Using Climate Research to Introduce Sustainability in a Computer Science Curriculum

As challenges related to global climate change become ever more pressing, it is imperative that all parts of higher education are capable of preparing students to deal with global challenges posed by climate change in their professional careers. Many study programmes in engineering have attempted to introduce sustainability as part of their curriculum, but there are many factors that may impede progress and uptake, both within faculty and among students. Especially Computer Science education has been slow to adopt sustainability in the core curriculum. Those who have introduced sustainability as a separate subject have reported generally lower student ratings, especially if students fail to see the relevance of sustainability for them. To address these issues, we describe an approach to use concrete climate simulation tools and data to introduce computer science students to sustainability-related topics. The main aim is to improve students’ appreciation of, and interest in, sustainability issues by using real-world sustainability problems, hard data and technical methods. Also, we wish to assess whether common course material, available as an open toolbox, can lower the barriers of entry for educators who wish to introduce sustainability in their own computer science courses. In this paper, we describe a toolbox with climate change research tools and simulation data, and report on experiences from two courses and three student groups where this material has been used. We describe some impediments and success factors to using the material, and present the results of surveys and interviews from the three student groups participating. O public understanding of the full impacts of climate change, including radical loss of biodiversity, disruption of food production and mass migration to name a few, has made climate change an important topic in public discourse. [1] Climate change is no longer a topic restricted to discussions at climate science conferences or in environmental groups, but a common part of public discourse. It is increasingly obvious that challenges ahead will require not only small, incremental improvements to current ways of producing goods and services, but more significant changes in general. The challenges that we face ahead are stupenduous, and will require significant efforts by all members of society, as individuals as well as professionals. The UN has specifically mentioned education for sustainable development as a key to enabling societies to cope with challenges ahead. [2] I. Sustainability in Higher Education Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has seen an uptake in academia, and increased interest in integrating issues related to sustainable development into the main curriculum. From having been a topic reserved for special degree programmes in environmental studies, several attempts have been made to integrate sustainability into the main curriculum of a broader set of degree programmes such as in computer science (see, e.g. [3], [4]). Although some argue that the education system need to be radically revised in order to fully enable students to become change agents for a sustainable society [5], [6], others outline models for integrating sustainable development in curricula that do not require radical departures from what we mean by higher education [7]. Just as with other approaches to introduce new topics or aspects in education, it is critical to ensure that students feel motivated to participate in whatever activities we subject them to, and demonstrate the relevance of sustainable development for them [7]. Barth describes three central starting points for selecting material on sustainable development for integration into students’ curriculum: 1) Students must appreciate the relevance of sustainable devlopment for their studies as well as their future careers and lives, 2) they must feel that they are active in making the very decisions that will determine whether future societies will become sustainable, and 3) they must understand how they can apply their domainspecific problem-solving techniques on problems related to sustainable development, through general principles or concrete tools and methods. Commonly, there have two types of obstacles to implement sustainable development in study programmes other than environmental studies: the “not our subject” and “crowded curriculum” objections. As sustainable development can be argued to concern everyone and no-one at the same time, educators have found it difficult to relate to the issues, and find that they are important for their own curricula. To improve the relevance of the subject to all students, we could try to apply existing problem-solving techniques from engineering on large-scale societal problems. Doing so in a curriculum that is already full with “core” courses presents several challenges, both cultural challenges and economical. One approach to improve student appreciation of sustainable development, and to lower the barrier for educators, might be to use a common set of educational resources on sustainability-related issues and LTHs 9:e Pedagogiska Inspirationskonferens, 15 december 2016 include those resources in several different courses at a lower marginal cost. For instance, at KTH, Sweden, a collection of sustainability learning material has been developed that can be adapted for different courses in which the material is used [8]. II. Sustainability in Computer Science In Computer Science, educators have only recently developed their own understanding of what it would mean to integrate sustainable development in the curriculum. For instance, Penzenstadler argues that it is important to distinguish between the environmental effects of producing and using any IT system, and the potential effects that IT systems may have in a larger scope, where our ability to solve sustainability problems improve as a result of moving from a productoriented economy to one built on services [9]. One way to develop a positive attitude towards using professional skills in solving sustainability issues is to help students see how their skills can be applied to addressing sustainability-related issues [4]. At Linköpings universitet, we have conducted a project in which students from several degree programmes, in two courses: one in their first year, and one eligible in the fourth and fifth years, have worked on projects related to understanding the impacts of climate change. Students have been given climate simulation data from regional 100 year simulations of mean temperature and precipitation levels in Europe, and use existing tools to extract meaningful patterns from that data. The first-year students have been tasked with running some small scripts to understand how programming skills can be relevant when working as a researcher in climate science research, conduct a visit at the climate science research facility (SMHI in Sweden) and write a longer report on climate science research in general, with examples of how to use tools they have studied. Students in the course for fourth and fifth year students were given a task to provide information visualization tools for different groups of users based on the same types of climate simulation data. In both cases, students had to do research independently on climate change, climate simulations, and climate research. The purpose of using climate models and simulation data was to make them feel engaged in climate science as professionals, and see the effects of using their knowledge to address problems in climate science research. Engaging students in sustainability topics and make sure that they are active in directing their own learning has been regarded as key to enable students’ to actively contribute to a more sustainable society [10].