The two-week CUBG Environmental Education Training Course 2016 came to a successful end on August 15, which is marked by 8 interesting oral presentations by trainees. 27 trainees involving environmental education from botanical gardens, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and universities got certificates of completion from Prof. Chen Jin.

   This is the fourth session of the Environmental Education Training Course which is initiated by the Chinese Union of Botanical Gardens (CUBG) and held annually in Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) since 2013.

  The training course consisted of lectures on theories of environmental education, research methods, statistical analysis, literature comprehension, small research projects, etc. Prof. Chen Jin, director of XTBG and current chairman of CUBG, delivered lectures and guided the participants to studies through the whole two-week course. The course provided the participants a new insight into carrying out public education in botanical gardens.

Prof. Joe E. Heimlich, a professor in Extension at The Ohio State University in the School of Environment and Natural Resources and the Environmental Science Graduate Program, was invited to teach psychology of environment and conservation, theories of informal learning, current status of environmental education in USA, etc.

Dr. Scott Loarie, editor-in-chief of iNaturalist.org, was another lecturer at the training course. He showed practical cases studies on how to use new technology and media to serve environmental education.

Prof. Kyle W. Tomlinson and Mr. Wang Ximin also guided the whole course. 

The two-day First Luosuo River Education Forum provided a platform for the trainees to communicate with professional educators and gain new insight.

The trainees were divided into 8 small groups to raise scientific questions, design experiment, collect data, and analyze data. They presented their results to expert panel on August 15. The presentation entitled “How botanical garden experience affects knowledge gain?” was evaluated as the best one among the 8 presentations. The presentations by the trainees were exciting and won praise from the training specialists, which marked the training course a success.

Prof. Chen Jin introduces training course 

 Prof. Joe E. Heimlich teaches at the course

Group discussion 

 Trainees and teachers pose a photo.

Dr. Scott Loarie introduces  iNaturalist.org

Group study

Groups comduct small research projects.