Preparing students for complexity and uncertainty: Flexible Learning strategies for developing environmental professionals

This chapter showcases how flexible learning pedagogical strategies facilitate thirdyear university students’ engagement with complexity and uncertainty in the food system. Flexible learning approaches, featuring pedagogical and logistical flexibility, blend community-based experiential learning, transdisciplinary collaboration, collective action, and technology into university teaching and learning. Focusing on disciplinary content knowledge and competencies such as systems thinking and effective collaboration skills, our approach uses transdisciplinary case studies to disrupt the traditional lecture-midterm-final course structure. The on-line course components, which provide students with key concepts, guiding principles, and evaluation guidelines for project work, increases time available for group meetings, community visits, and project design, implementation, and evaluation. Students in the course (n=199) were asked to reflect upon their experiences at the end of the term. Three key themes emerge from the analysis of student writing: transdisciplinary learning creates a common arc of experience in response to the uncertainty inherent in the pedagogy: apprehension, frustration, and appreciation; the process creates meaningful experiences for preparing students for dealing with uncertainty in their future careers; and, flexible learning strategies enhance student learning and ability to conduct community-based projects. We discuss our findings with respect to similarities reported in professional transdisciplinary science processes and projects.