The restoration of oak woodlands often requires removal and management of woody invasive plants. This can trigger germination of the soil seed bank, which can alter restoration trajectories. In degraded deciduous woodlands generally, it is unclear whether the soil seed bank will contribute native plant material in sufficient quantities to help achieve restoration goals and allow practitioners to rely on passive restoration without supplemental seeding. To support restoration decision‐making around passive or active restoration in three Rhamnus cathartica‐invaded forest preserves in the Chicago region, we asked: (1) Does the soil seed bank differ from standing aboveground vegetation at reference and unrestored sites? and (2) Can the species richness, Shannon diversity, floristic quality (measured by abundance‐weighted mean coefficients of conservatism), or density of germinable seeds of native species in the soil seed bank be predicted by a site's restoration status (reference or unrestored)? We found that species composition differed significantly between aboveground vegetation and the soil seed bank at reference and unrestored sites, with a significant interaction between restoration status and location. Despite high variation among the three forest preserves, restoration status also predicted native species richness, diversity, floristic quality, and seed density in the soil seed bank, with unrestored sites significantly lower than reference sites in all measures. Results suggest that reintroduction of native seeds will be necessary to fully restore desired native plant communities in oak woodlands following the removal of invasive woody plants.

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in interactive narrative-based serious games for education and training. A key challenge posed by educational serious games is the balance of fun and learning, so that players are motivated enough to unfold the narrative stories on their own pace while getting sufficient learning materials across. In this chapter, various design strategies that aim to tackle this challenge are presented through the development of Sustain City, an educational serious game system that engages students, particularly prospective and beginning science and engineering students, in a series of engineering design. Besides narrative-learning synthesis, supplementing the player's actions with feedback, and the development of a sufficient guidance system, the chapter also discusses the integration of rigorous assessment and personalized scaffolding. The evaluation of Sustain City deployment confirms the values of the serious games in promoting students' interests and learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.

An algae-based curriculum is being used to teach engineering fundamentals and concepts from the humanities such as ethics, gender and racial biases, discrimination, and public policy. The project involves hands on experiments with algae that relate to core concepts in engineering such as materials, energy, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, water treatment, and green engineering. Each experiment requires data collection, analyses, and interpretation. Technical and reflective writings along with oral presentations are integrated with the course. Students are exposed to case studies through movies, readings, and documentaries that allow them to learn about ethics, race and gender issues, and public policy. The experiments of the curriculum give students the fundamental skills and knowledge necessary to tackle some of the world's most challenging issues and encourage interest in solving them. They also give students a broad knowledge base of humanities and global issues that are commonly not included in typical engineering courses.

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in interactive narrative-based serious games for education and training. A key challenge posed by educational serious games is the balance of fun and learning, so that players are motivated enough to unfold the narrative stories on their own pace while getting sufficient learning materials across. In this chapter, various design strategies that aim to tackle this challenge are presented through the development of Sustain City, an educational serious game system that engages students, particularly prospective and beginning science and engineering students, in a series of engineering design. Besides narrative-learning synthesis, supplementing the player's actions with feedback, and the development of a sufficient guidance system, the chapter also discusses the integration of rigorous assessment and personalized scaffolding. The evaluation of Sustain City deployment confirms the values of the serious games in promoting students' interests and learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.