Actively Moving Adult Learners into Social Action through an Urban Soils Course.

Making science relevant in mature-age adult undergraduate classroom spaces can foster deeper learning and bring about empowerment and social change in improving the urban environment. Incorporating social action and experiential learning projects into science courses can improve learner engagement, increase motivation to learn, and enhance learners’ social responsibility. Driven by the need to address urban soils in a meaningful way, a course entitled “Urban Dirt” for mature-age adult learners in an undergraduate competence based program was created. This course operates without a “normal” soils laboratory; however discovering the secrets of urban soils in a variety of active learning experiments and field trips captured their interest in soils and even sparked their desire to advocate for improving soil quality.