Multimodal Stories on Climate Change in Earth & Environmental Sciences
Emi Ito
Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences
College of Science & Engineering
Emi Ito is Professor and Director of the Limnological Research Center in the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences. She teaches courses including Climate Change and Human History (ESCI 3002) and Earth Resources (ESCI 3005).
Please describe your assignment.
The assignment is a group video project in which students investigate one topic in depth. Students increase their awareness of the interplay between environmental change and human society by focusing on one event of major significance in human history (for ESCI 3002/5102) or increase their awareness of the environmental effects of use of Earth resources (for ESCI 3005).
For each project, the target audience is high school seniors, so students need to define terms and concepts from the course for a non-expert audience. Group members collaboratively set research questions, conduct research, critically evaluate information, and organize their findings into a short video presentation.
How does the assignment work in your class?
There are multiple class meetings during the semester set aside for groups to work together. One of these classes is devoted to the critique of storyboards by specialists from Media Services and others (mentors). Groups post their “draft” videos on YouTube or Kaltura so that their classmates, the instructor, and the mentors can view and evaluate each video.
In week 13, each group shows their video in class and responds to questions and criticisms during a Q&A session. Students assess each video using a rubric and suggest improvements. The suggestions are compiled and shared with each group before they make their revision plans. The grade for the “draft” video is calculated by averaging student evaluations (50%) and instructor and mentor evaluations (50%).
After the Q&A session, groups have a week to revise their videos based on criticisms and suggestions received. The instructor’s grade for the final video considers how the group revised in response to feedback received from peers and mentors. Students also complete a self-evaluation and evaluate each member of their group.
What learning does this assignment support?
The assignment supports a variety of relevant SLOs, including:
- Can identify, define, and solve problems
- Identify the types of information that must be gathered to team-produce a video and develop effective strategies to obtain the information.
- Identify for each “case study” of a past or modern society what may be or may have been the most important steps that society took to deal with environmental problems.
- Can locate and critically evaluate information
- Locate and evaluate relevant scholarly sources on a research topic using library resources for the group video project
- Understand diverse philosophies and cultures within and across societies
- Engage in critical considerations of differing views of different past societies about the Earth and the natural phenomena and how they might have affected their views regarding people and the environment.
- Can communicate effectively
- Improve presentation skills (visual and oral) through group video project.
- Constructively critique videos made by other groups and effectively (without becoming aggressive or defensive) explain and justify the video content made by own group during the Q&A session.
- Effectively and succinctly communicate a revision plan for the video.
How have you developed and refined this assignment over time?
- I've changed the assignment slightly each time I've used it. Most changes have been greater specificity in expectations. The format and requirements have evolved over time:
When we began in the mid-to-late 1990s, students made hand-made posters. We did not provide in-class time for group work. - In the mid-2000s, the course transitioned to printed large format posters. I provided about 3 in-class meeting times. At my request, the ESCI Librarian started to make class presentations about finding reliable sources.
- Starting some time in the mid-2010s when we switched to PowerPoint presentations, I increased the scaffolding drastically, increasing the in-class meeting times and requiring progress reports. The weight of the group project increased to 40% of the course grade.
- In spring 2019, we switched to video projects, and I sought help from the Library media center and Writing Across the Curriculum.
- The target audience changed from fellow classmates to high school seniors in 2019.
- In spring 2025, students were required to actually submit a revised video instead of simply identifying what they would like to change after receiving feedback.
And I'm still experimenting with the assignment. For instance, last semester I gave students a choice of three AI-generated papers about their topics, and had them assess its analytical moves. This was partially successful, and I will continue to experiment with other variations on the assignment.
What advice would you give to other instructors who would like to develop a similar assignment?
Start very early in the semester. Specify target audience. Provide plenty of scaffolding. Be ready to guide students in narrowing a broad topic or suggest a focus.
What do students say about the assignment? How have they found it valuable?
Most groups devote quite a bit of energy to the project, and overall they seem pleased with their product (with some exceptions such as when a group member drops the class late in the semester). Some students told me that they became obsessed with their topic.
Student Artifacts
Students in ESCI 3002 created videos designed for various audiences that articulated how emerging research on climate change has evolved previous understanding of historical events. Students in ESCI 3005 explored how use of Earth resources impacts the environment.
What We Like about Emi’s Assignment
Multimodal Assignments: Emi's assignment requires groups of students to produce short videos that involve a script, imagery, voiceovers, and visual editing. For many instructors, this can be a heavy lift when it comes to designing, supporting, and assessing multimodal assignments. Support for this assignment was provided by Media Services, Academic Libraries, and the Writing Across the Curriculum program at the University of Minnesota. The WAC program is happy to support instructors who want to develop multimodal assignments.
Read more about Media Services.
Read more about multimodal assignments.
Read more about multimodal assessment.
Schedule a consultation with a WAC team member.
Relevance through Alignment: Students will likely be more motivated to complete a writing task that has obvious relevance to course goals and/or personal goals. Here, Emi has emphasized the relevance of the assignment through the use of bold text and the referencing of course aims in the opening paragraph.
Read more about alignment.
Rhetorical Situation: All writing is situated in a specific rhetorical context. Making clear the rhetorical situation —what the role(s) of the writer(s) are, who the primary audience for the writing is, and what form the writing takes—allows students to make more informed choices about how to present their ideas. In her assignment, Emi has identified a *high school senior* as the primary audience. This helps writers make decisions about what information to assume and what information to clarify. It also supports students with thinking about what appeals might be effective in the videos they create. Throughout the stages of the assignment, the high school senior audience is useful for storyboarding, drafting, assessing drafts, and guiding final revisions.
Read more about rhetorical situation.
Read more about helping students think about audience.
Authentic Collaborative Writing: In her assignment, Emi references her own collaborative work experiences in the field of Earth Sciences. By doing so, Emi demonstrates to students the authenticity of this project. Emi is also describing a key condition for collaboration: interdependence. Real, authentic collaborative assignments should not be able to be done by just one student.
Read more about collaborative and inclusive team-based assignments.
Assessment, Reflection and Revision: Team-based projects benefit from feedback and reflection across groups and within groups. Emi provides materials that support this process. An important detail to note is that Emi has scheduled the screening and feedback of the group videos two weeks before the semester ends. This makes the in-class feedback session useful for supporting revision. Final revised video projects are submitted two weeks later.