Session 6.5
An attempt to strengthen and assess transdisciplinary competences in an undergraduate course
Marlene Mader, BinBin Pearce, Leonhard Späth, Carmenza Robledo Abad Althaus, Urs Brändle, Livia Hess, Rachel Kunstmann, Gina Saccavino, Yuri Schmid, Christian Pohl
ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Using the example of the bachelor course “Tackling Environmental Problems” at ETH Zurich, we reflect on how we promote transdisciplinary competences for sustainable development (Pearce et al. 2018; UNESCO 2017). 150 students work for one year on selected sustainability challenges in a region of Switzerland. They learn how to analyse the initial situation and together with stakeholders develop and implement measures by applying and combining design and systems thinking. In the process, the students acquire a set of knowledge, skills and competences, such as critical, systemic, strategic and creative thinking, identifying problems and imagining solutions, communication and collaboration competences as well as self-reflection and self-awareness.
In addition to selecting appropriate teaching activities to achieve the learning objectives and promote specific competences of the students, assessment is another challenge in td courses. Assessment in this course consists of three parts: a group work from the 1st semester, a group work from the 2nd semester and an individual oral exam. External stakeholders are involved in the grading and we additionally apply peer assessment among the student groups.
In a short video we would like to reflect on and initiate a discussion about the contribution td courses can make to strengthening students' competences for sustainable development and how we can also make these visible in the assessment (which is of course of essential interest to students). In various contributions:
students will reflect their learning experiences (both individually and as a group), what competences they have developed and how appropriate they experienced the assessment;
tutors will talk about their roles as coaches, lecturers and supporters in the learning process;
external stakeholders will report on their motivation to engage in such a course, what they learn and how they benefit from it;
a mediator will talk about potential conflicts in group work and how she supports students in reflecting about their self and others, communicating their motivation and values and in collaborating within their group;
and the educators will provide background information about the idea and concepts of the course.
Pearce, B., Adler, C., Senn, L., Krütli, P., Stauffacher, M. and Pohl, C. (2018). Making the link between transdisciplinary learning and research. In, D. Fam, L. Neuhauser, P. Gibbs (eds), Transdisciplinary theory, practice and education: The art of collaborative research and collective learning. Springer: Basel, Switzerland.
UNESCO. (2017). Education for Sustainable Development Goals – Learning objectives. Paris, UNESCO. Accessed: https://www.unesco.ch/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Learning-objectives.pdf
(Re)designing university courses to foster transformational mindsets and capabilities to work in transdisciplinary teams
Kateryna Pereverza 1, Hayley Ho 1 & 2
1 KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden; 2 RISE Research Institutes of Sweden
Transformations towards sustainability would require capabilities on different levels (individuals, groups and organisations) to build upon the diversity of perspectives and problem framings, engagement in cross-silo collaborations, and reflexivity to continuously learn from practice. Universities are places for tipping interventions with great potential to enable the next generations of practitioners to be better equipped for bringing positive changes in society. Yet currently many university courses are not set up in a way that allows students to build important transformational skills and mindsets. In this study, we aim to push the boundaries of what higher education learning could be and develop new ways of how university courses can be designed. We also explore the shifting relationships and roles in courses aimed at promoting transdisciplinary collaborations.
The study is based on experiences and data collected within two editions of a university course "Transdisciplinary approaches for system innovations" (TASI) - physical setting 2020, digital setting 2021 - in KTH, Sweden, and a workshop focused on digital collaborations (DCW) conducted digitally in spring 2021. TASI is a project-based course based on modular Participatory backcasting (Pereverza et al., 2019) as an approach for addressing sustainability transition challenges. Students from different disciplinary and cultural backgrounds collaborate in heterogeneous groups to address a given challenge. DCW was designed as a transdisciplinary event connecting students and teachers/facilitators from several Swedish universities who were involved in different roles in collaborative courses in a digital setting during 2020-2021. Collected data was analysed using a process-based approach to follow the dynamics of participation and interactions, and to narrow down on separate activities within the course while still seeing them as a part of a whole. Conceptually we connect to the educational sciences (e.g. Prince, 2004; Dionne et al., 2020; Tejedor et al., 2018), but also considered other perspectives on learning used in transition studies (van Mierlo and Beers, 2020).
Our experimental approach to the course design was guided by the intention to enable active, collaborative and reflexive learning of students. Facilitation techniques and supportive spaces were designed to balance between guiding and enabling creativity so that students can develop their own approaches for structuring, visualising and organising their thoughts and findings. We followed a responsive approach to the course design, developing and introducing several feedback loops to get input from students along the way. Shifting the role of teachers to be facilitators of learning by evolving the student-teacher relationship, enabled the development of the creative experimental approach to DCW, which was co-designed by teachers and students of TASI.
The described approach proved beneficial for students to adopt exploratory and reflexive learning. However, a number of pre-conceptions became evident (e.g. being bound by predefined outcomes, undervaluing the process, overlooking unexpected insights), indicating a need to support unlearning of certain attitudes to learning. Insights from this study can contribute to the refinement of approaches aimed at fostering transformational mindsets and capabilities to work in transdisciplinary teams for addressing complex societal challenges.
Read about the experience of Hayley Ho and Kateryna Pereverza of participating in ITD21