Thursday, December 3, 2009
Education evaluation
For anyone who wasn’t at the education presentation day. Arielle and I surveyed two high school classes of 9th and 10th graders on global warming. The high school group we compared to an equal number of randomly chosen FGCU students. We did this to evaluate FGCU success on educating the students on nature resources and climate change. We had six questions on facts about global warming and the other four questions were about the student thoughts on global warming. We got 69 student from each group to answer the survey. We wanted the same number to be able to not only compare each other with percents but in real numbers. I thought it was interesting that on the question that we asked which was not a contributor of global warming and about half of the FGCU students responded saying water vapor and 75% high school responded in the same way. Almost a third of high school students polled knew that the America did not sign the Kyoto Protocol, while only half of FGCU students polled answered correctly. For how concerned students were about climate change both groups had over half from concerned or extremely concerned. Only about ten percent or lower of each of the groups were not concerned at all. Of all the students polled in both groups over 80% thought that humans were one of the largest contributing factor to climate change. One of the last things that I want to touch on is the question that we had on sources of information on climate change. I was impressed that over 50% of college students were getting it from teachers and other sources such as research. I was a little concerned that high school students put their leader of information being media with 58%. This concerned me because the media can change fact and images to what they are trying to portray. Over all I thought that FGCU students did well on the survey and that do to the concern I have about the media as a primary source for high school students I think that FGCU services as a good example for not only other colleges but possibly other types of schools in the area.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
ReplyDeleteEDUCATION SURVEY GROUP
We finished gathering the results from our student surveys, which were conducted on campus over the past few weeks. What I found to be most revealing was the amount of students who are under the impression that the United States signed the Kyoto Protocol. There were also a significant amount of students who failed to recognize that the majority of earth scientists agree that we are experiencing a mass extinction. I believe this is a result of misplaced faith in our political leaders. Understandably, some of the students may not have any idea about the details surrounding the Kyoto treaty, especially since our country didn't participate in its signing, but I also believe that many students are under the false impression that our government is doing everything it can to take care of the climate change issue. Another interesting detail from the survey results was the amount of students who feel that the media has exaggerated the threat climate change poses, when in reality, the media cares more about the death of celebrities than the melting polar ice caps. I think that a solution to climate change is not just educating students about the science surrounding it, but making sure that they are aware of the role their country and its leaders play in the fight against it and what effective actions they are taking. Public outrage may be the key to getting our representatives to listen, but if the masses continue to have the wool pulled over their eyes, our future will remain uncertain.
--Michael Verdi
Posted by Michael Verdi at 8:58 PM 0 comments