Incremental Learning: Initial Exploration of the Campus Unseen

Campus Unseen is a collection of essays written by students in the spring semester, 2015 Ethnobiology class at the University of North Texas. The essays are an inductive experiment concerning what types of observations students make when they spend a reliable period of time each week in the same small area, outdoors, over the course of a semester. The idea for this experiment comes from two major sources, the recognition by ethnobiologists that people in societies that spend much of their time outdoors more easily adopt a conservation ethic (see papers by Eugene Hunn and Nancy Turner and Fikret Berkes on this subject, in particular). The second source of inspiration for this exercise is the book The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch Nature by David Haskell. Through regular visits to a small area, which he referred to as a mandala, Haskell was able holistically explore biology, ecology, and ethnobiology. Today was the first day of the exercise, and students were simply charged with finding a place (a mandala) and to spend time there observing and contemplating the outdoors around them. As the professor of this class, I am hoping they will connect their experiences with the contemplations and observations written about by the ethnobiological scholars whose works we will read this semester. Will they contemplate elements of place? Early indications are that the answer is yes; the next series of posts are their initial observations. I look forward to seeing how the places they observe change with the seasons, during a time in which their familiarity with this process grows. I also look forward to hearing about what they learn and to noticing what I learn in the process. Welcome to the Campus Unseen.

Haskell, D. G. (2012). The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature. Penguin.
Hunn, E. (2014). To Know Them is to Love Them. Ethnobiology Letters, 5, 146-150.
Turner, N. J., & Berkes, F. (2006). Coming to understanding: developing conservation through incremental learning in the Pacific Northwest. Human Ecology, 34(4), 495-513.