10.7. Learning Activity - Sustainability and Ecosystem Services Pitch

Learning Activity - Sustainability and Ecosystems Services Pitch

Consider a scenario where you are an entrepreneur in a new solar energy technology startup. Your challenge is to integrate the principles of sustainability and environmental justice with your solar technology and generate a convincing pitch for your stakeholders.

Think about your course project proposal and identify the ecosystem services at your locale that need to be maintained, enhanced, or created and how you would address them in your business plan.

Here are some questions you may want to ask and answer:

What ecosystem services exist at the project locale and site and how will those be impacted?
Why is it important to include ethics and sustainability strategy in solar project development?
What is the short-term or long-term benefits in devising and implementing measures for maintaining ecosystem services at your site?
Is there co-location of services in your project that benefit the community at large?
What steps will be taken to ensure the resilience of land and nearby ecosystems through the project lifetime?

These questions become particularly important in formulating the core business philosophy for a specific firm. However, the context of the assignment here still needs to be couched within a real locale and for a well-defined client. (That is why I encourage you to tie it to your project proposal)

Directions

As a deliverable for this learning activity, you will need to create a 5-min video with your pitch to a potential client or stakeholder, specifically outlining the environmental benefits of your project design approach. Here you don't need to talk much about the technical or economic rationale of your project (there is no time for that) - focus on the eco-aspects and questions therein.

Please share your video in th Media Gallery in Canvas.

The style of the video is your preference – whatever works best for you personally. You can use a couple of slides, images, your own footage, or even show some data (if it helps) and narrate over it, or you can just speak to the camera.

Because you need to keep it within 5-min limit and still to be informative, writing a script beforehand is highly helpful, but it is not required for submission.

Be sure to check out other videos and provide comments to your peers.

Video creation options (choose one of these):

Use Zoom to record your speech and save it to a cloud
Use narrated PowerPoint slide show and save it as video [1] (mp4)
Record the video on your phone or screen capture on your computer.

For the video to appear in the EME 810 Media Galery, it will need to be uploaded to Kaltura - Penn State's video-sharing platform [2]. You can log in it with your Penn State credential and upload your video to your MyMedia profile. You should designate your video “unlisted” to let viewers access it.

If you have never used Kaltura or other video sharing sites, such as YouTube, this tutorial [3]may be helpful.

Submitting your work

Please follow these steps to share your video in the EME 810 Canvas Media Gallery:

1. Click on Media Gallery link (left-hand menu in Canvas)

2. Click on +Add Media

3. Select the video you want to add (from Penn State MyMedia)

a. Or click on Add New

b. Click Media Upload

c. Drag and Drop the file or click on Choose a file to upload

4. Click Publish

5. The video will be marked as pending. When the instructor approves your video, it will be added to the Media Gallery.

Grading criteria:

You will be graded on your ability to clearly convey the benefits of your ecosystem services plan to a broad audience. This activity is worth 20 points. Please see the grading rubric in Canvas.