Term Paper Topic -Coca Cola: Improving Water Efficiency
Students will utilize this page throughout the course to find specific information related to all aspects of the course project.
Term Project Overview
Throughout the term, students will research, write and ultimately present about a specific aspect of environmental sustainability of their choosing. Students have wide latitude in the subject choice, but the main criteria are that the project must
Use the framework provided in our textbook to analyze the issue’s social-environmental system and the related risks and opportunities.
The project will culminate in a 7-10 minute voice-over multimedia presentation of research findings that will be posted for class discussion in Week 9.
The project should be solution-oriented, meaning that most of the presentation slides and duration should be focused on viable options to making the status quo more environmentally sustainable.
There are no quizzes or exams in this course. Please give adequate attention to make this project something you can be proud of and something that will be interesting to your peers.
Work Schedule
Week 1
Choose a topic and at least one backup topic to research. Submit it to the instructor by Sunday of Week 1 for feedback.
Week 2
After instructor approval, post your research intentions in discussion by Thursday of Week 2.
Week 3
While studying the textbook’s “framework for understanding and pursuing sustainability,” apply it to your topic.
Weeks 4-6
Gather references (sources and images) as you research your topic and proposed solutions. Keep track of image credit sources as you go, and start building works cited.
Weeks 6-7
Outline and draft presentation.
Weeks 7-8
Opportunity for individual feedback of student’s scripts and presentations upon request. Record and embed narration (this part can be tricky and frustrating so don’t wait until the last minute).
Week 9
Post final presentations in discussion by Monday of Week 9.
Choosing a Term Project Topic
Each student will select a topic to research and present at the end of the term. Selected categories may (not must) be chosen from the broad areas listed below, but the chosen topic should be a more focused. The instructor will inform each student to let them know if their topic has been approved. Once approved, students may begin their research. More examples of topics that would be too broad would be “biodiversity hot spots” or “food webs.” Topic should be narrow and specific. For example:
The Sustainability Efforts of [company name]
Can You Trust Green Label Claims?
Solutions for problems e.g.: Peat Moss, Palm Oil, etc.
Foreign Policy Approaches to Prevent Human Migration
Recycling and Cultural Change at [company name]
Preventing Red Tide in Florida
Students are encouraged to select topics in which they are personally or professionally interested. This is an opportunity for everyone to further cultivate an expertise in a subject that they are passionate about. It is also okay to use this project to explore a different aspect (related to sustainability) of a subject that students have already researched. In that case, students must cite their own previous work when referencing it to avoid self-plagiarism.
The following presentation topics are available for the final presentation. Important note: Two students within the course may not research the same topic. If students have another topic that they would like to research not listed here, feel free to contact the instructor for approval (sooner rather than later).
Option 1: Choose a simple consumer product that is widely used. Conduct a very streamlined life cycle assessment of the product through its value chain and propose an a more sustainable alternative to meet this need. The alternative could be dematerialized, a product of service, substitution of less toxic components, or any of the strategies for sustainable manufacturing that will be discussed and students choosing this option will research. The research will include a materials assessment and an evaluation of the social and environmental impacts of this product and proposed alternatives. Students will also provide recommendations for consumers and policy makers based on their findings. Upon choosing this option, the instructor will provide initial research resources to get students headed in the right direction. Note: This is a tricky topic because insider access is often a requirement to learn about product formulas and manufacturing processes, and it takes networking to get this done in a timely manner. Consider the connections you already have established when picking a product.
Option 2: Propose a new business opportunity that will hasten progress towards sustainability. This could be a new way to deliver an existing good or service, or it could be a new way to fill a need altogether. Students must apply the concepts from our class to justify an original idea that is a triple bottom line improvement over the status quo or even what passes for “green” today. Students need to make sure this is (at least somewhat) an original idea (research this part before selecting this option). Then conduct basic research to determine what the market is for the new business idea, what price it can be delivered at, and what it would be needed in terms of capital (financial, human, etc.) to make it happen. Students will package all the findings as a pitch to potential investors for the presentation and be prepared to defend it.
Option 3: Analyze a company’s sustainability efforts and propose recommendations for how they can be improved based on what has been learned in class and in the research. This can be the student’s personal business, the student’s workplace, or a publicly held corporation. The corporate reports used in research must be linked (and therefore publicly shareable) to the final presentation. Students should contact the company directly and review scholarly literature for other case studies and benchmarking data in the appropriate sector to gather more information.
Option 4: Conduct research on any environmental sustainability subject. Here are some broad areas in which appropriate and more specific topics may be selected, but the field is very open. Whatever subject students choose, it is important to keep the audience in mind. This project shouldgo deeper and be much more specific than what we cover in class to help everyone gain more understanding and new perspective of the extent of the problem and what the viable potential solutions are for the chosen topic. You can choose to either make this an argumentative or analytical but you should state this when submitting your choice.
o Specific approaches to sustaining biodiversity. (e.g. Effective Approaches for Controlling Invasive Wild Boar Populations)
o Sustainable agriculture and the world food crisis. (e.g. How to Scale up Permaculture Approaches)
o Fresh water crisis. (e.g. Wastewater Recycling and Redistribution in America)
o Global fisheries, dead zones, water pollution and our ocean future. (e.g. Plastic Pollution in the Ocean)
o Desertification issues and solutions. (e.g. Key Strategies for Restoring Ecosystem Services Lost to Desertification)
o Nonrenewable energy: impacts and sustainable solutions. (e.g. Leveraging Nuclear Energy)
o Renewable energies: challenges and potential benefits. (e.g. New Advances in Tidal Energy Generation)
o Environmental hazards and eco-toxicology. (e.g. Less Toxic Alternatives to Coal Tar Sealants in Parking Lots)
o Climate change: potential impacts and what can be done. (e.g. Sustainable Economic Growth in the Amazon Forest)
o Urban ecology and sustainable urban ecosystems. (e.g. Managing Urban Timber)
Within any of these broad subjects, students would focus their research on a much narrower subtopic (this could be narrowed to a specific geographic area, a specific ecosystem or species or kingdom, a specific hazard, etc.) And then based on the student’s premise, several solutions or variations on one solution to the problem would be presented, compared and contrasted. In this approach, it is also expected that you briefly examine the counter approach and defend why the selected approach is preferable.
Key Elements
Regardless of the approach or topic selected, every presentation should be focused on solutions rather than problems.
A comprehensive presentation will include:
Background
Application of the textbook framework concepts to summarize risks, challenges and opportunities of both the topic itself and the proposed solution(s)
Conclusions
References noted throughout and at the end in APA format for every fact, image, and idea that is not your own. (see below for further explanation)
It is very important that >50% of your presentation be focused on evaluating solutions to problems. We want to spend our time learning about what we can do to solve the problems at hand.
Multimedia
Regardless of the topic selected, it is imperative that presentations include compelling imagery throughout. Photographs, video clips, charts, graphs, and animated illustrations must be used to help support the premise. All of these images, if not the student’s own, must be cited appropriately on each slide and in the references, so it is wise to collect reference data when collecting multimedia files. Grades will be seriously reduced for any student who spends 10 minutes reading words off slides. Students can use any presentation software to make the presentation so long as the end result is stitched together into a mp4 video file that can be uploaded into the course. One option is the simple Screencast-O-Matic (Links to an external site.)app; it is free and can easily be used to record narration and switch between different slides, images, videos, etc. during the presentation, as it is much easier than recording voice-over in PowerPoint, and it results in a much smaller file size.
In case of technical difficulties with recording audio, students can alternatively submit a conventional presentation with the script for the narration included in the notes page of each slide.
Citations
The same rules used for writing a paper hold true for presenting information in a slide deck. Therefore
Parenthetical citations are required for every quote, paraphrase, or when information is summarized from another source. That means on the slide after and immediately following the sentence. e.g. (King, 2013)
For images, its the same. These can appear in a textbox and in smaller font so that it doesnt interfere with the overall aesthetic of the slide.
A page of Works Cited or References at the end of the presentation
should be formatted the same way that it would be if you were turning it in as a paper requiring APA citation style.
Assessment
This assignment is worth 30% of the final course grade and will be graded on meeting assignment milestones on time (20 points) and on the quality of the final product (280 points). The assignment rubric clearly defines expectations.
This is a graduate level research project. Therefore, in addition to merely summarizing the findings of others, it is essential that students synthesize their findings into original new ideas and communicate those well.
Deliverables
Students will submit project topics, at least one first choice and one back up to the instructor by Sunday of Week 1.
Students will post final presentations in the Week 9: Research Presentations class-wide discussion where all students will view all of each others’ presentations and do Q&A as if we were in an on-ground classroom by Monday of Week 9.
As always, if students have questions or need clarification, email the instructor via course mail.
