As one of the three important training courses of the Chinese Union of Botanical Gardens (CUBG), the CUBG Environmental Education Training Course 2014 was held during August 5-18 at Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG). 20 trainees from 14 botanical gardens around China participated in the training. The two-week training course provided the participants a new insight into carrying out public education in botanical gardens.

The course focused on techniques for delivering innovative environmental education and also how to evaluate the success of environmental education programmes. It also dealt with case studies of environmental education, climate change and environmental education in botanical gardens, citizen science, etc. Prof. Chen Jin, Dr Shaun Russell, Dr. Sophie Williams, and Mr. Wang Ximin were invited as training specialists.

The course was composed of lectures and practicals. The training specialists delivered a series of lectures concerning environmental education research and evaluation. The trainees were divided into 6 small groups to raise scientific questions, design experiment, collect data, and analyze data.

On August 17, trainees presented their results to expert panel. Two groups were praised as top of the 6 groups. The presentations by the trainees were exciting and won praise from the training specialists, which marked the training course a success.

Afterwards, certificates of completion were conferred on the trainees by Dr. Chen Jin, director of XTBG and chairman of CUBG.

Sophie Williams and trainees

Chen Jin and trainees

Group discussion

Group photo of trainees and teachers