As part of the Joint-Honours Bachelor of Arts Degree from the College of Arts at the National University of Ireland Galway, students in the first year undertake a series of lectures on Society and the Environment, part of the module SP159 taught by the School of Political Science and Sociology. Similar to last year, at the first of nine lectures this semester covering broad aspects of the topic including climate change, (over)consumption, environmental harm, policy initiatives and responses, and environmentalism, a brief unscientific experiment was carried out in class. At the beginning of the lecture, students were asked to reflect on the theme of Society and the Environment and to come up with a word that echoes their current thoughts on the issues. These were then correlated and a Wordle was produced, which is provided below:
After the series of nine lectures, students were again asked to reflect carefully on the nature of Society and the Environment and, once again, verbalise their thoughts on the subject with fellow students and record these as concisely as possible in a single word or phrase. These were again processed and a Wordle was produced, which is provided below. Although not scientific in nature, this was an interesting ‘snapshot’ of how students thought about the subject before and after the series of lectures.
