Florida Gulf Coast University
AC-6: Sustainability Literacy Assessment

Question 1 - From the following list of sustainability-related topics, indicate to what degree (no understanding, little understanding, a general understanding, a detailed understanding) you understand each topic.

Question 2 - Which aspect of sustainability will impact you the most?

Question 3 - Why will this aspect of sustainability have the greatest impact on you?

Question 4 - Are healthy ecosystems important to society and the economy in southwest Florida? Explain why or why not?

Question 5 - What is the most important thing you can do to reduce your ecological footprint (your impact on sustainability) in southwest Florida and around the globe?

Question 6 - Describe 1 way that our modern industrialized agricultural practices have been unsustainable (economically, socially, or environmentally).

Question 7 - Which aspect of climate change will affect you the most and why?

Question 8 – Discuss one way cities can be designed to be more sustainable.

The University Colloquium is an interdisciplinary course designed to explore the ecological, social, and economic aspects of sustainability. The course has been a graduation requirement since the University opened its doors in 1997. Course curriculum is maintained and revised by an advisory council made up of faculty, staff, and student representatives from a diversity of departments across campus.

The assessment tool was developed specifically for the University Colloquium course by the full time faculty in the summer of 2017. That group of 6 test piloted the instrument and did some adjusting over the next couple of semesters. It was officially launched in Spring of 2018.

Because every student takes the course at some point, it is a representative sample of the undergraduate population.

Students from all majors must take the course to graduate and a representative cross-section of the undergraduate population is enrolled at any given time. The University Colloquium Coordinator also evaluates annual grade data from the Registrar's Office to sample the sustainability literacy of our campus population.

From the attached report: “…pre-test and post-test surveys were added to a Canvas Blueprint course that I initially developed to support faculty during the shift to fully online learning in summer 2020. The Blueprint has proven to be a valuable faculty development tool and a much-demanded resource. As is the case with the common syllabus template and required textbook, the Blueprint helps facilitate a consistency of language and experience for students across all sections and provides important support for those who teach infrequently or are new to the course. The core Colloquium faculty typically do not utilize the Canvas Blueprint; therefore, data from that group were not used for this assessment. As a result, all data came from adjunct and contributing faculty members.
Pre-test and post-test surveys were administered to the students of participating faculty members in Canvas within the first two weeks and the last two weeks of each semester. I then asked those faculty to download the anonymous survey data and share it with me. For the first part of the analysis, I used the same simple rubric that I have used in previous assessments to make consistent comparison possible. This rubric looked for a cogent answer (a response that demonstrates understanding of the concept in question, regardless of the simplicity of the answer) in responses to each short answer/essay question. In order to better assess changes in students’ critical thinking throughout the semester, I used a more discriminating rubric for the second part of this assessment.”

In the current assessment period from Summer 2021 through Spring 2022, although the COVID-19 pandemic was a continued presence, it imposed a less significant impact on university and classroom processes than it had during the previous assessment period. As past assessments have shown, University Colloquium students demonstrated learning gains thanks to the hard work of the Colloquium faculty. In question 2, students’ shifting emphasis on climate change as the aspect of sustainability that would have the greatest impact on their lives may reflect the increasingly tangible effects of climate change being seen around the world. Question 5, which asks students about the most important thing they can do to reduce their ecological footprint is the only question to have seen a consistent decline in the last three assessments. Perhaps it is time to reword this question to better reflect our push to focus on social as well as environmental issues. The de-emphasis of the environment and increased emphasis on social issues (see question 2, Figure 4) is precisely what the full-time faculty and the University Colloquium Advisory Council have been working to do.
An additional year with a complete dataset allowed a more reliable examination of trends in student responses through time. Trends for many of the individual questions indicated that students are entering their University Colloquium classes with a greater understanding of various concepts related to sustainability (for example, Q3 Figure 6, Q4 Figure 8, Q6 Figure 12, Q7 Figure 14, and Q8 Figure 16). However, students’ responses to the first question in which they indicate to what degree they understand items from a list of sustainability-related topics do not mirror this apparent trend.
In past semesters assessment results have clearly reflected significant events occurring across southwest Florida and the larger world (for example, harmful algal blooms/red tide, COVID-19 pandemic, and racial violence/injustices). That trend was not the case for this assessment. Our students continue to see climate change and population growth as the greatest threats to their future, though their emphasis has shifted away from population growth, perhaps reflecting the reality that the impacts of climate change can be seen all around them. We can no longer assume that those will be problems solely for future generations. Encouragingly, despite the pandemic fatigue that students, staff, and faculty alike were feeling during this assessment period, learning was happening, and University Colloquium students will be better prepared to take on the challenges that will face them in the future.