Helping Students Build Deeper Relationships with and Appreciation for Plants

TILT program: TILT SoTL Project

Principal Investigator: Miranda Meents, lecturer, Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science

Project team: Shaghayegh Bahrami and Shana Ruess, TILT research assistants

Timeframe: June 2024 – October 2025

TILT Support: Up to 160 hours of TILT research assistant time and up to $850 for participant incentives

Course addressed: BISC 337 -- Plant Biology

Final report: View Miranda Meents' final report (PDF)

Description: 

This project addressed the phenomenon of low plant awareness (also termed plant blindness or plant awareness disparity) among undergraduate biology students, investigating how a third-year plant biology course fostered student awareness and appreciation of plants, while identifying course elements most influential in this transformation. 

The course included weekly lecture and labs covering plant diversity, anatomy, lifecycles, and human interactions while developing scientific observation, microscopy, drawing, and visual communication skills. The course was intentionally designed to promote plant appreciation by including activities such as "Plant Stories" highlighting plants in daily life and, a greenhouse scavenger hunt, pet plant profiles where students grew plants at home and created group species profiles, and a drawing showcase where students created full-color pieces for public celebration. Most components employed student self-reflection and self-assessment (ungrading) rather than traditional grading.

The project’s findings showed that students’ plant awareness and appreciation rose substantially over the semester, with the largest gains among those who began with lower awareness but all groups ultimately reaching similarly high scores. Thematic analysis revealed that students entered the course with widely varying perspectives on plants, then developed sharper observational skills, deeper understanding of plant lives, and a shift from seeing an undifferentiated green backdrop to noticing individual plants and their features. 

Questions addressed:

• How do students develop stronger relationships with and respect for plants through taking the course?
• What aspects of the course do students think are most important to shifting how they think about plants?
• What value do students see in having deeper relationship, respect, and appreciation of plants?
• How does knowledge of plant biology contribute to awareness and appreciation?
• What roles do hands-on experiences and social interactions play in fostering plant awareness?
• How do changes in plant awareness persist and influence future behaviors?

Knowledge sharing: Future plans include presenting in a department seminar series, with Teaching Matters or TILT, at BC Bio conference, with colleagues at other universities (UBC, UBCO, Thompson Rivers University, University of the Fraser Valley), and through the Canadian Society of Plant Biologists. 

Keywords: Plant awareness, plant blindness, plant awareness disparity, botanical education, experiential learning, affective learning outcomes, botanical literacy, hands-on learning, collaborative learning, self-reflection, ungrading