EARTH 380 “Mineral Resources, Economics, and the Environment” empowers students to understand the technical, social, and financial complexities of radically transforming the electricity infrastructure of our campus. Following a flipped classroom format, students are introduced to a particular energy-related concept and given a problem to investigate each week, using the entire Ann Arbor campus as their primary site of inquiry. The problems are scaffolded such that students have the tools they need and produce data independently. Students submit their results via Canvas prior to a weekly discussion section, enabling instructors to aggregate and evaluate the results for similarities and differences, and highlight areas of consensus and disagreement.

The culminating project collects all the research gathered in the earlier weeks of the semester. Each student develops a web-based story map to communicate her/his findings to the class and, later, a community forum. The universal outcome is that students recognize that their own solutions are often similar to those of their colleagues, no matter their academic home. Moderated discussion, blended with think-pair-share activities, allows their solutions to become the starting point for real conversations inside and outside the classroom.