During a university class project related to climate change mitigation strategies, we utilized a university green space as a “living laboratory” for collaborative learning exercise to estimate landscape-level carbon biomass storage. The key objective of the exercise was to foster sustainability awareness with regard to the effectiveness of tree-planting initiatives to offset carbon emissions. Collaborative learning is a process by which students work together in small groups to accomplish a common goal. As experiences are active, social and student-owned, the process leads to the development of a variety of cognitive and transferable skills that are beneficial in academia and the workplace. Through data collection/analysis, the carbon biomass exercise not only allowed students to assess critically the efficacy of a tree-planting initiative as a means to sequester carbon, but they became aware of the difficulties in performing research on complex environmental issues. The intention of the research was to give students an opportunity to practice data collection, data analysis, problem solving, teamwork, communication and scientific literacy skills, meanwhile utilizing the campus open green space to enhance the knowledge discovery process. Informal assessment and discussions with students demonstrated that the activity was successful in reaching a wide range of students with varying backgrounds and initial attitudes about climate change mitigating strategies, which was our objective. Our case study demonstrates how learning objectives can be integrated with university sustainability initiatives to improve learning and student engagement. Finally, we see green spaces as dynamic settings for learning about physical processes and issues related to environmental management and sustainability.

在与减缓气候变化战略相关的大学课程项目中，我们利用大学绿地作为“生活实验室”进行协作学习练习，以估计景观级碳生物质储存量。该活动的主要目标是提高人们对植树活动抵消碳排放的有效性的可持续性意识。协作学习是学生在小组中一起工作以实现共同目标的过程。由于体验是积极的、社会的和学生拥有的，该过程会导致各种认知和可转移技能的发展，这些技能对学术界和工作场所都是有益的。通过数据收集/分析，碳生物质活动不仅让学生能够批判性地评估植树计划作为一种固碳手段的效果，而且他们也意识到在复杂环境问题上进行研究的困难。研究的目的是让学生有机会练习数据收集、数据分析、解决问题、团队合作、沟通和科学素养技能，同时利用校园开放绿地来加强知识发现过程。与学生的非正式评估和讨论表明，该活动成功地吸引了具有不同背景和对气候变化缓解策略最初态度的广泛学生，这是我们的目标。我们的案例研究展示了如何将学习目标与大学可持续发展计划相结合，以提高学习和学生参与度。最后，我们将绿色空间视为了解与环境管理和可持续性相关的物理过程和问题的动态环境。