Description
Module content:
This module engages students in generating emergent solutions to climate crisis and biodiversity loss in order to prototype integrated approaches to natural prosperity broadly understood. Students will explore a series of approaches to democratising research and public engagement, creating innovative forms of knowledge sharing, deliberative reasoning and experimental policy making. Through the use of ‘ateliers’, or solutions-focused workshops that mirror Prosperity Collaborations deployed directly in IGP research, students will have unique opportunities for engagement with a wide range of IGP projects and/or challenge problems presented by IGP research and policy collaborators. Students will have access to the IGP’s portfolio of existing projects and initiatives including the SDG focussed millennial business community Fast Forward 2030. The module will draw on the expertise from a number of innovation leaders and futurists who are part of the IGP community. The aim of the module is for students to engage with adaptive epistemologies and transdisciplinary approaches as a means to drive new collaborative solutions to major natural prosperity challenges.
Illustrative module outline:
- Natural capital and ecosystem services
- Social capital and community wellbeing
- Human capital, health, and education
- Built capital and renewable energy production and use
- Quality of life/wellbeing/flourishing/
- Participatory governance and deliberative democracy
- Property rights regimes
- Common asset trusts
- Community engagement and citizen science
- Nature-based solutions and green finance
Education is not a preparation for life; education is life itself. —John Dewey
“Aٱ” (French for workshops) address real-world problems at multiple time and space scales. They involve faculty and students from multiple disciplines, decision-makers, and other stakeholders in collaboratively finding integrative solutions. Ateliers often include:
- transdisciplinary problem-based, solutions-focused learning,
- community/client sponsorship,
- stakeholder participation,
- blurring of the distinctions between research and education,
- adaptive management and flexible working groups,
- appropriate and practical communication and publication of results.
Grounded in experiential learning models such as service learning or problem-based learning, solutions-focused atelier modules provide students with hands-on problem-solving experience. At the same time, they provide communities with working solutions to previously vexing challenges. Students develop key career and collaboration skills through the application of transferable tools and disciplinary knowledge. Atelier modules also provide a platform for transdisciplinary collaboration among university scholars, staff, and community practitioners. The community challenges addressed may exist on or off campus: locally, regionally, nationally, or internationally. The results of these modules will also be communicated to the larger world through an appropriate publication medium, such as journal articles, websites, books, workshops, videos, podcasts etc. This will allow a module to achieve research and policy impact, while training students in the art of effective communication and academic publication.
Module deliveries for 2024/25 academic year
Last updated
This module description was last updated on 19th August 2024.