Jeremiah Johnson
University of Michigan
Jeremiah Johnson is currently faculty at the University of Michigan's School of Natural Resources & Environment. This fall, he will be joining the faculty of North Carolina State's Department of Civil, Construction, & Environmental Engineering. His work focuses on assessing the environmental impacts of changes to the power system, including integration of variable renewables and energy storage. He has also developed numerous interdisciplinary teaching cases on sustainability. Prof. Johnson earned his BS in Chemical Engineering at Clarkson University and his MS and PhD in Environmental Engineering at Yale University. Following graduate school, he spent several years as an energy consultant, advising electric utilities on renewable energy strategy.
Research has demonstrated that traditional lecture-based instruction in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) leads to inferior student performance and increased failure rates when compared to active learning techniques. Constructivist-centered courses, where students take efforts to build their own understanding as opposed to passively receiving information, can better engage students and deepen the learning experience. Instructors can achieve this through case-based teaching, in which students learn by actively navigating a complex story, typically based on real world problems. Now widely adopted in business schools, the case method places students in the role of a decision maker facing a challenging business problem with binding constraints, incomplete information, and a suite of imperfect solutions.
Problems in environmental sustainability are not typically solved by adhering to disciplinary boundaries. They are complex and uncertain, often requiring decision makers to act despite imperfect or limited information. When well designed, case-base instruction anchors learning activities to a larger problem, gives the student ownership over its solution, and creates a learning environment that reflects the complexity of the problem at hand. The benefits of case-based teaching align well with the challenges faced in sustainability education and by sustainability practitioners.
In 2015, we launched the Michigan Sustainability Cases program which develops multi-media rich, practitioner-engaged teaching cases. In this talk, I will present the results of one teaching case that focuses on the decision of Green Mountain Power (a small electric utility in Vermont) to partner with Tesla and offer their customers access to distributed energy storage via the PowerWall. Through this case, students assess the environmental impacts of behind-the-meter energy storage, the power system benefits of this storage (e.g., capacity value and distribution upgrade deferral), and the economic benefits to rate payers and the company. A podcast is used to reinforce these concepts, featuring an executive from the utility, an energy analyst from GreenTech Media, and an academic scholar who studies environmental impacts of energy storage.
To evaluate the effectiveness of case based teaching, I deployed a three-pronged, mixed-methods approach including embedded assessments (e.g., exam questions), full-sample surveys (e.g., soliciting student opinion), and structured interviews with past participants (e.g., alumni interviews focusing on usage of skills and knowledge). While none of these assessments can accurately isolate the attributable change in learning stemming from the use of teaching cases, these efforts elucidate mastery of content and students’ perception of the value of this approach.
As the challenges in environmental sustainability become increasingly complex, innovative teaching solutions are needed to adequately prepare students. Introducing case based instruction into a traditional lecture based course has proven to be one effective method to challenge and engage students on problems in environmental sustainability that embracing interdisciplinary analysis and decision making in light of uncertainty.
