The energy tradeoffs assignment for Green Britain asks students to communicate the knowledge they’ve learned about energy science and climate impacts with diverse audiences by acting as a guest expert during a simulated public news interview.

The Guest Expert Media Interview is worth 20% of students’ course grade for GEO/PSC300.

Assignment Details: Guest Expert Media Interview

Grading Rubric

Students are expected to:

• form groups of 2, and assign roles of ‘interviewer’ and ‘interviewee’ (though both partners should be involved in preparing both the interviewer’s question list and key messages in the interviewee’s responses)

• choose an overall theme for a mock news story, which must be connected to issues of energy production, distribution, and/or use in devolved Wales (the topic might also link to the wider United Kingdom, but must highlight tensions/questions around devolution and energy issues while explaining the science involved) [2 points]

• prepare at least 5 questions that a reporter/news host would ask a guest expert when covering this story [5 points]

• ask and answer the questions in a prepared simulation of the students’ design [10 points]

• submit a polished story that would be easily understood by the average person [3 points]

The news story can be submitted in any relevant form (such as a typed interview that might be found in a magazine, a voice recording like something that would be broadcast on the radio, or a video that could be shown on television). There will be no difference in points earned across the various potential styles, but thoughtfulness should be given to presentation style, and it should be clear that some effort was put into polishing the piece for external audiences.

Examples of high-quality submissions from previous students are available here.

The file should be emailed to the course instructor by the due date.