Introduction to an Online Environmental Education

Online Education in Environmental Studies

Most such programs are offered by colleges and universities and will require that you register for them the same way you would an on-campus course, enrolling in the school that offers them and so on. Sometimes they can be applied toward a degree or other certification at the offering school, as at Nova Southeastern University; Melissa Dore, Administrator of their Oceanographic Center, reports that their online courses can lead to a “graduate certificate in coastline management or a master’s in coastal zone management.” Conversely, Lisa Gerloff, Manager of the University of Montana’s Wilderness Management Distance Education Program (WMDEP) asserts that it can “fit into any applicable program.” Theresa Schwerin, Associate Director of Education Programs at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), says that IGES designed their three online environmental courses to be used as professional development for grade-school (K-12) teachers.

Programs will vary in terms of how much of the coursework can be done online. Gerloff says WMDEP students can go on the Net to “access the study guide and the discussion component,” although they’ll also need books that have to be ordered separately. Schwerin describes the IGES courses as “learner-centered” and to be taken “on your own schedule”, but terms them “inquiry-based, not self-paced”; they’re grad-level courses to be done cooperatively by teams of four to six teachers. Dore says that all of the Nova Southeastern coursework can be done online except for “capstone” oral defenses, and “we’re even working on teleconferencing for those.” She adds, however, that students “who are in the area or want to come here and do field courses can do so.”

Institutions That Offer It

Here’s a small sample of some of the schools and other organizations that offer net-based education in environmental subjects:

EnviroEducation.com Directory of Online/Distance Programs
ElearnUK awards certificates in conservation, ecology, and other environmental subjects.
Michigan State University teaches a Virtual Watershed Program.
Penn Foster Career School lets you study online for a diploma in wildlife/forestry conservation.
The University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, offers several environmental courses over the Internet.

Be aware that the online material provided by different institutions might look very similar, because schools sometimes pick up and customize content developed by others. Schwerin notes that since IGES created their courses, they’ve been offered by twenty colleges and universities and taken by over 1700 teachers.

Conclusion

Some people might bring up a fundamental objection to this kind of program: Environmental science is, in essence, the study of the outdoors; can you really study it indoors, on a computer screen? Online study “doesn’t preclude field work,” says Schwerin. She goes on to point out that no one can experience the entirety of our environment in any one field location, no matter how diverse. “That’s like studying with a microscope, but you can also study with a telescope. In the past, meteorologists have studied the atmospheric sciences, oceanographers have studied the hydrologic sciences, and earth scientists have studied earth processes.” In the IGES program, she says, “we take a systems approach -- how do these systems interact? Online, you can see these images and interact with other students,” no matter where in the world they are. In other words, if you’ll forgive yet another metaphoric reference, studying the environment online can help make sure you don’t miss the forest for the trees.