You may want to have the students take time to create a list of interview questions and interview important stakeholders. For example, if one groups wants to create pollinator habitat on your school campus, they may have to discuss space and resources with the school principal.

Imagine

Brainstorm all the possibilities. You may want to start with a brainstorming warm-up exercise. The purpose of the exercise isi to get students thinking creatively about solutions. The point is to think of as many solutions as possible, and not to worry about how “good” the solutions might be. In the warm up the students have 2 minutes to brainstorm as many solutions as possible to an unrelated question, such as:

• How can you wake up early without an alarm clock?
• How can you catch a fish without using a fishing rod?
• How can you find a needle in a haystack?

After the warm up have a brief discussion with the students to see how the exercise went for them. Now they will continue brainstorming, but for their chosen environmental issue. Students can follow this process:

1. Individually brainstorm as many solutions as you can in the time that you have. Set a goal for yourself to try and come up with 10, 20, 100 different solutions. Record your ideas in your design challenge notebook using words, picture, and/or numbers.
2. Take time to share your ideas with your group. Can you combine any of the ideas? Can you organize them into categories?
3. Narrow the list down by voting or having a group discussion and drawing out the pros and cons of each solution. Are any of your solutions nature-based?
4. Vote or decide on the best solution.

**Students solutions can range from physically engineered designs such as compost bins, rain barrels, or pollinator gardens, to social media campaigns, or educational materials for other students, family or community members.

Plan

Get this part of the process started by holding a brief discussion with students about why they have chosen to focus on these certain issues, and who is going to benefit from their solution. Hopefully, this discussion will be motivation to keep the ball rolling and accomplish their goals!

Have students complete the following tasks in their design challenge notebooks or blogs in order to help them plan:

1. Make a list of the resources you will need (supplies and people) and where/how you will get them.
2. Draw up a plan for the steps that you will take to achieve your goal. (ChatGPT is a great tool for helping students create project work plans, it can give them tasks for each day that they have to work on the project which can be especially helpful when you know you will only have a certain number of class days for students to work on these projects)
3. Divide up the work.
4. Draw up a timeline that matches the project plan.

Create/Prototype

Now it is time to implement the plan! At the beginning of each work session, have students review their project plan, and create a daily to-do list.

Test/Reflect

If applicable, have students test out their designs. This could include practicing or rehearsing the delivery of instructional materials. Have groups elicit peer feedback and incorporate this into their reflection. Provide time for reiteration or redesign based on feedback.

Share

Sharing and celebrating the students accomplishments can be done in many ways. There could be an event in groups are able to educate and share their solutions with the community, or if they created blogs, you could compile them into a website that could be published and shared with others. Or, each group could have their own separate plan for sharing that could range from a TikTok video to a presentation to the school administration to inviting a local journalist to do a news story.