SDG Examples

Builds on BIOL 243 to develop practical skills in the management, visualization, and analysis of biological data in the R coding environment. Covers frequency distributions, central moments and summary statistics, sampling and probability, tests of significance, correlation and regression, linear models and model selection. Emphasis is on hands-on coding, reproducible reporting, and the interpretation of statistical output for biological inference. Examples and assessments throughout the course are drawn from the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

LEARNING HOURS 120 (36L;19T;65P). PREREQUISITE BIOL 243.

The course opens in Week One by naming a focal set of six goals that motivate the case examples covered in lectures and assignments:

• SDG 2 Zero Hunger: optimizing crop yields, monitoring pests, understanding ecological interactions in food systems.
• SDG 3 Good Health and Well-being: disease dynamics and pathogen spread, especially zoonotic and vector-borne disease.
• SDG 6 Clean Water and Sanitation: biological monitoring of water quality and microbial contamination.
• SDG 13 Climate Action: species responses to climate shift, carbon cycling.
• SDG 14 Life Below Water: marine biodiversity, population dynamics, pollution and overfishing impacts.
• SDG 15 Life on Land: species distributions, habitat loss, conservation policy.

BIOL 343 teaches computation and statistical analysis to biology majors. In the offering featured here (Fall 2025), students worked collaboratively through twelve substantial coding assignments:

• Merging messy datasets from different sources 
• Simulating data
• Fitting and selecting linear models
• Producing publication-quality figures 

From Fall 2026 we are reducing the number of graded assignments. Each assignment is built on a real biological problem tied to one of the course's six focal SDGs. The scenarios include:

• Breeding perennial biofuel crops
• Investigating pollinator decline
• Testing invasive-species biocontrol
• Modelling drivers of island biodiversity
• Monitoring contamination effects in the Great Lakes

For scale, the Fall 2026 scheme is:

• Self-reflection assignments 10%
• Weekly quizzes 10%
• Weekly assignments 25%
• Participation and peer review 10%
• Final exam 45%

Aligned with CLO3, CLO5 & CLO8, the two Self-Reflection Assignments are the only individual work in the course. Each worth 5%, for a combined total of 10% of the final grade. These reflections are assessed on:

• Completion
• Clarity of communication

They are not graded on students' opinions or personal viewpoints. Submissions are anonymous to the grading TA.

Students may complete each reflection in one of three formats:

• Half-page written journal entry
• Approximately 3-minute audio recording
• Concept map or graphic representation

Self-Reflection Part 1: Positionality 

Assigned: week 4

Purpose. The task. Students revisit the Sustainable Development Goals introduced in Week 1 and choose one that resonates with them personally—on the basis of life experience, values, or social identity. 

They then answer two questions:

1. Which goal did you choose, and why does it resonate with you?
2. How can your learning in biology contribute to it?

Why It Occurs in Week 4. By week 4 students have completed four coding assignments, each framed around a goal chosen for them—biofuel crops, simulated epidemic and climate scenarios, pollinator decline, and a data-integration problem set in either a hospital ward or a Great Lakes restoration project. 

So they arrive at the reflection having already met four worked examples of "here is a technical skill, here is a global problem it serves." The assignment is early enough in the course that the remaining eight assignments are all read through the lens they choose.

Connection to course design. In the same week there is a coding assignment where students choose between two versions of the same technical problem:

1. one framed as hospital infectious-disease data 
2. the other as freshwater contamination data 

The raw data and code for analysis are identical, but the biological context is completely different. The positionality reflection along with this "choose-your-own-adventure" style of assignment shows how important context and interpretation is to science, independent of the mathematical rigour of the analysis.

Transferability Across Disciplines. This general approach could be transferrable to other courses: 

Have students commit, in writing and early, to a problem they personally care about within the domain of a course. This influences how the rest of the term's assignments be read against that commitment, which gets revisited later in the course through the second self-reflection exercise.

Self-Reflection Part 2: Confirmation Bias 

Assigned: week 11

Purpose. The task. Following a lecture and assigned reading on how documented biases shaped the work of prominent scientists, students address three questions:

1. Where do these biases come from—personal, cultural, institutional, systemic?
2. How might they show up in statistical models—in how data are collected, interpreted, or presented?
3. What can you do to minimize bias in your own scientific practice?

Assignment Focus: Personal interpretation and reflection.

Why It Occurs in Week 11: In week 4 the students are primed to think about positionality, and by week 11 the students have spent weeks making judgement calls that may have felt purely technical at the time. This reflection revisits those decisions, showing how unconscious bias is pervasive even the most prominent figures in the history of biology, such as:

• Gregor Mendel 
• Karl Pearson 
• Francis Galton 
• Ronald Fisher

Some examples from history and the students' own work include:

• How data are collected and processed—which anomalies are typos to clean and which were real observations to keep?
• How data are interpreted—which models to use, and what to do when they disagree?
• How data are presented—every assignment in the course includes publication-quality figures with stand-alone captions. Which comparison goes on the axis, which are relegated to a supplement, what do the caption assert?

The week 11 reflection is asking students to audit two months of their own decisions, which they still have in front of them. In the same week the group assignment has students designing an experiment, prompting them to think about biases at the earliest stages of scientific inquiry.

Transferability Across Disciplines. The more general approach is to place a bias reflection after students have accumulated a body of their own methodological decisions, and ask them to examine those specific decisions rather than the concept in general. 

Assessing potential biases through self-critique is normalized by showing how prominent scientists in history have made mistakes that would be considered obvious, even embarrassing today. For example:  

• Mendel's fudged segregation ratios
• Fisher's published papers questioning the cancer link to cigarette smoking

Why Self-Reflection Assignments Work

Self-reflection assignments that are individual, anonymous, low-stakes, and opinion-based are, in my opinion, a good way to disincentivize the use of generative AI. These are the only individual assignments in a course where everything else is group work. They are anonymous to the grading TA, and they are graded on completion rather than against a correctness standard. 

A reflection on positionality that will be marked for quality, attributed to a named student, and possibly seen by their group becomes an exercise in producing the answer the instructor wants. You get compliance instead of reflection, and the whole thing is worse than not assigning it.

Flexible Formats for Inclusion 

Allowing variable formats feels more inclusive: 

• written entry
• audio recording, or 
• concept map

This started as an accessibility measure and turned out to improve the work generally: some students think more honestly out loud than on the page. 

It doesn't add much time to grading because it's a simple complete/incomplete choice. Submissions that do not meet the standard for 'complete' are returned to the student who has the option to resubmit for a 'complete' grade (e.g., clearly no effort or doesn't address all of the prompting questions). 

I think more assignments along these lines is one way to respond to the problem of generative AI.

Placement Matters

Placement is most of the design. These reflections are placed early and late in the course, to make a personal choice meaningful and spark reflection.

Completion-Based Grading Requires Clear Standards

Ours standard:

1. Does it address all of the questions? 
2. Is the reflection clear? 

Anything short of that gets a revise-and-resubmit option. It's important to stress to the TA that the specific opinion is not being graded. Discuss what happens with a submission that is clear, complete, and expresses a view you disagree with — the answer should be “complete". 

Start Small

Courses are like a house of cards, especially when everything is structured through OnQ. Every change causes knock-on effects. Small things like reframing an assignment or adding one self-reflection exercise are a good starting point with minimal risk of breaking too many things.

This course deals with subsurface contamination by hazardous industrial liquids such as PCB oils, gasoline, jet fuel, chlorinated solvents, and coal tars. The fundamentals of multiphase/multicomponent flow and transport in soil and groundwater are outlined followed by specific treatment of both dense and light non-aqueous phase liquids. The course will examine the subsurface distribution of these liquids, site characterization methods, indoor air intrusion, regulatory aspects, remediation technologies, and selected case histories.

SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being

Target 3.9: By 2030, substantially reduce the number of deaths and illnesses from hazardous chemicals and air, water and soil pollution and contamination.

SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation

Target 6.3: By 2030, improve water quality by reducing pollution, eliminating dumping and minimizing release of hazardous chemicals and materials, halving the proportion of untreated wastewater and substantially increasing recycling and safe reuse globally.

Target 6.6: By 2030, protect and restore water-related ecosystems, including mountains, forests, wetlands, rivers, aquifers and lakes.

Assessment 1: Historical Case Study [CLO1] (5%)

Purpose: This low-stakes, high-impact assessment was designed to help students understand the human and environmental consequences of contaminated sites, while establishing early motivation for learning about contaminant transport and remediation. Grounded in SDG 3 and SDG 6, the assessment highlighted the historical impacts of environmental contamination and environmental injustice, helping students understand the importance of preventing future contamination-related illnesses and protecting water and soil quality. 

Learning Focus

• Students actively researched, communicated, and synthesized information from historical examples of communities affected by hazardous chemicals resulting from soil and groundwater contamination.
• Rather than focusing solely on the scientific and mathematical principles of contaminant transport, this assessment emphasized the broader social and environmental significance of these issues.
• This assessment encouraged students to reflect on how engineering decisions influence public health, environmental quality, and community well-being, while considering the role engineers play in preventing contamination and remediating impacted environments.

Assessment Description

During Week 1, students formed groups of three and selected a historical contaminated site to investigate. Students submitted their top three choices from a list of suggested sites and were also encouraged to propose alternative sites if sufficient published information was available. Groups were then assigned one of their preferred topics. 

In Week 2, students completed a guided literature review examining the site’s history, contaminants of concern, remediation efforts, and impacts on surrounding communities (2.5%).

In Week 3, students participated in a jigsaw-style learning activity. During the first half of the tutorial, students were reorganized into small groups composed of classmates who had researched different contaminated sites. Within these groups, students shared their findings and learned how soil and groundwater contamination has affected different communities and environments. Students then returned to their original groups to compare insights across case studies. During the second half of the tutorial, students completed a group reflection summarizing the most important lessons from both their own research and their peers’ contributions (2.5%).

Assessment 2: Site Investigation Project [CLO5] (30%)

Purpose: Site investigation is a critical component of contaminated site management and remediation, directly supporting the objectives of SDG 3 and SDG 6. In professional practice, site investigations involve collecting soil and groundwater samples and installing monitoring equipment to characterize contamination. The goal of this authentic assessment was to provide students with a learning experience that closely reflects professional environmental engineering practice.

Learning Focus

• Students completed a site investigation simulation that mirrored professional practice and regulatory expectations.
• The assessment required students to characterize contamination, evaluate available evidence, and develop an appropriate remediation strategy.
• By developing competencies in contaminated site assessment, students gained practical skills that can help them contribute to improving water quality, protecting ecosystems, and reducing risks to human health throughout their professional careers.

Assignment Description

In this term project, students worked in groups of three to investigate a virtual contaminated site using concepts and methods introduced throughout the course. 

Because conducting a real site investigation is not feasible within a university course, students instead used a virtual site investigation platform originally developed through a collaborative research project funded by the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP). This platform was first integrated into the course by Dr. Kevin Mumford to provide students with an authentic and practice-oriented learning experience. In this open-ended simulation, student teams could “install” a range of virtual investigation tools to identify the extent of contamination and develop an appropriate remediation strategy.

Students completed the project in stages throughout the semester. After Week 3, a significant portion of tutorial time was dedicated to project work, with students receiving progressively more complex investigation tasks. Similar to professional practice, students were required to work within a limited budget, requiring them to exercise professional judgement when deciding which investigation tools to use and where to deploy them. 

The project included two milestone assignments (7.5% each), which provided students with formative feedback to support subsequent decision-making. The project culminated in a comprehensive Site Investigation Report (15%), modeled after a professional Environmental Site Assessment. 

Incorporating Active Learning Strategies

I highly recommend incorporating active-learning strategies, such as jigsaw activities, into the classroom. During my own undergraduate engineering education, I had never participated in a jigsaw activity and was initially unsure how effective it would be. However, after consulting with the Centre for Teaching and Learning, and discussing how to employ active-learning tools, I became convinced of their value for student learning and engagement. The implementation of this type of activity requires enthusiasm from the teaching team to encourage students to ‘buy-in’ to the exercise. 

Organizing a Jigsaw Activity

At the start of the jigsaw activity tutorial, I had students meet with their original groups to prepare a two-minute elevator pitch summarizing their key findings from their research. This ensured that all students were up to date on the research their group conducted. When students moved into their jigsaw groups, each participant was responsible for presenting this summary. While students were in these groups, I provided discussion prompts that were clearly visible throughout the activity, which helped facilitate deeper conversations following the elevator pitches. 

During the tutorial, I had the teaching team circulate throughout the room to support engagement and discussion. 

Implementing this activity early in the semester created some challenges because students were enrolling in and withdrawing from the course. Despite these logistical issues, I believe the timing was beneficial because it generated interest and motivation early in the term. For these early assessments, I encourage instructors to be flexible, as deadlines may need to be adjusted and marks may need to be redistributed when students join the course after initial assessments have been completed.

Innovation Makes a Difference

The Site Investigation Project was very well received by students. Although implementing an authentic assessment of this scale requires a significant investment of time, the benefits can be substantial. Real-world, open-ended assessments help students apply knowledge in meaningful contexts, strengthen critical thinking skills, and better prepare for professional practice. Connecting the project to broader societal challenges and SDG3 and SDG6 further increased students' appreciation of the relevance and importance of the work.

Overall, my primary recommendation is for instructors to step out of their comfort zone and introduce new assessment strategies. New assessments do not need to be large-scale initiatives. Incremental changes can have a significant positive impact on student learning while allowing instructors to refine and evaluate new approaches over time. Collaborating with specialists at the Centre for Teaching and Learning is beneficial, as they can provide valuable guidance when selecting and implementing new assessment approaches. When instructors are transparent about why an assessment is being used and how it supports learning, students are generally very receptive to trying new approaches.

This course offers a critical exploration of the political economy of resource extraction, emphasizing ways in which the extraction of natural resources shapes and is being shaped by political, economic and socio-cultural factors that give rise to or enable various forms of exploitation, accumulation, and dispossession. Grounded in political economy theory and enriched by feminist, Indigenous, Black, and decolonial thought, this course examines how resource extraction operates through interconnected systems of race, gender, and class. 

In this course, we will ask: what extractive logics give rise to and sustain global extractivism, and how are they linked to political and economic systems such as colonialism, capitalism, neoliberalism, and globalization? Who benefits from resource extraction, and who bears the cost? What role do institutions such as the state, multinational corporations, and global /local financial actors play in facilitating or resisting extractive violence? What role do sexualities play in determining who is seen as ‘fit’ or ‘unfit’ within the economies of labour and production in extractive contexts? How is ‘dissent’ and ‘crime’ constructed to serve the ends of extractivism? How do race, gender and class intersect with waste infrastructures? And what might alternative, post-extractive futures look like?

Through a critical reflection and collaborative engagement with these questions, we will be encouraged to think critically beyond the logic of resource extraction to broader political-economic structures that enable and sustain resource extraction. 

SDGs 10 Target 10.2: By 2030, empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status [CLO2]

SDGs 12 Target 12.2: By 2030, achieve the sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources [CLO3]

SDGs 16 Target 16.6: Building effective and accountable institutions [CLO4]

SDGs 16 Target 16.3: Promote the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all [CLO5]

Assignment 1: Conceptual Vocabulary Log [CLO 3, 5] 10%

Description

The Conceptual Vocabulary Log is a weekly, reading-based assessment designed to support students’ sustained engagement with course materials and develop their familiarity with key concepts in the political economy of resource extraction. The assignment asks students to identify, define, and contextualize important theoretical and analytical concepts encountered in the course readings for each week’s modules.

Purpose

Rather than providing dictionary-style definitions, students are expected to explain concepts in relation to the political, economic, social, and historical contexts in which they are used by the authors of each text. The conceptual vocabulary log provides a cumulative record of students’ conceptual learning and helps develop the analytical vocabulary needed to critically examine resource extraction and its relationships to power, value, inequality, colonialism, dispossession, labour, accumulation, and resistance.

Step 1: Identify Key Concepts

Each week, students will identify two significant concepts from the assigned readings. Concepts may include theoretical terms, analytical frameworks, or key ideas that are central to understanding the week’s topic.

Students should select concepts that are:

• Stood out to them and explain why.
• Central to the arguments or debates presented in the readings.
• Relevant to the political economy of resource extraction.
• New, challenging, or particularly significant to their understanding of the course material.
• Useful for connecting theoretical ideas to empirical cases and broader course themes.

Step 2: Define and Contextualize

For each concept, students will provide a concise explanation in their own words. The definition should demonstrate more than basic comprehension by situating the concept within the specific scholarly context in which it is used.

Each entry should:

• Define or explain the concept in the student’s own words.
• Identify how the concept is used by the author(s) in the assigned reading.
• Explain its significance for understanding the week’s topic or the political economy of resource extraction.
• Where appropriate, identify connections to other concepts, readings, or themes addressed in the course.

Students are encouraged to consider who uses the concept, what forms of power or relationships it helps make visible, and what assumptions or processes it allows us to analyze.

Step 3: Apply and Connect

Students should briefly reflect on how each concept can be used as an analytical tool. This may involve connecting the concept to the week’s topic, an empirical case, a class discussion, and/or a broader question concerning resource extraction.

The goal is to move from recognizing a concept → understanding its meaning → applying it analytically.

Students are Expected to:

• Write 20 concepts in total: two concepts per week from Weeks 2–11.
• Submit concepts that include a definition, contextual explanation, and brief analytical application or connection to the topic of the week.
• Submit their entries each Thursday, two days after the relevant weekly lecture.
• Weekly submissions begin in Week 2 and continue through Week 11.

Submission Requirements

• Submission must not exceed 5 lines of a Word document.
• Each week’s entry must answer the questions: 
  1. What concept stood out in the readings?
  2. Why did this concept stand out for you?
  3. What does the concept mean (according to the text where it is pulled)?
  4. How does it connect to the week’s topic?
  5. How does this concept speak to the broader theme of political economy of resource extraction?

The emphasis of this assessment is on conceptual understanding, contextual interpretation, and analytical application, rather than memorization of terminology.

Assignment 2: OP-ED [CLO 2, 4, 5] 20%

Description

This assignment asks students to write a public-facing op-ed that critically examines how nation-states and/or media institutions frame dissent and resistance in resource-extractive contexts. Drawing on real-life empirical case studies, students were to analyze how resistance to resource extraction is discursively constructed as criminality and a threat to public order, security, or development, rather than recognized as political acts in response to dispossession, environmental harm, and other forms of structural violence.

Purpose

The assignment provides students with an opportunity to translate scholarly debates into accessible public writing while developing an independent argument/opinion about the relationship between media framing, power, discourse, state control, violence, and resistance in extractive contexts. Students should critically assess how dominant narratives shape understandings of dissent and influence public and policy responses to resistance in extractive contexts.

Step 1: Identify and Contextualize the Real-life Case Study

Students will select one empirical case study involving a community/individual dissent movement or resistance to resource extraction. The case study may be drawn from any extractive context globally and should strictly be in connection with the extraction of natural resources, including mining of critical minerals, oil and gas, etc.

Students should:

• Identify the case study: extractive project and the community or groups resisting it.
• Briefly establish the political, economic, and social context of the case.
• Identify how dissent, resistance, or political opposition has been represented by state actors and/or media.
• Consider the broader histories of colonialism, dispossession, inequality, or development that shape the conflict.

Step 2: Analyze the Construction of Dissent

Students will work with the identified case study, using course readings and concepts to critically analyze how resistance is represented and understood in the context of that case study.

The op-ed should consider whether and how dominant narratives:

• Construct dissenters as criminals, threats to security, and/or obstacles to development.
• Obscure or depoliticize structural violence associated with resource extraction.
• Legitimize surveillance, policing, militarization, or other coercive responses to dissent.
• Reinforce racialized, colonial, gendered, or developmental hierarchies.
• Define whose claims, knowledge, and forms of resistance are recognized as legitimate.
• Shape public opinion to extraction-related resistance.

Students should move beyond describing media representations to analyze how particular narratives produce political effects and whose interests those narratives serve.

Step 3: Develop your Argument/Opinion

Students will develop a clear, independent argument/opinion about how dissent and resistance are constructed within the selected case. The op-ed should connect the empirical case to broader debates in the political economy of resource extraction, particularly around power, criminality, violence, dispossession, development, and resistance.

The op-ed should conclude with a clear final thesis and/or call to action that communicates what should be reconsidered, challenged, or changed in relation to dominant representations of extractive conflict.

Students are Expected to:

• Develop a clear and persuasive argument about the construction of dissent and resistance in resource extraction context.
• Use at least one course reading from the week on “Dissent and Crime”.
• Engage with relevant external scholarly and/or credible public sources.
• Use one empirical case study to ground the analysis.
• Consider how dominant representations may reproduce or challenge colonial, racialized, gendered, and/or developmental power relations.
• Write for a public audience while maintaining analytical and scholarly rigour.
• End with a clear call to action and/or final thesis.

Submission Requirements

• Not exceeding 750 words
• Written in OP-ED style (argumentative, concise, persuasive and a call to action/final thesis).
• Uses at least one course reading associated with the week in focus (Dissent and Crime).
• Engages relevant external source(s).
• Engages one empirical case/case study.
• Includes a call to action/final thesis.
• Well-structured in-text citation and consistent reference format.

This assignment emphasizes critical analysis, developing writing skills through critical thinking and media research, and applying political economy concepts to an empirical case, rather than simply summarizing media narratives or describing a conflict.

When implementing a Conceptual Vocabulary Log, keep the task short and manageable, and make clear that students should explain concepts in their own words rather than reproduce definitions from other sources. 

To encourage authentic engagement and reduce reliance on AI-generated responses, design each entry around the student’s own reading of the material—for example, asking why a particular concept stood out to them, how they understood it, and how they connected it to that week’s discussion or learning.

Requiring specific references to the assigned material and personal analytical connections makes the task more meaningful and less suited to generic AI-generated responses. Clear expectations that students complete the work themselves, together with occasional in-class discussion of selected concepts, can further reinforce this.

For the Op-Ed, clearly distinguish public-facing argumentative writing from a conventional academic essay. Do provide guidance on developing an argument, using evidence, writing for a non-specialist audience, and incorporating sources without allowing the piece to become a literature review. For both assessments, ensure that the instructions and grading criteria align with the learning outcomes. 

Finally, avoid rewarding summary over analysis: the vocabulary log should demonstrate understanding and connection to weekly modules/content, while the op-ed should demonstrate a clear argument supported by relevant evidence.