Sustainability and green transition (SV100)

Content

The on-going climate and nature crisis means that we all need to learn to see ourselves as part of a global community where we find solution together for complex and difficult challenges. The problems we are facing require collaboration across disciplinary boundaries and therefore this course gives you the opportunity to use your own disciplinary knowledge together with students from other disciplines.

The aim of the course is to increase your cross-disciplinary environmental awareness and to practice environmental citizenship. You will get the opportunity to develop critical and creative thinking and acquire tools that can help you contribute to green transition and sustainable development. To do this you also have to couple theoretical knowledge with real-world societal challenges. In particular, you will practice your ability to foster dialogue with representatives from other disciplines and experience that solving big problems requires knowledge from several fields.

The nature and climate crisis is related to complex global systems with an unequal distribution of who is generating the problem and who has to live with the consequences. To create societies that contribute to a sustainable world requires special attention to three different themes: climate and environment, economy, and social conditions. These are often described as the three dimensions of sustainable development, and it is the relationship between them that determines whether something is sustainable, according to the United Nations. In the course, you will also be introduced to other ways of thinking about sustainability.

The course is cross-disciplinary with contributions from the perspective of social science, the arts, economics, and the technical-natural sciences. It is open for all bachelor students at UiS in the second or third year, but is limited to the 100 first students who apply after the course is published on June 15.

Learning outcome

When the course is completed students are expected to reach the following learning objectives:

Knowledge

• Has broad knowledge of key concepts such as sustainability and green transition.
• Has knowledge of climate change and loss of biodiversity.
• Has knowledge of the history of the environmental movement and industrialisation.
• Has knowledge of different directions in environmental philosophy.

Skills

• Can reflect on relevant knowledge that contributes to understanding the climate and environmental crisis.
• Can analyse specific environmental challenges in a critical, systematic and cross-disciplinary way.
• Can apply knowledge about sustainability to a given issue in their own field and shed light on this from different perspectives

General competencies

• Can reflect on their own role in the green transition and how this can be exercised in their own field, in future professional practice and as a citizen.
• Can update and disseminate their knowledge of sustainability and green transition within their own field.
• Can discuss how sustainable innovation can affect their own field.

Required prerequisite knowledge

Recommended prerequisites

Exam

Coursework requirements

Students are required to complete the teamwork component through participation in three team assignment throughout the semester. This is assessed as accepted or not accepted.

In addition, the students are required to attend 80 % of the organised teaching activities.

Course teacher(s)

Course coordinator:

Method of work

• Guest lecture series with cross-disciplinary perspectives on sustainability and green transition
• Group and plenary discussions about learning points and relations between the different perspectives in the guest lectures.
• Challenge-based learning (CBL) with a point of departure in the ECIU model. Students work in cross-disciplinary teams to understand and find solutions for a concrete challenge in a real-world situation. This entails three stages: (1) ENGAGE: The teams transform general knowledge about sustainability and green transition into a concrete challenge (problem definition); (2) INVESTIGATE: The teams collect specialised knowledge about the chosen challenge to understand it better (problem analysis); (3) ACT: The teams develop solutions in an informed and evidence-based way (problem solving).
• Individual reflection where each student with the teamwork as a starting point reflect on how sustainability and green transition can be integrated in their own discipline.

Open for

Course assessment

Literature