Kyung Hee University Humanitas College Offers Liberal Arts Course on Birdwatching

Experiential Humanities Education Through Campus Ecology

Kyung Hee University's Humanitas College has launched a unique liberal arts course that helps students view their everyday surroundings from an ecological perspective and directly experience the nearby natural environment, receiving a highly positive response from students.

The newly offered course, "Birds on Campus: Encountering Nature Through Birds," expands the scope of liberal arts education by connecting theoretical learning, on-site birdwatching, and group projects. Through this series of activities, students observe and document birds within the campus ecosystem.

Professor Jinwon Lee from Kyung Hee University is conducting birdwatching activities while walking around the campus with students. Kyung Hee University

According to Kyung Hee University on May 29, 60 students are currently participating in the course. After learning the basics of bird ecology and birdwatching etiquette in the classroom, students walk around the campus to observe bird habitats and behaviors firsthand.

Students experience various bird survey methods, such as point counts and line transects, and conduct group projects to compare avian diversity in specific habitats or analyze behavioral characteristics of certain species, sharing their findings in presentations. In addition to this course, Humanitas College continues to offer other liberal arts classes focused on daily encounters with nature, such as courses on understanding campus plants.

Kim Jin-hae, Vice Dean of Humanitas College, said, "The idea for this course came from the belief that students should be able to experience the nature close to campus firsthand," adding, "There is nature on campus, and I thought we shouldn't confine students to the classroom to learn."

Professor Jinwon Lee, who is in charge of the class, explained, "When many people think about nature, they first imagine distant places such as mountains, seas, or national parks. However, real ecology already exists in the spaces where we live our daily lives," adding, "The campus itself is also a small ecosystem."

Professor Lee emphasized, "What matters is not simply how many species you saw, but how and what you observed," and continued, "Rather than focusing on perfectly identifying each bird, the course stresses the process of recording observations and developing them into questions." He added, "This class uses birds as a medium to rethink the relationships among humans and nature, cities and ecology, and the spaces in which we live."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.