The improvement of students' higher environmental and climate change knowledge: A case study

Abstract

Having in mind that the growing body of research and case studies have predefined environmental education and its objectives in non-traditional education that rely on relevant modern teaching models such as project-based learning, this paper will focus on the scientific research of organized academic environmental activities in a climate-change oriented project in order to achieve learning objectives of higher environmental and climate change knowledge of students. This is particularly important considering the importance of climate change issues as the integral part of the present day student body, as well as a part of their social and personal lives. For the purpose of our research we surveyed the students of the University of Belgrade - Faculty of Organizational Science, the Republic of Serbia, who participated in this project not only regarding their attitudes referred to gaining environmental and climate change knowledge in this particular way, but also on their achievement levels in faculty environmental studies program. An analysis of the results was carried out using the SPSS 24 software package. Based on the obtained results we concluded that students were significantly motivated to improve their environmental and climate change knowledge, as well as that they showed greater motivation and willingness to participate again in similar environmental activities.