Geology: Environmental geology/professional practice, Level 3
When originally set up, this intensive one week module was considered quite a radical idea. Moving away from pure science and technicality, it aims to develop the 'soft skills' that students will need when working with geology in the real world; communication, team working, community consultation, sustainability; fitting the science and technicalities of Geology into 'the bigger picture' as course designer Norman Moles put it.
Norman chose a very local case study - Southern Waters 're-charging aquifer' operations on sites around Brighton. Following recent EU legislation, companies such as Southern Water are now expected to consider sustainability implications when mining bore holes, and adopting a very similar scenario, Norman's students role play the entire process that would be undergone in a real-life bore-holing project.
This includes
- bidding for the contract from Southern Water
- locating where to drill the bore holes (with particular regard to the nearby golf course and nature reserve)
- Running a community consultation meeting with the environment agency, local business people, local government, local families who use the land for recreation and even Green Peace activists.
- Presenting a completion appraisal before a mock board of Southern Water executives, highlight good practice and to look at areas that didn't work so well.
Many of these tasks are to do with communication, between the company and the local people, between the company and the contractor doing the drilling etc, and others are about understanding the complexities of a real life project - weighing up the scientific ideals with the practicalities and making compromises, for example exploring what would happen if the best place to put the bore hole is in the nature reserve. Norman created an imaginary map, so as to ensure that the students came across these complexities! |
Student response:
‘it was a bit mind-opening actually cos...our course is quite specialised really, and very geology orientated...so it's good cos a lot of people might have to work in that kind of situation where you are dealing with a lot of different things’
See also: Norman Moles' presentation from the 2008 ESD Conference
More: definition of education for sustainable development: making the links.
Watch the class in action
Learning via role play to take environmental precautions
Role play
Understanding multiple perspectives
Using real-life scenarios to learn about power dynamics
Interviewee: Norman Moles