Teaching Energy Awareness: Understanding Sources and Uses

An online workshop for undergraduate faculty
April 11 - 12 and 18 - 19, 2011

This workshop has taken place. You can find workshop presentation files, screencasts and other outcomes on the workshop program page.

Energy use has a profound effect on human civilization. Energy is a gateway to flourishing societies, a valuable commodity, and a resource with substantial social and environmental consequences. Energy consumption is also the fundamental cause and the primary solution to anthropogenic climate change. There are many avenues for addressing energy in today's college classrooms, and its relevance can bring current science and policy into your teaching.

This workshop is for undergraduate faculty who are interested in bringing energy-related topics into their courses, or who already teach about energy but may be looking for new approaches to teaching about it. Workshop topics will be centered around teaching energy awareness Concept B: The primary sources of energy used by society are non-renewable stores sources, such as fossil fuels and nuclear, and renewable sources, such as solar, wind, hydro and biomass.

Workshop activities will include presentations about sources of energy, examples of successful activities for that illustrate the relationship between energy types and their uses, work time to develop new classroom activities for teaching these concepts, and opportunities to collaborate and network with other faculty.

The workshop will be held online and will use web conferencing, web collaboration tools, online discussions and conference calls. Workshop activities will be a blend of synchronous sessions and asynchronous work time, and will take place on 4 days in mid-April 2011.

The workshop is free of charge, but space is limited and pre-registration is required by Monday, April 4, 2011. The workshop registration form is available online.