Problem based accounting learning activity for notes and interest payable, sales tax payable, and payroll.
This interdisciplinary course is a real-world collaborative multi-year project that connects various departments, courses, and independent study projects on a college campus. Using the client/consultant model, students from several departments and a wide range of environmental backgrounds come together to explore the design of an efficient future student house on campus. Over a couple of years, students research and test building designs, energy for heating and power, natural flows of available energy, natural ecosystem processes including living machines, and possible materials to use in the eventual construction of the eco-house. This SERC Starting Point site includes learning goals, context for use, teaching tips and materials, assessment, and references.
This semester-long project on conducting an environmental audit of a college campus can be done by an individual or by groups of students working in teams. Each group will research a different aspect of campus operations; they will collect data, analyze their findings, and make recommendations for improvements. This SERC Starting Point site includes learning goals, context for use, teaching tips and materials, assessment, and references.
This Starting Point Teaching Collection page describes the Yellowstone Fires module created for NASA's Classroom of the Future. Emphasizing an integrated approach to environmental earth science through problem-based learning, the module asks students to assume the role of environmental biologist, and help several government agencies resolve the debate surrounding "let it burn" policies in national parks. The government agencies would like to know whether or not to allow naturally occurring fires in Yellowstone National Park to burn to their natural conclusion. The agencies are particularly interested in student recommendations based on an Earth System Science analysis of a fire's impact on the air, land, water, and living things. Many of the pages within the module site provide hyperlinked background resources to investigate wildland fire issues in more detail. A glossary, references, related links, and a general description of the problem-based learning model compliment the site. On this page, teachers can find learning goals, teaching notes and tips, teaching materials, assessment hints and references and resources dealing with this exercise. It also describes the context in which the module is best used.