Enhancing online climate change education: distance and conventional university collaboration for a Master's curriculum

See also a longer version: ‘Expanding Citizen and Practitioner Engagement with the Climate Change Challenge Through Collaborative Masters Curriculum, Open Educational Resources, E-learning Communities and Virtual Mobility’, presented at a conference of European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EDTU), Zermatt, Switzerland, September 2010 (www.eadtu.nl/.../Accepted%20Presentations%20for%20Newsletter.pd).

This paper analyses the different ways in which both distance and conventional universities engage with learning and teaching. It argues that rather than seeing their roles as institutionally compartmentalised, there is much benefit in delivering online education through an institutional collaboration which develops synergies with a potential to contribute to citizen and professional practitioner empowerment, in this case, for debates about climate change. The example the paper draws on is that of a European Region Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students (Erasmus) project ‘The Lived experience of climate change (LECH-e): interdisciplinary e-module development and virtual mobility’. The project brings together five distance and three conventional universities across six EU countries, plus the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU), to create a Master’s curriculum in the area of climate change. It argues that universities across Europe have complementary strengths, both in terms of their disciplinary expertise and the ways in which they engage with students. Understanding the complex, real-world challenge of climate change requires a holistic approach which draws on these complementary strengths through collaborative work. Keywords: conventional universities; distance-learning universities; Master’s curriculum in climate change; collaboration.

This paper analyses the different ways in which both distance and
conventional universities engage with learning and teaching. It argues that
rather than seeing their roles as institutionally compartmentalised, there
is much benefit in delivering online education through an institutional
collaboration which develops synergies with a potential to contribute to citizen
and professional practitioner empowerment, in this case, for debates about
climate change. The example the paper draws on is that of a European Region
Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students (Erasmus) project ‘The
Lived experience of climate change (LECH-e): interdisciplinary e-module
development and virtual mobility’. The project brings together five distance
and three conventional universities across six EU countries, plus the European
Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU), to create a Master’s
curriculum in the area of climate change. It argues that universities across
Europe have complementary strengths, both in terms of their disciplinary
expertise and the ways in which they engage with students. Understanding the
complex, real-world challenge of climate change requires a holistic approach
which draws on these complementary strengths through collaborative work.
Keywords: conventional universities; distance-learning universities; Master’s
curriculum in climate change; collaboration.

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