The role of climate change education on individual lifetime carbon emissions

discussion is provided about the educational approach and the factors we felt were critical to the success of the education program. 2. Methods The San Jose State University IRB committee has approved this human subject research (F15035) and all participants have provided written consent. 2.1. University course and students In fall 2007, a new course was offered at San Jose´ State University (SJSU) that satisfied all three subject areas of the upper division general education (GE) requirements, plus the campus upper division writing requirement. The course, COMM/ENVS/GEOL/HUM/METR 168 & 168W: Global Climate Change I & II (hereafter referred to as COMM 168), is taught over an academic year, with six credit hours in the fall semester, and three credit hours in the following spring semester. The course is team taught by three faculty members from different depart- ments with expertise in the core themes of climate science, climate mitigation and environ- mental communication. Although different professors taught the course during the five-year study period, the syllabus was consistent through the five years. During this same five-year period, student enrollment came from a broad distribution of the campus colleges, as shown in Table 1. The course uses a number of design approaches to impact students in ways that maximize effects on students’ personal and professional lives, and this is described in more detail in section 3, Course Design. COMM 168 has been taught every year since 2007 and con- tinues to be a well-enrolled class at SJSU. 2.2. Survey and focus groups

An 18-item survey instrument (provided in the S1 Text) was developed to study participants’ beliefs about climate change and whether their own personal actions to mitigate climate change could be associated with taking the COMM 168 course. The survey was broadly based on ques- tions about climate change drawn from [31] and [32], and included questions that used a five- element Likert scale (strongly agree, agree, don’t know, disagree, or strongly disagree), multiple choice, and free response. A draft survey was trialed at SJSU by other educators and was revised based on their feedback. Of the more than 500 students who took the course, 104 students from the five different course iterations between 2007 and 2012 completed the survey. We emphasize that the survey was given to students at least five years after they completed the course, and no surveys were given before participants took the course. The categories of questions focused on participants’ a) attitudes and beliefs about global warming and whether they perceive it to affect them personally, and b) whether any of the participants’ current pro-environmental behaviors can be attributed to taking the COMM 168 course. The survey data was collected using an online platform where participant email was used to ensure only one response was collected per Table 1. The distribution of colleges from the reported major for each of the participants. College % of students College of Social Sciences 40% College of Humanities and the Arts 22% College of Business 19% College of Applied Sciences and Arts 10%

College of Science 7% https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0206266.t001 The role of climate change education on individual lifetime carbon emissions PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0206266 February 4, 2020 3 / 23