Place-based Learning

Place-based learning involves learners interacting with their local community. With components of inquiry-based learning, experiential learning and/or service learning, place-based learning encourages the learner to ask questions about the local place which could touch on environmental issues, economic issues or issues of social equity.

When using place-based learning with your students, consider the following:

What are your learning goals for students?
What knowledge, skills, and/or dispositions do you want your students to gain from this learning experience?
What do you, as the instructor, need ot do prior to engaging students in this activity?
What is unique about this place that will help engage students in learning?
How will you support students while they are learning about this place?
What community connections, if any, need to be nurtured to support students?
How will you and students measure growth in learning?
How will students share their learning and/or progress with each other and you?

Examples of place-based learning include, but are not limited to:

Field Trip
Guest Speaker
Primary source document from Community
Questions about the Community

Feel free to browse different examples of lessons and activities that highlight place-based learning below.

Title

Preview

Assignment 3 – Observe a Public Meeting

Attend a public meeting in the Boston area, take careful notes on the event, and report back in a succinct, well-organized informational memo. Be sure to also collect any materials distributed at the event for reference. Your memo should describe the organization, discuss where its power originates, identify the purpose of the meeting, explain the structure of the deliberative process used to collect input, and discuss what, if any, outcome resulted.
Assignment 1 – Hometown Analysis

A critical part of creating policy is the data gathering process. What data can you find quickly and analyze? What do the data mean? What story can you tell using reliable data? What data do you need?

Using your hometown as the subject of your investigation, assume that you are a policy analyst and you work for the new mayor or the new town or city council.

What data can you use to tell a story about your hometown? Where is it located? How many people live there? What does it provide in terms of resources to the state?
Sector Paper

Write a five-page paper (double-spaced, not including figures, tables or pictures) describing the current state of affairs in your country in one of the sectors that we have studied in class:
Drowned Out

If you can't make it to the evening film screening, view DVD of Drowned Out on your own time prior to class on Ses #25.
Artifacts, Layers, Traces, and Trends

Now the objective is to find traces of these changes present in the current environment and to interpret their significance. Many of you were attracted to your site because of some anomalous features that puzzled you and made you wonder why they were there and what had caused them to be. This is an opportunity to explore some answers to such puzzles.
Your Site through Time

This is the third part of a four-part, semester-long project. The first part consisted of finding a site; the second, to find evidence of its environmental history and ongoing natural processes. Now the task is to trace changes on your site over time by comparing its character at several points in time, using maps. You may find different kinds of changes: Land use, density of settlement, additions to buildings, ownership, transportation. The types of sources you will find helpful are historical maps, especially nineteenth and twentieth-century atlases, and may also include plans, prints, and photographs.
Your Site and Natural Processes

This is the second part of a four-part, semester-long project. The first part consisted of finding a site. Now the task is to find evidence on your site of its environmental history and ongoing natural processes. The objective, through the examination of your site and its context, is to explore how natural processes shape cities.
Select a Site

In 2016, MIT will celebrate the hundredth anniversary of its move from Boston's Back Bay to the current location in Cambridge. To honor that occasion, this year the class will focus on MIT's former and current neighborhoods, so you should select a site within the designated boundaries in Cambridge or the Back Bay. The site should be between four and eight blocks. Ideally, it should include more than one type of land use. And it should be a place that intrigues you. Reflect on why it interests you, why you are drawn to it. What questions does the place raise, for which you hope to find answers this semester?
Methane Leaks Field trip

Objective: Hands-on field activity collecting data on real-word methane leaks from natural gas infrastructure in Cambridge and Somerville MA. Familiarize two sets of 5–8 participants with the tools and methods.
National Environmental Policy-making

Given what you have read in Unit 1 and what we have discussed in class, provide the simplest model you can of national environmental policy-making for any country you choose.