Microclimates and human comfort : cooling urban setting through design and manipulation of microclimatic factors

Abstract

The goal of this creative project was to develop a unit to be incorporated into an environmental education general studies course at Ball State University. The unit was developed as a hands-on experience activity manual.The goals of the unit were:1. to increase student awareness of the effect vegetation and water have on human comfort in the urban environment.2. to engage students in hands-on activities that relate methods for manipulating the microclimate of a space.3. to develop a pre-test/post-test containing questions which relate to the activity topics and which determine the topic knowledge of students.The manual contains an introduction, four section activities and activity subsectionexercises to combine all techniques learned in the four activity sections. Each of the four sections contain a list of objectives for the activity, explanatory text, an activity procedure, and discussion questions. Illustrations accompany the manual in order to augment the learning process for each activity.