Course Description

This course will introduce to students the diverse ways human society has interacted with the natural environment, raise their awareness of the complexity of environmental issues, and encourage them to explore various aspects of global and local environmental problems. The teaching will focus firstly on how scientific and technological development has influenced human society in gaining economic benefits from understanding and being able to modify and manage the natural environment. It will then draw students’ attention to the consequences of human modification of the natural environment, including an increase in the scale of natural hazards recently occurring worldwide.

Course Learning Outcomes

On completing the course, students will be able to:

1. Recognize and describe the reciprocal relationships between humans and their environment influenced by scientific discovery and technological development.
2. Analyze the impacts of scientific discovery and technological development on the natural environment and human societies at different spatial and temporal scales.
3. Demonstrate an awareness of the impacts of science within the broader economic, environmental and socio-cultural context, and apply knowledge gained to evaluate solutions appropriate to the specific cultures and environments.
4. Produce written evidence, in the form of individual course work, of their aquisition of knowledge and analytical skills in the topic.
5. Present, in the form of internet searching for relevant information and group digital presentation of research results, their IT and communication skills.

Offer Semester and Day of Teaching

First semester (Wed)