Synergy of the (Campus) Commons: Integrating Campus-Based Team Projects in an Introductory Sustainability Course

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting topic and one that is worthy of research attention, but it does have several weaknesses in methodological and analytical quality. Also, the article is not coherent, and it lacks the standard way of writing a research paper. There are some key methodological issues that need to be addressed.

While this is an interesting and important topic, there is a huge gap in the methods section and there needs to be significant revisions. But more significantly, there needs to be a much greater focus on how these campus-based team projects integrated with the introductory sustainability course and how these facilitate sustainable development outcomes.

While developmental outcomes may occur as a result of experiences in these projects, if this is simply part of the introductory sustainability course and not intentionally cultivated through specific strategies, then it does not give sense. There must be intentionality to the developmental outcomes which are fostered through these campus-based team projects.

If this intentionality is present in these projects, then this should be described in detail, and it should also be integrated into the Results and Discussion sections. Otherwise, it isn't clear that this manuscript is a good fit for the journal of sustainability.

As stated in the manuscript, this article describes an introductory undergraduate course, which is designed to facilitate learning and research among students. How does the development of research skills represent a sustainability outcome? Was this outcome the result of the course or the campus-based team projects? Please, give your readers enough information about the study design, participants, procedure, and analysis. In the absence of these details, simply describing the contents of the campus-based team projects in an introductory sustainability course, as it appears in the submitted manuscript, does not feature research.

I agree that the list of historical team projects, as presented in this manuscript, may be useful and inspirational to those on other campuses, and will support relevant faculty/staff collaborations at other institutions of higher education. However, it is unclear how these happen in the absence of a clear focus on the problem and a rich description of the research methodologies.

For me, the result did not seem to result in a true sense. Because it is simply one or more project examples. Descriptions of project examples can be part of the methods sections but not a stand-alone piece of the results.

In the discussion section, researchers usually interpret their results within the broader spectrum of research evidence presented in the literature on that specific field. Also, they use their personal and professional experiences to give meaning to the results they presented in the manuscript. When the descriptions presented in the discussion section are compared vis-a-vis these, they did not comply with the standard format.

Also, the Limitations and Challenges section did state about the limitations and challenges of campus-based team projects in an introductory sustainability course instead of the study limitations and challenges.

In tandem, I did not see enough details about the research nature of this manuscript. Instead, I saw a detailed story of campus-based team projects as applied in an introductory sustainability course without due consideration for the research component of the manuscript. Under this influence, it is very difficult to justify that this manuscript had a research element worthy of publishing in the journal of sustainability.

Author Response

Thank you for your time and thoughtfulness in providing comments and helping improve the quality of our submission. 

I hope we have addressed the following comments in your review: 

We appreciate your identifying that we had not put the projects and the theory into close enough conversation in the text. We added text in both the introduction, results, and discussion sections to focus on how the campus-based team projects integrate with the course as a whole, and how, taken together, they address outcomes of sustainability and sustainability education. We also added text around theory of sustainability education. We added text to clearly specify how the development of research skills represents a sustainability outcome. In short, to achieve sustainability outcomes, research and evaluation skills, both in the "doing" and the "evaluating" of work others have done, is critical to success. We increased information about the study design, participants, procedure, and analysis. We moved the initial reference to the table of projects to the methods section, and refer to it again in the results section (to point to the third, evaluative, column). We edited the discussion, and limitations and challenges, section to provide clearer meaning from our work. Within limitations and challenges, we addressed these both for the class, and added text considering these for the study itself. 

We were less certain that we adequately addressed a few comments: 

You began by stating that the article lacks the "standard way of writing a research paper." We were unclear as to your meaning. If we have not edited sufficiently to address this comment, please let us know, and perhaps provide more detail as to your thoughts.  Your final comment was about the research nature of this manuscript. We see this work as a descriptive and exploratory study of the project component of the course. We believe a unique value add to the field is the descriptive list of projects, in addition to the other details about the course. That said, we added some text acknowledging what other forms of data collection and analysis would add substantively to future research on this course. 

Again, we are grateful for the depth of comment that you provided to our first draft, and hope that you find this revision a step forward towards publication. 

Charlotte Clark and Tavey Capps

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper includes a series of experiences that can be extrapolated to other institutions for improvement. It is a very interesting paper. The information is clearly structured, easy to read and can reach a large number of readers. Simple and understandable language is used. The experiences developed are clearly described.

It is advisable to describe more precisely the students involved in these experiences.

 

Author Response

Thank you for your review and your comments.Wee have added a paragraph to further describe some demographic information about the students who have taken the class. 

We hope that this revision addresses your comments, and that you find it a step forward towards publication.

Charlotte Clark and Tavey Capps

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have presented an in-depth look into their university's introductory course on sustainability. While they have done a good job of describing the content and implementation of the course, they do a poor job of framing the background and need for this course. Furthermore, there is no evidence that the courses do achieve their stipulated learning outcomes and would benefit from survey data or descriptive statistics. The following points must be addressed to make this manuscript suitable for publication:

A more thorough and in-depth literature review is required, detailing the work done in teaching introductory sustainability courses, as well as the findings of research in sustainability education that are relevant to the manuscript. I would expect a course that has been taught for several years to have consistently evolved and be shaped by the latest educational insights on sustainability education. As in its current state, the introduction section is insufficient. The article would benefit from samples of assignments, grading rubrics or exam questions in order to determine that the course learning outcomes are being met by the course activities/assignments. Another piece that would strengthen the manuscript would be to include student comments (the author states that 'We modified the course over the years based on student comments and challenges faced' so I assume they are available) or feedback from instructors regarding the course. Elaboration must be provided on what teaching pedagogies are being used in this course. Considering that the course focus on small class size, collaborative learning and research design, please include a section for discussion of the theoretical framework and citing relevant literature that assisted in developing your pedagogy. Please do not restate verbatim the results from other papers using quotes. This is not acceptable and the results must be paraphrased in your own words in order to best communicate the results.

Author Response

Thank you so much for the time and consideration that you provided in review of our first draft manuscript. I believe that we have addressed your comments, and provide specific summaries below. 

We have added text to frame the background and need for the course, both from the perspective of Duke's specific needs, and from the broader need to educate current undergraduate students, regardless of their primary major.  We have bolstered the literature review. Should you find that this is still not thorough enough, we are happy to continue to work on this, and would value any specific topics you feel are lacking, or specific recommendations of authors or articles of value.  The introduction section has been significantly revised.  We have included more information about assignments, an example rubric, and example final products.  We have added substantial text around assessment of both the students in the course, and of the course itself. We have included verbatim student comments as evidence towards our points.  We have added text around teaching pedagogies used in the course. We have added text describing our theoretical framework, including literature citations.  We have removed verbatim quotes from the literature, replacing them with original reworded paraphrasing.

Again, we are grateful for your efforts to improve our manuscript! I hope that we have made strides towards a higher quality paper for publication. 

Charlotte Clark and Tavey Capps

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors, thank you so much for taking the time to revise the manuscript according to the recommendations. I have seen that the manuscript is now substantially improved. I am happy with your revisions and have no further comments.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your time and attention to our work.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have made substantial revisions to their manuscript and the article is much improved as a result. I can recommend it for publication.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your time and attention to our work.