Managing Sustainability (Autumn 2020)

Abstract

This course is a practice-based course where the students will learn how to manage sustainability.

The world is facing severe economic and ecological challenges in relation to climate change, rising population and not least a growing middle class. The International Panel for Climate Change, IPCC, has given us 12 years to act and reduce CO₂ emissions. In a Danish context this means that we should reduce our average per capital CO₂ emission from 17 tons to 2-3 tons. This challenges politics, innovation, technology development and not least social behaviour. Denmark has made a national goal to be CO₂ neutral in 2050 (with no plan how to do it yet), and the City of Copenhagen has made a climate plan aiming to be CO₂ neutral in 2025.

In this course the students will be introduced to politics and technological development around sustainable transitions. The course will be planned around a number of specific real-life cases within e.g. smart city development, CO₂ accounting, smart electricity, and waste management. The case owners will pose concrete challenges for the students to work on. The students will work in groups proposing conceptual solutions and discussing the chosen cases. The case owners will help the students get access to relevant data and stakeholders, just as they will be giving the students feedback during the process. The cases include challenges around managing sustainable development. The conceptual solutions may include strategy development, conceptual design solutions, organising of partnerships, and guidelines for politics and citizens involvement. Besides working practically on the challenges, the students will have to discuss the case and their own solutions through literature from innovation studies, design theory, and social science and technology studies.

After the course the students will have hands-on experience and a basic understanding of work practices around sustainable development in the real world. They will be better qualified to  contribute to concrete solutions for city planning departments, environmental companies, and other relevant actors within sustainable development.

Furthermore, the cases at the course may also open possible access to further BA thesis work. 

Description

This course is a practice-based course where the students will learn how to manage sustainability.

The world is facing severe economic and ecological challenges in relation to climate change, rising population and not least a growing middle class. The International Panel for Climate Change, IPCC, has given us 12 years to act and reduce CO₂ emissions. In a Danish context this means that we should reduce our average per capital CO₂ emission from 17 tons to 2-3 tons. This challenges politics, innovation, technology development and not least social behaviour. Denmark has made a national goal to be CO₂ neutral in 2050 (with no plan how to do it yet), and the City of Copenhagen has made a climate plan aiming to be CO₂ neutral in 2025.

In this course the students will be introduced to politics and technological development around sustainable transitions. The course will be planned around a number of specific real-life cases within e.g. smart city development, CO₂ accounting, smart electricity, and waste management. The case owners will pose concrete challenges for the students to work on. The students will work in groups proposing conceptual solutions and discussing the chosen cases. The case owners will help the students get access to relevant data and stakeholders, just as they will be giving the students feedback during the process. The cases include challenges around managing sustainable development. The conceptual solutions may include strategy development, conceptual design solutions, organising of partnerships, and guidelines for politics and citizens involvement. Besides working practically on the challenges, the students will have to discuss the case and their own solutions through literature from innovation studies, design theory, and social science and technology studies.

After the course the students will have hands-on experience and a basic understanding of work practices around sustainable development in the real world. They will be better qualified to contribute to concrete solutions for city planning departments, environmental companies, and other relevant actors within sustainable development.

Furthermore, the cases at the course may also open possible access to further BA thesis work.

Formal prerequisites

Intended learning outcomes

After the course, the student should be able to:

• Account for the challenges and opportunities around managing sustainability
• Investigate and analyze a specific case of sustainable development
• Develop a conceptual solution for a specific case-challenge within sustainable development
• Account for the process behind the conceptual solution developed
• Discuss the conceptual solution in relation to literature
• Critically reflect upon the challenges and opportunities around managing sustainability

Learning activities

The course is practice based, which means there will be relatively few lectures, but the students will work independently in groups with close supervision from teachers as well as case owners.

The students will work in groups (3-5 persons) on one of the chosen cases-challenges. They will be developing conceptual solutions around the challenges given by the case-owners. There will be several mandatory assignments, where the students will be presenting the work they are doing to the teachers.

One time during the course the students are expected to present their ideas and thoughts to a panel of specialists, who will give feedback.

Course literature

The course literature is published in the course page in LearnIT.

Ordinary exam

Exam type:
D: Submission of written work with following oral, External (7-point scale)
Exam variation:
D2G: Submission for groups with following oral exam supplemented by the submission. Shared responsibility for the report.

Time and date