by Victoria Jones and Bailey Mae Rodgers
From its early development, a key mission and strategic goal of Florida Gulf Coast University has been to focus on Florida’s unique environmental challenges and to focus on environmental sustainability education. The following case study is a project produced by the University Archivist and Archives Coordinator that uses primary sources to help students better understand their local environment by identifying the ecological, economic, and social relationships in the university and the surrounding community (Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy, Learning Objectives 3A, 3B, 4B, and 4C). Ultimately, the authors created a flexible, asynchronous activity that is used in two of the University’s core classes and invites students to think of the bigger questions regarding sustainability, applies the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, and introduces the use of primary sources across the curriculum.
Access: “We Could Be the Way Forward:” Creating an Asynchronous Primary Source Activity