SV-220 Practicing Sustainable Transformation
- ECTS Credits:
- 10
- Responsible department:
- Faculty of Social Sciences
- Course Leader:
- Alexander Ruser
- Lecture Semester:
- Spring
- Teaching language:
- English.
- Duration:
- 1 term
The course is connected to the following study programs
- Bachelor's Programme in IT and Information Systems
- Bachelor's Programme in Planning and Communication
- Bachelor's Programme in Sociology
- Bachelor's Programme in Global Development Studies
Teaching language
English.Recommended prerequisites
SV-156 Foundations of sustainable development and SV-157 Approaches, opportunities, and challenges for sustainable transformation.
NOTE: The courses SV-156 and SV-157are taught sequentially during the semester. In order to take SV-157, students will need to take SV-156 the same semester. In order to take SV-220, students will need to take both SV-156 and SV-157.
Course contents
This course builds on SV-156 Approaches, opportunities and challenges of sustainable transformation and provides students with the opportunity to discuss, assess and understand the specific challenges of implementing sustainable policies, practices, and projects. The course work evolves around practical cases to understand complex transformation, and to develop both critical analytical abilities and competencies. It particularly encourages students to further engage with projects and research questions already developed in SV-157 Approaches, opportunities, and challenges.
By focussing on selected practical examples, the course allows the students to understand the interplay of technological, political, economic, ecological, and social factors that influence the mapping of sustainable futures. Can we simply follow the experts, or do sustainable solutions need to be hammered out in democratic debates? How can we create new arenas for collaboration, new socio-technical experimentation, and governance models?
Learning outcomes
Upon successful completion of the course, the student should be able to apply concepts and knowledge to the complex interplay of ecologic, economic, political, technological, and ethical aspects of sustainable transformation through:
- learning to critically assess selected problems and projects
- actively engaging with practical scenarios and project development for sustainable development
- assessing appropriate use of digital technologies
- project based contextualization of sustainability policies and emergent dilemmas
- assessing systemic and organizational factors affecting decision-making and implementation of sustainability policies
- critically reflecting on issues of human, technological and ecological relations, and justice in transformation processes
Teaching methods
The course will focus on selected problems and examples of sustainable transformation thus allowing the participants to engage in project -based, participatory learning. The use of advanced teaching methods such as scenario planning, simulations and cross-impact estimation modelling allowing the students to engage with the complexity of real-world problems of implementing sustainable solutions. Estimated workload is 270 hours.
Evaluation
The study programme coordinator decides, in cooperation with student representative, the form of student evaluation and whether the course is to have a midway or end of course evaluation in accordance with the quality system for education, chapter 4.1.
Assessment methods and criteria
Portfolio examination including both group work and individual work, graded A-F. Further information about the portfolio will be given in Canvas.
Other information
The courses SV-156 and SV-157are taught sequentially during the semester. In order to take SV-157, students will need to take SV-156 the same semester. In order to take SV-220, students will need to take both SV-156 and SV-157.