Alberta Grasslands Stories is a curriculum-integrated and community-engaged experiential learning opportunity for students.

The course empowers learners to enhance anthropological disciplinary learning by applying it in a field-based setting. Through project-based learning and cross-cultural learning, students:

1) learned how to employ anthropological methods to understand climate change on the grasslands, including participant observation, interviewing skills, multimodal field documentation and analysis, visual methods, and audio recording;

2) learned about diverse approaches to climate change, emphasizing a multiple knowledge systems approach. In the context of southern Alberta, this means prioritizing Blackfoot ways of knowing and Indigenous science, specifically through Knowledge Keeper-guided learning and land-based education. Students also learned about local knowledge, western scientific, and activist approaches to the grasslands;

3) involved students in a series of activities that are mutually beneficial to community partners; and

4) lastly, learned about and practiced digital storytelling skills critical to knowledge mobilization regarding climate change on Alberta’s grasslands. The digital storytelling component of this course was supported by the equipment and resources of the Energy Stories Lab.