Empowering Students to Engage with Climate Change Action: A Project-Based Module for Artificial Intelligence Literacy and Sustainability Thinking

There is a growing need to prepare students to address complex environmental challenges, particularly climate change and the expanding role of artificial intelligence (AI). This article examines the adaptation of the Artificial Intelligence for Social Good (AI4SG) Ideation module, a pitch- and project-based teaching framework designed to integrate AI literacy and sustainability education. Implemented in an upper division climate change course, the module combines project-based learning, culturally responsive pedagogy, and geographic thinking to guide students in developing community-oriented AI proposals aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Students were encouraged to approach their communities not through deficit lenses, but through additive lenses, and to frame sustainability challenges across campus, local, and metropolitan scales. To examine student engagement with the module, we analyzed lab reports, team proposals and pitches, and end-of-semester reflections. Findings indicate that teams articulated SDGs frameworks at local scales and conceptualized AI applications grounded in community context, such as consumption-related carbon emissions and climate-related disaster response. Student reflections further suggest developing critical AI literacy, including attention to ethical considerations and the limitations of technological solutions. By situating AI within applied geographic reasoning and pitch-based pedagogy, the AI4SG Ideation module provides an example of how environmental and technological literacy can be integrated within undergraduate geography education.