United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Open Pedagogy Fellowship
Issues in Your Community: Sense of Place
Dianna Gielstra, PhD, Maricopa Community Colleges (Arizona)
Kathryn Ortiz, M.A., Pima Community College (Arizona)
2022-2023
Introduction:
Welcome to your role in an international mission. This mission is dedicated to expanding
educational access and championing student empowerment through "open pedagogy." In this
approach, you, as a student, are at the heart of an engaging, collaborative learning environment,
with the freedom to access your educational journey. What is this mission's ultimate goal? To
heighten social justice in our community, promoting the free exchange of knowledge and work.
Under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework, this renewable
assignment paves your path to becoming an agent of change within your community. Prepare to
embark on this transformative journey.
For this work, we will integrate the disciplines of Geography and Language Arts to achieve the
primary goal of responding to SDG #11: Sustainable Cities and Communities. This assignment
also focuses on SDG #4: Quality Education.

Purpose:
This activity builds the intellectual and emotional connection within the classroom community
and helps students support the exploration of their assignment development and to expand
discussion. The activity relationship builds whether the classroom is in person or asynchronous
online.

Learning Objectives:
Students will be able to:
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Develop spatial thinking
Identify issues using geographic inquiry
Collect and store data for exploratory observations
Understand method and procedure for data collection

Instructions:
Sense of Place originated with indigenous practice and it is the intellectual and emotional
connections people have to place. These connections, known as “place attachment,” are built from
our senses (sight, touch, sound, and smell) and our experiences (cultural) to place. Sense of place
is based on our shared cultural experiences and as an activity has many uses. In education we can
leverage sense of place practices to help explore the landscape in terms of physical and living
elements, and the activity boosts collaboration and engagement. We can also use the activity to
understand the landscape and climate's impact on human communities and what we value to build
our resilience to disruptive natural events and help us plan and improve sustainability practices.
Tools needed: a digital camera or a phone with a camera application
-Explore your bioregion. Identify the most influential way that people have improved or damaged
the landscape. --Reflect and take a picture.
-Add the image and text (a one-sentence description or a haiku/poem) to our shared Sense of
Place Map.
After you’ve added the information to the map, reply to this discussion with a more in-depth
analysis of your chosen location. Include your observations of place attachment in the field. Why
is this place important to the community (Ex. physical/natural elements, historical or
cultural events)? Which of your senses were engaged in the observations, and how do the
sights, sounds, smells, etc., impact your emotions or memory? Explain your point of view as
to why you chose this site.
Reply Post
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Respond to at least two classmates' posts. (75 minimum word count each)

Format Requirements:
The information point reflection (poem, song lyric, haiku) is not more than 1-2 sentences.
The initial discussion response is a length of 150-300 words.
The 2 participation posts in response to others are 75 words each.

Assessment Criteria:
Quality-The discussion explores course topics and learning objectives as outlined in discussion
requirements in class. The post is substantive. The post invites further discussion.
Word count meets the 150-300 word count minimum.

Offers two well-developed posts in response to teacher and peers in the class. 75 minimum word
count.
Research information used to develop initial discussion and participation are cited and referenced.
The tone is respectful and positive. Spelling and grammar errors are absent (or minimal) from
students' writing.

Instructor Notes: A tutorial video on how to use Google My Maps with the teacher's example
information point is a best practice for this activity.
Issues in Your Community: Sense of Place is licensed by Dianna Gielstra, PhD, Maricopa
Community Colleges (Arizona) and Kathryn Ortiz, M.A., Pima Community College (Arizona)
under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA)