Sustainable.now (5 cr)
Sustainable.now (5 cr) is a candidate-level basic online course for anyone interested in sustainable development and climate change. The principles of sustainable development will be linked to the 1.5 degree climate target. The course will be designed and built during 2020.
The course will provide a solid knowledge package on the concept of sustainable development and its ecological, social, economic and cultural dimensions, as well as the connections and tensions between them. The ethical perspective that runs through the course provides a basis for considering sustainable development also as a political and normative concept. The course also emphasizes the importance of agency and the different roles of the individual. Students will be given the opportunity to look at the sustainability of their own lifestyle in terms of individual choices, but on the other hand, sustainability and climate challenges will also be presented as a structural and systemic problem.
Practical examples and case descriptions illustrate the sustainability challenges and their solutions. Through group work in the course, students deepen their understanding of sustainability challenges and gain peer support from other students. Group assignments teach students collective and multidisciplinary knowledge formation and collaborative skills that are essential in solving sustainability challenges.
The Sustainable.now course also includes a concept bank and a glossary of key terms for sustainable development and climate change.
The course serves as both an independent course and an introduction to the System Thinking course (Systemschange.now).
In addition to University of Turku, partners contributing to this course are affiliated with University of Helsinki, University of Oulu, University of Jyväskylä and LUT School of Business and Management (LBM). During the design process, the multidisciplinary planning team of the course has learned to co-ordinate the views of different disciplines. We have also concretely experienced the value of multidisciplinary knowledge in solving sustainability problems. The application and development of online pedagogy has also provided a learning experience for course designers.
Learning Objectives
- The student understands the intersectional, partly contradictory, goals and interdimensionality of the climate challenge and the challenges of sustainable development.
- After completing the course, students will be familiar with the multidisciplinary links between climate change and different goals of sustainable development, and will identify different tools for solving problems.
- The student understands the importance of positivity and solution orientation both through the global responsibility of individuals and through the transformation of existing structures.
