Teaching Green Information Technology in the Classroom: an Undergraduate Case-Study

The leaders of tomorrow need to have an awareness and understanding of numerous socio-economic and environmental challenges that are impacting on society at large today. One of these challenges is how Green Information Technology can be applied effectively by organisations to contribute to the global green revolution. The author teaches 1500 under-graduate students yearly about Green Information Technology in one of their under-graduate subjects. The aim of this is to influence these students' awareness positively in terms of efficient ways that computer resources can be used. In order to facilitate this process, the author supplemented the theory component with a practical assignment leveraging a number of interactive learning tools, including: social networking, on-line collaboration and 3-D programming. These tools can be classified as being social software which is one of the components of social computing. Social computing is seen as the convergence of information technology with social behaviour, and the resulting interactions. The tools which were used includes: Alice (c), Facebook (c) and pbWiki (c). The students were tasked with creating an animation using Alice (c) teaching people about Green Information Technology. Upon completion of the assignment, a questionnaire was distributed to these students in order to ascertain what their view of Green Information Technology was upon completion of the subject. This paper details the nature of the Green Information Technology teaching component, including the teaching techniques that were employed. Additionally, this paper details the findings of the questionnaire, which highlights the degree of effectiveness of the teaching methods and learning tools employed with regards to teaching and Green Information Technology. The paper merges theory and practical aspects of teaching Green IT to under-graduate students. It will give practitioners insight into the attitudes of these students towards Green IT. It provides educators and researchers with insight in terms of interactive teaching tools that can be employed to teach Green IT.