How do our students fit in our current and future society? How can we prepare them to tackle real-world challenges? How can we prepare them to support science for decision-making? My teaching goals are motivated by a desire to engage our students, both in classrooms and through research, to better use and communicate science to guide informed decision-making. During my graduate studies, I served as a teaching assistant in many courses, a mentor for many undergraduate thesis projects, and a graduate student/teaching assistant mentor for my graduate department. Through these roles, I have developed strong teaching principles, methods, and ways to enrich diversity in both classrooms and research settings. As a faculty member at the Division of Environmental Science & Engineering at POSTECH, I plan to develop and improve active participatory tools in which students can experiment and explore real-world challenges. A number specific themes that I find particularly interesting are shown below.
1) Assessing the efficacy of negotiation simulation tools for variability synthesis
Environmental issues reflect diverse sets of discipline priorities, practices, knowledge, and worldview. How the variability in these factors is understood and used in decision-making processes can determine environmental sustainability outcomes. My goal is to create effective learning environments where our students can experiment with this variability and discover ways to facilitate across them for environmental decision-making. To this end, I plan to investigate how negotiation simulation tools (NSTs) or role-plays are used to construct students¡¯ knowledge, perception, and ability to synthesize variability in the context of environmental decision-making at local to international settings. NSTs have previously been developed for climate change and international mercury treaty negotiations. The effectiveness of NST for student learning has only been evaluated in a limited number of classroom settings and environmental topics. By assessing the efficacy of NSTs, I would like to further improve and support NST as a strong evidence based teaching practice in a wide range of environmental science courses.
Examples of available NSTs
2) Developing new pedagogical approaches for uncertainty analyses
Quantitative uncertainty is an uncomfortable but crucial concept when using science for decision-making. Uncertainties exist not only in scientific tools and methods, but they can also originate when scientists attempt to make predictions of the past and future changes in human-natural systems. In fact, emerging studies on Discipline Based Education Research show that temporal thinking is a distinctive concept in geoscience education research. I am interested in designing active, project-based learning curriculums to promote students¡¯ ability to interpret and characterize various types of quantitative uncertainties associated with measurements, field based, and modeling in the context of historical and future projections of pollutant changes. Potential initial case studies include pollutant measurement and model inter-comparison studies, and interpretation of long-term changes in pollutant concentrations in geochemical reservoirs.
Existing tools for assessing uncertainty & variability
3) Raising participatory activities for uncertainty and variability communication
In addition to understanding uncertainties and variability, it is important for our students to practice how to communicate them for decision-making. One of the most important lessons learned from the climate change negotiations is that scientists, as experts, have not been able to communicate uncertainties effectively to the public and decision-makers. I plan to develop participatory activities for students to analyze and communicate scientific uncertainties and variability by tackling real world problems. By understanding how decisions are made, students will be forced to reflect and assess their own analysis and communication skills in science. In this activity, our students will take the lead of identifying local environmental issues and stakeholders, synthesizing scientific findings and uncertainties, and communicating these results to the stakeholders to reach decision. I believe firmly in the method of learning by teaching. By engaging in participatory activities, our students will also develop leadership, ownership, and communication skills in science.
4) Assessing the long-term efficacy of research-based teaching practices
In the long term, I would like to assess the efficacy of research-based teaching practices on students¡¯ long-term learning goals in the field of geosciences and environmental engineering. Scientific research promotes deep grounded understanding of scientific concepts, methods, and practices. Tremendous effort has been put in, at both international and institutional levels, to transform traditional undergraduate and graduate science education to research-based teaching. Unfortunately, research-based teaching practices suffer from lack of measurement data, which monitors students¡¯ long-term knowledge, ability, interest, and performances as scientists. As a faculty member at POSTECH, I would like to assess and improve the existing research-based teaching practices in the department and establish new measures to monitor students¡¯ success as future geoscientists and environmental engineers.