Climate University researchers and teachers met in Turku on 7-8 May with the intention of getting a practical touch on how phenomenon based learning works in the context of sustainability challenges. The first day was organized by the University of Turku (and the second by the Turku University of Applied Sciences.)

The first day was divided into two parts, which were, however, seamlessly linked together. During the morning, we introduced the KEKO concept, the learning method of the University of Turku’s Sustainable Development Studies Program. In the afternoon, participants were given the opportunity to experiment with the methodology of futures studies. The idea was also to link the events of the day to the planning of the content of future “Sustainability.now” and “SystemsThinking.now” –courses.

Sustainable Development Training Program KEKO is a prospective Minor for all students at the University of Turku. It consists of a year-long core course (10 credits) as well as optional, sustainable development courses (minimum 15 credits) organized by different faculties and other universities and organizations. KEKO has been literally a phenomenon since birth. Since 2008, a multidisciplinary, long-term group-based and phenomenon learning- based course has brought together 40 students each year to reflect on the different dimensions and challenges of sustainable development. The year-long KEKO core course is long enough to look at complex phenomena and the student’s commitment to both sustainable development and teamwork. The KEKO year has been described by many students as a life-changing experience. “It’s probably the best course I have completed at the university” a former student recently described in his letter.

One of the key elements of KEKO is that most of the learning takes place in multidisciplinary teams, into which students are divided in the beginning of the year. Each team receives a theme, which is studied from the perspectives of the different dimensions of sustainable development. As an example, during this year, one of the themes was “Domestic use of fire-wood” and another one “Fashion”. During the year, students will gain an in-depth view of both their theme and the various dimensions of sustainable development: ecological, social, economic and cultural. Students learn that dimensions cannot be viewed in isolation, but they are all connected.

Above all, KEKO’s strength lies in the fact that students learn working life competence, dialogue, and what collective expertise and group intelligence mean in practice. During the KEKO course, students leave prejudices and learn to work in a team. Respect for other disciplines will increase. In  multidisciplinary teams, students learn to understand what they know and how their skills are related to the nature of the disciplines they study. It is also important that KEKO is a safe context for experimenting with co-operation and , sometimes, failure. KEKO offers a safe way to understand that no one in the world can change it alone. Things happen only by influencing and co-operating with others. Contradictions and their solutions are part of life.

During the Turku Workshop 7.5.2019, the perspective was in the afternoon changed to futures thinking and systems thinking as tools for making the sustainable futures: How could we strengthen the power of the co-learning and co-creating by using the idea of alternative futures as tools to dispose the possibilities that may exist at any (given) time and place? How could we start identifying the future images of various forms of sustainabilities as well as the relations and dynamics between them? Instead of pretending to “predict the future[i]“, a very classic method, a form of a futures table learns how to envision futures as an open and complex process with an endless flow of alternative images. It shows the power of narrating and innovating new paths for the future, and how multiple perspectives and even conflicting images must be taken into consideration as a basis for actions in the present.

[i] “The future” cannot be “predicted,” but “preferred futures” can and should be envisioned, invented, implemented, continuously evaluated, revised, and re-envisioned.” Jim Dator, Advancing Futures: Futures Studies in Higher Education. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2002)

Blog by Sari Puustinen and Anna Kirveennummi, Finland Futures Research Centre, University of Turku

Photos: Laura Riuttanen

How to integrate climate change solutions and circular economy in teaching? What climate related projects are currently going on in the Lahti region? Warmly welcome to the workshop that is arranged as part of the Climate University project! The venue is the new Lahti campus Mukkula.

On Monday focus is e.g. on how Finland’s climate policy is put into practice in the Lahti region (Canemure project); how the City of Lahti offers companies opportunities for climate partnerships with Lahti Region Development and Lahti University of Applied Sciences (“Ilmastohaaste”); and how Lahti, as the first city in the world, trial a personal carbon trading scheme (CitiCAP project).

Tuesday starts with an excursion to renewable energy and waste/recycling facilities in the region. We visit Kymijärvi power plant, where a new bioenergy plant is being built in order to replace use of coal in 2020, and Kujala waste and recycling centre. The afternoon continues with how to integrate the digital learning material circular.now in teaching, and how to strengthen the connections to working life.

Please find the program here. The two-day workshop is held in English.

Sign up for the workshop here (until 3.6.): https://www.webropolsurveys.com/S/84CA1FA04D5BD321.par

Please feel free to forward the invitation.

Welcome!

In this post we’ll an update on the Climate University needs assessment

Starting point: what are the skills needed to solve the grand challenges of climate change and sustainability?

One of the main aims of the Climate University project is to produce new educational materials based on the needs of the Finnish higher education field. The selection of materials is based on what materials are most needed in climate and sustainability education in Finnish universities.  In addition to wholly new materials we will produce smaller additions to the popular Climate.now (http://www.climatenow.fi/ ) To support the decisions on selection of materials, a needs assessment was conducted earlier this year.

In November 2018, we held the first kick-off workshop in Tiedekulma, at the University of Helsinki. The opening theme in the kick-off workshop was to examine the question of

“What kind of expertise (education) is needed in the near future, in order to answer the challenges of climate change and sustainability?”

After an interactive urban orienteering –themed interview of experts from various branches of the Finnish society, the workshop participants had a lively discussion on what the relevant skills and areas of expertise would be. Summarised, the main areas considered crucial for future education in the discussion were:

• Multi-disciplinarity – crossing the traditional borders of natural (or technical, engineering) vs human (sociological) sciences is necessary
• Holistic understanding of the challenges is required and systems thinking is important. It is important to try to see the bigger picture and not look at the challenges from a single, narrow angle
• Impactful decisions are based on data and statistics, to but it is equally important to keep in mind the personal, human perspective (choices, values, ethics, principles) and create an emotional connection to the challenges, to bring about change in the society
• Values and ethics should be included in the discussion of climate change and sustainability.
• Science communication is key. Academic knowledge needs to be communicated to the decision makers, but academics equally need to understand political decision-making
• Including the private sector and markets in answering the challenges and considering finances and the economics is needed, and (green technology) business opportunities and innovations need to be recognized. However, focusing too much on innovations and technical solutions may hinder grasping the bigger picture of the challenges.
• Consumer perspective is important to consider – green choices need to be made easy. Sustainability education (in e.g. circular economy) in schools is necessary, to educate responsible citizens and customers of the future.

Specifically, we were urged by the participants not to fall for “silo mentality” or to classify materials of questionnaire themes by typical topical classifications. Therefore, the above listed themes were adopted as the basis for themes charted in the needs assessment questionnaire. Based on the project plan and the kick-off workshop feedback, both described above, a survey form was drafted. The survey was implemented using an online questionnaire and was answers were collected from January to March 2019.

The needs assessment survey: what did we as a community find important?

The survey received in total 49 responses. Most of the responses were from University personnel, which is the largest group of people forming the Climate University community. The respondents backgrounds were distributed rather evenly among the Finnish universities and the respondents generally represented more than one faculty or department at each university. Additionally to the universities’ representatives, we received multiple answers from other sections of the society such as schools, NGO’s and government institutes.

Statistics

In the “Materials” section of the questionnaire we asked the respondents to evaluate (i) the levels of need for materials and (ii) the respective expertise in their potential production in their organisation. The question included a numeric answer on a scale of 1 to 5 to each of the seven themes selected as well as a freeform additional comment (optional). The distribution of answers by the themes is shown below:

In addition to the averages and standard deviations of the numerical answers, we additionally calculated the difference between the need and expertise reported by the participants. This difference, which we here labeled “skill gap” can be taken to represent the need of outside expertise (or similarly the capability to offer expertise to others, if expertise > need; i.e. skill gap is negative). Please note this calculation is not a robust scientific one, but rather arbitrary metric we derived to have at least some measure for the overall balance of needs and expertise, as well as a measure of need for collaboration between the various universities.

From the statistics, we proposed three conclusions can be drawn:

• The overall demand is highest (mean of ‘need’) for the two themes as of multi-disciplinarity and holistic understanding.
• For the themes of ethics and values and consumer perspective, the discrepancy between estimated need and expertise (mean skill gap) is the highest, indicating an overall lack of expertise on these topics among the participating organisations.
• The consumer perspective and private sector and markets themes feature the widest distributions (highest standard deviation) of ‘skill gap’, which we propose could be taken as a sign that co-operation between the organisations would be especially beneficial in these topics.

Freeform comments

Of the themes offered, multi-disciplinarity and holistic understanding  gathered the largest amount of supporting comments and propositions, e.g.:

“Especially in the technical areas, we need to be exposed to a view of the whole and how our endeavours fit in to healing the human condition and the planet!”

“I think we could make use of more material/cases on the holistic understanding of reasons behind climate change”

“Ilmastonmuutos systeemiajattelun valossa”

“Risk assessment, perception and communication”

The themes of consumer perspective, science communication private sector and markets also well represented among the comments:

“How to cooperate with companies and other organizations on climate issues: project work module” (Private sector and markets)

“New technological innovations emerging from the need to cut down carbon emissions – dealing with energy production, mobility solutions and businesses” (Private sector and markets)

“Not very much integrated to present  curriculum? Is of great importance.” (Science communication)

“Miten nostaa ilmastoaihe vakavaan keskusteluun monialaisessa ja kiireen vaivaamassa organisaatiossa? Miten puhutellaan johtoa tehokkaasti? Miten saadaan organisaatiosta irti parhaat tehot ilmastokysymyksessä?” (Science communication)

“reasoned discussion on how encouraging individual choices might spill over into demands on better regulation – instead of mutual stand-still & wait” (Consumer perspective)

“Yes, this is important  but why do we still want to talk about customers and consumers? People are becoming producers, and individuals’ role should be rethought.” (Consumer perspective)

Outside of the pre-selected themes, multiple respondents suggested in the freeform comments that a basic course on sustainability would be needed:

“Basics of sustainability e.g. based on planetary boundary and donut approaches. Explanations on each of the themes presented in both approaches.”

“Introduction to Sustainability: We propose a on-line course “Introduction to Sustainability” to provide  comprehensive basic/starting knowledge and skills for master students with various backgrounds.”

“On behalf of research group LUT/School of Energy Systems/Sustainability Science: Digital course “Introduction to Sustainability” to provide an overview of the variety of sustainability issues related to natural resources, technologies, sustainable and profitable business models, climate changes, food and water, systemic thinking etc.”

 

Summarising the survey results – the main conclusions:

• – Themes considered most important: inter-disciplinarity and holistic understanding
• – Sustainability (introductionary) course was mentioned and wished for many times!
• – Topics that got several mentions, and align well with project goals: Industry / business collaboration and school collaboration
• – Science communication raised many positive comments and was seen as important
• – Other possible topics for smaller materials include for example
• Climate change in Arctic/ Nordic areas, Ethics & values, Consumer perspective & active citizenship, Climate Law and
• Data basis

Further developing the ideas

In the second Climate University workshop, held at the University of Jyväskylä 28.-29. March 2019, the results so far from the questionnaire were presented to the wider Climate University community.

From the basis of the survey result and discussion in the workshop, we decided to go forward with two main themes: (1) Introduction course to sustainability and (2) an ambitious, advanced course of systems thinking for unde4rstanding global change. We also decided to pursue smaller courses / materials for school and private sector co-operation, namely (3) a high school level online course based on Climate.now and (4) a project course based on working life challenges from industry and other collaborating partner organisations. There were also several ideas for smaller materials, the ideas of which we decided to refine.

The preliminary concepts for the four primary materials were discussed in small working groups in a session of the Jyväskylä workshop. Based on the survey results and preceding discussion, the groups discussed the concepts and summarized their ideas in form of quick posters. These ideas will add to the material available for further refinement of the course and material concepts.

To be continued…

Working groups have now been assigned for preliminary planning and refining of the ideas, and we will give an update of the progress at the next workshop in Turku, in May 7 to 8th. You are most welcome to discuss these materials and interesting themes with us!

The final needs assessment report, 14 May 2019.

Climate University goes Turku 7.-8.5.: Innovations in education for sustainable future

Program and registration: https://www.lyyti.fi/reg/climate_uni

Also registration to the next Climate University workshop is now open! Workshop on Circular economy and renewable energy solutions will be hold in Lahti 10.-11.6.2019.

Check the coming workshops, as well as greetings from the past two workshops, from the Climate University blog: https://blogs.helsinki.fi/climateuniversity/workshops/

“Climate University goes Jyväskylä – teaching and learning for sustainable future” workshop was held in Jyväskylä on 29 March 2019

Vice rector of the Univeristy of Jyväskylä, Professor Marja-Leena Laakso opening the Climate University goes Jyväskylä workshop. Photo by Laura Riuttanen.

Opening words by Marja-Leena Laakso, Vice Rector of the University of Jyväskylä

Vice rector Marja-Leena Laakso warmly welcomed nearly 50 participants across disciplines and institutes to the second Climate University workshop. In her opening words, she addressed the need for education in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to stop global warming. As a Professor of Early Childhood Education, she brought up the worry of children and the young on their future environment. However, at the end of her speech the vice rector said: “There is hope”. The timely role of Climate University project as a producer of high-quality digital education material was appreciated and acknowledged by the vice rector. For us members of the established Climate University network, her opening words were of great worth.

Video recording of the opening can be viewed here.

Aims of the Climate University

Project coordinator Laura Riuttanen outlined the aims of the Climate University project for the next two years: to make two new moocs (massive open online courses) and smaller additional material to existing Climate.now course. Laura Riuttanen’s presentation can be viewed in the link above, directly after Professor Marja-Leena Laakso’s presentation. Mikko Äijälä presented results of the online questionnaire sent for participants prior to the workshop. The message was that a holistic, interdisciplinary approach in education material is called for, with new focus areas on consumerism and ethics.

Commentary from working life

After Laura Riuttanen’s and Mikko Äijälä’s floors, we heard views of Development Manager Hannu Kapanen from Regional Council in Central Finland, Environmental Education Specialist Tanja Tuulinen from ELY centre and Environmental Specialist Minna Salonen from Cental Finland Health Care District. The need of communication skills in working life was emphasized, and the reliable, timely information for stakeholders, politicians and health care personnel called for.

After these floors a vigorous and excited conversation broke out. Comments on the need for popularization of science were thrown by several participants. The need of good communication and pedagogic skills were recognized by the audience, too. Student delegates were concerned about co-operating with emotion-based actions and unwillingness to contemplate new environmental information.

Holistic and nexus approaches

“You may leave the village but the village never leaves you” crystallized Professor Tuula Tuhkanen, the local host, in her presentation referring to her work on sanitation in developing countries. Professor Tuhkanen initialized a nexus approach to the Sustainable Development Goals of United Nations to be implemented as a part of the new Sustainability.now mooc. There will be a Jyväskylä Summer school short course in 5-8.8.2019.

Professor Janne Kotiaho introduced the recently established School of Resource Wisdom. The Wisdom is a University of Jyväskylä’s network for scientists pursuing well-being for all the species inhabiting the Earth. Professor Kotiaho’s presentation opened the dialog between Climate University and the Wisdom network.

In the end of this session, Lecturer Vesa Lappalainen brought regards from the Faculty of Information Technology by presenting the online-learning open technology that his team has been developing and that could contribute to the aims of the seminar participants.

Past, present and future of online education

As a concluding presentation of the day, we had a live stream by Professor Thomas Hatfield from the State University of California. Professor Hatfield overviewed the past, present and future of online education. Compared to the situation a couple of decades ago, the communication has improved – not only in terms of hardware and software, but also in terms of interaction. Online platforms enable immediate answers to student’s questions. The important future aspects according to Professor Hatfield were incorporating artificial intelligence to assist in online courses and feasible transfer of credits across institutes. He stressed that “the real meaning of online learning, however, does not come from the computers and programs. It comes from the professor-student interaction”. He emphasized co-operation and building of trust, which suited well in the context of Climate University workshop. Recorded presentation by prof. Hatfield can be viewed here.

Working in small groups

In the end of the seminar day, the participants formed five small groups and discussed about each of their own topics regarding the material that the Climate Univeristy will produce. The two courses and thus two groups took working names of Sustainability.now and Solutions.now following the previously established nomenclature of Climate.now. Third group started outlining the possible plug-ins to the Climate.now -course based on the experiences on using the material on bachelor level courses. Fourth group discussed about the climate education in primary schools. The fifth group was planning how the concrete working-life related innovations will be implemented as a part of the Climate University project.  In the near future, the more precise contents of the actions of the Climate University will be established, and these discussions were a good basis for that.

The Climate University goes Jyväskylä was a successful event, incorporating experts to exchange information horizontally and prepare educational plans in a constructive atmosphere. Jyväskylä warmly thanks the Climate University project management (Laura Riuttanen and Mikko Äijälä), the seminar speakers and participants for accepting the invitation to visit us. See you next time in Turku!

Text by: Pauliina Salmi, University of Jyväskylä 

Workshop was held at the University of Jyväskylä Mattilanniemi campus, aside the beautiful lake Jyväsjärvi. Photo by Laura Riuttanen. 

Next Climate University workshop is around the corner! Welcome to join – also remotely.

Climate University goes Jyväskylä: Teaching and learning for a sustainable future

Location: University of Jyväskylä, Ylistönrinne (Survontie 9), Ambiotica YA

Program, Fri 29th March 2019

8:30 Coffee
9:00 Opening words
Marja-Liisa Laakso, vice rector, University of Jyväskylä
9:15 Climate University, next steps
Laura Riuttanen & Mikko Äijälä, University of Helsinki
Sari Puustinen, University of Turku
Tina Nyfors, LUT University
Climate.now in Jyväskylä
Elisa Vallius, University of Jyväskylä
10:15 Commentary
Hannu Koponen, Development Manager, Regional Council of Central Finland
Tanja Tuulinen, Environmental education specialist, ELY Centre
Minna Salonen, Environmental specialist, Central Finland Health Care District 
10:45 Coffee
11:00 Jyväskylä perspectives:
Towards SDG’s – Nexus of water, Food and Energy
Tuula Tuhkanen, University of Jyväskylä
Resource wisdom
Janne Kotiaho, University of Jyväskylä
Intelligent learning spaces
Vesa Lappalainen, University of Jyväskylä
12:00 Lunch
13:00 Online learning: past, present and future
Tom Hatfield, University of North Carolina
13:30 Workshop: Climate University next steps
14:30 Conclusions
15:00 Adjourn

Further information:
Tuula Tuhkanen (040-5345120), Laura Riuttanen

**Event is full and registration closed, but you can still ask for extra spaces from Tuula.**

You can also participate remotely!
Link: https://meet.lync.com/jyu-fi/paulmasa/96C097G4
Host Pauliina Salmi

Climate University is a project of 11 universities to develop and foster higher education on climate change and sustainability in Finland in 2019-2020, in collaboration with working life and schools.

As part of the project, we collect concrete sustainability challenges from working life, to which multidisciplinary groups of university students could propose solutions to. Challenges should connect either to

1) climate change: solutions, emissions, adaptation, attitudes…

or

2) sustainable development: ecological, social, economic, or cultural…

For example, in Autumn 2018 the “Leadership for sustainable change” course (www.leadforsust.fi), our students designed concrete project plans for change leadership towards circular economy.

The challenge should consist of:

• title of the challenge
• collaboration partner and contact person
• description of the challenge
• possible special requests regarding the solution / collaboration / schedule etc.

Challenges can be in English or in Finnish. We are happy to help you in the formulation of the challenge. First round of challenges is collected by 5 April 2019.

One or more of the challenges will be chosen to the Climate University Turku workshop 7.-8.5.2019, where we present innovation pedagogy to the university teachers. If your challenge is chosen to the workshop, we wish you could participate the workshop to present your challenge and hear the solutions. Idea is to further develop this collaborative concept and incorporate all the challenges to suitable university courses.

To join Climate University Challenges, send your proposal to Laura Riuttanen (firstname.surname a helsinki.fi).

Climate University is a joint project of 11 universities in Finland to foster climate change and sustainability education. In 2019-2020, we will produce new online courses and materials on these topics and arrange workshops for university teachers and other collaborators. The first Climate University workshop was held in Helsinki in November 2018, and the next ones are taking place in Jyväskylä 29.3.2019, and in Turku 7.-8.5.2019.

The Jyväskylä workshop, “Teaching and learning for sustainable future”, concentrates on the outcomes of the Climate University assessment of needs which was conducted in February 2019. Based on the assessment, we will collaboratively come up with the initial idea of the new materials to be produced within the Climate University project. We will also hear local perspectives, and commentary from collaborators and experts of various fields. See program for more details.

In the Turku workshop, “Innovations in education for sustainable future”, we demonstrate phenomenon based learning in sustainability challenges, as well as innovation pedagogy for sustainability challenges from the work-life. We will also learn how to utilize methods of the futures studies in education for sustainable future. Finalized proposals for the new Climate University materials will also be presented for commentary by the Climate University community in the Turku workshop.

Registration for Jyväskylä workshop is open until 21.3.: https://link.webropolsurveys.com/S/F1A80ED27F8001D0

Registration for Turku workshop is open until 30.4.: https://www.lyyti.fi/reg/climate_uni

The first Climate University workshop was organized in Tiedekulma, in Helsinki, in November 2018. Below, you will find a short summary of the main events, discussions and conclusions of this kick-off workshop.

Opening of the event

The event was opened by Chancellor Kaarle Hämeri and Chief Digital Officer (CDO) Jaakko Kurhila from University of Helsinki. Chancellor Hämeri highlighted the mission of universities of bringing science to the society – this aspect is also at the heart of our project of bringing together actors from various branches of the society with a common agenda of answering the climate and sustainability challenges in the field of education.

CDO Kurhila proposed an idea of a digital constitution for universities, an idea that is certainly timely at a moment when in addition to digital materials and services, as also education is adapting more and more online–oriented teaching and learning methods.

Orientation and orienteering: what is needed to solve the sustainability crisis?

The first activity of the first day was “urban orienteering”, where the participants were tasked to find the answer for the underlying, major question of the entire CU project:

What kind of expertise (education) is needed in the near future, in order to answer the challenges of climate change and sustainability?

To answer this, the participants toured the city in small groups and interviewed people from various government institutes, NGOs, economic experts and many other relevant societal actors.

The weather favored us, with a sunny day and overall it seemed the orienteering activity was well received!

The thoughts and findings of the orienteering were summarized in the afternoon. The groups’ reports were thoughtful and varied, but some main themes seemed to emerge. In synthesis, the expertise and skills that were found to be the ones most acutely needed were:

·         Multidisciplinary – crossing the traditional borders of natural (or technical, engineering) vs human (sociological) sciences is necessary

·         Holistic understanding of the challenges is required and systems thinking is important. It is important to try to see the bigger picture and not look at the challenges from a single, narrow angle

·         Impactful decisions are based on data and statistics, to  but it is equally important to keep in mind the personal, human perspective (choices, values, ethics, principles) and create an emotional connection to the challenges, to bring about change in the society

·         Science communication is key. Academic knowledge needs to be communicated to the decision makers, but academics equally need to understand political decision-making

·         Including the private sector and markets in answering the challenges and considering finances and the economics is needed, and (green technology) business opportunities and innovations need to be recognized. However, focusing too much on innovations and technical solutions may hinder grasping the bigger picture of the challenges.

·         Consumer perspective is important to consider – green choices need to be made easy. Sustainability education (in e.g. circular economy) in schools is necessary, to educate responsible citizens and customers of the future.

We were very impressed with the results of this activity, and the thoughtful analysis of the groups, and proposed these topics also to be taken as the basis for our needs assessment that was recently conducted!

Innovation workshop: how can universities and private sector come together to advance education?

On Tuesday afternoon, we delved into the topic of collaborating over the traditional borders of academia and private sector. We had a delightfully broad representation from our partner companies and other organizations (Sitra, Climate Leadership Coalition, NollaE oy, Useless Company, Demos Helsinki, ESRI Finland, AW-Energy, CGI, Pöyry, Nordea, Climate-KIC), who first presented their perspectives on climate and sustainability challenges and prospects for collaboration on educational activities.

We then divided the participants to groups which included representatives both from education sector and businesses, and tasked them to come up with forms of collaboration that would be beneficial for both the companies and the universities. Again, the outcome was a thoughtful discussion that identified many of the challenges but also potential solutions for them. As a summary, the main conclusions were the following.

• There are incentives for the enterprises to collaborate with schools and universities (promote teaching relevant skills, public relations, research and development etc.).
• One major challenge is the time requirements for co-operation, both for the often busy company representatives and the teachers. There should be a pre-planned template for the collaboration, so that it is quick and easy for the companies to evaluate the collaboration proposal and say yes or no.
• Collaboration should include genuine interaction between the enterprises and the students and it should include regular meetings. Students and company contacts should both be included in planning of the co-operative projects.
• As a concrete proposal: project work based on challenges presented by the companies. Student groups should be multi-disciplinary.

We hear these messages forward, and will include these challenges in the needs assessment questions. Our aim is to try to refine a functional concept for how a fruitful collaboration could best be best.

To wrap up this very positive first workshop day, we had workshop dinner, (made entirely of leftover raw materials!) at restaurant Loop in Lapinlahti.

Climate.now

Climate.now is an online course, or learning material, provided at the University of Helsinki MOOC platform: www.climatenow.fi (in Finnish Ilmasto.nyt, www.ilmastonyt.fi). Anyone can study the material for free any time and get a MOOC certificate from the platform. Eight universities in Finland offer courses based on the material: University of Helsinki – also via open university, LUT University, Aalto University, Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, University of Eastern Finland, University of Oulu, and University of Tampere. In the Climate.now workshop we heard experiences from these courses. We also heard that the material has been used by other organizations, like Protect our winters and Mothers in business. We discussed the opportunity to make Climate.now more international, and the opportunity to make a shorter easily accessible version to attract more laymen.

Climate University Goes to Schools

As a parallel workshop session, we had an event where we discussed potential for co-operation between different levels of education in Finland, with representatives from basic to university education. We had short presentations on past and existing successful activities in schools, related to climate and sustainability, and got a wide range of positive examples of such education inspiringly arranged!

In the main discussions of the school workshop, the following conclusions were reached:

• The Climate University community should influence the planning of the upcoming, new national curricula for the Finnish schools. We should promote including climate and sustainability topics in the school curricula. We should prepare a petition on this for the government officials in charge of the preparation work (by February 2019). Such a petition should be signed by the university representatives, but also widely by companies and NGO’s.

• In was noted most teachers use existing course books, and may be hesitant to use online material. It was proposed the Climate University community could endorse school textbooks that cover the environment / sustainability topics, with some sort of a “seal of approval”. Same is applicable for online material, and coordination / collection / pre-selection of online material would be beneficial.

• Themed periods of “phenomenon learning” could be based on climate and sustainability topics. These should cover a wide range of subjects (both natural and human sciences topics).

• Climate / sustainability university level courses should be tailored to the needs of schools (lyceum) education. The three components that should be considered are: 1) students should get course credits at their schools (lyceum), or a diploma 2) the students should get university level study credits 3) completing a number of these studies should form a flexible pathway to university studies.

Again, these topics will be included and furthered, and we selected the main ones to be further examined for our needs assessment survey. The group concurred that we should start a working group to promote inclusion of climate and sustainability topics to the school curriculums in 2019 and that a permanent network or a forum of some sort would be needed to effectively communicate.

In these constructive and optimistic spirits, we were happy to conclude the opening workshop of our Climate university project! We would like to once more wholeheartedly thank all the participants who helped us make this event the positive experience it definitely was! We are looking forward to the next workshop, held in Jyväskylä, with more information in the next blog post!

  Mikko and Laura