Leveraging E-learning to prepare future educators to teach sustainability topics

As part of the ideals of the New American University, Arizona State University (ASU) has identified the need to work toward efforts to support a more sustainable way of living. Increasingly, we are faced with finding solutions to ensure that the world's population, especially those living in poverty, have the ability to meet their most basic needs. Sustainability definitions articulate this as meeting the needs of the present without jeopardizing the needs of those in the future (Our Common Future, 1986). Education represents the major mechanism for enacting lasting and impactful change. This chapter describes Sustainability Science for Teachers, a hybrid course in development at Arizona State University that integrates the use of technology and digital storytelling to teach sustainability topics in a meaningful way. This course is required as part of a programmatic education reform aimed at improving science content knowledge among preservice teachers. The goal of the course is for future educators to gain necessary knowledge and skills about sustainability, allowing them to become more informed citizens and helping them learn how to address sustainability concepts within their future classrooms. Not only do future teachers need to understand sustainability topics, but they also need to develop methods for teaching students about these areas and have a grasp of how sustainability fits within the existing curriculum standards (Nolet, 2013). The advantages and disadvantages of employing a hybrid format to teach sustainability topics to future educators are addressed.