Are you interested in making a positive change in this world?

Then engage in developing your own Changemaking Journeys!

What? Contents:

In this course, we will engage in three modules in three teaching periods with content around interpersonal leadership, self-awareness, and psychological flexibility (module 1), transformational leadership, collaboration and prosocial behavior (module 2), transformative action, stakeholder engagement and community co-design (module 3).

Module 1: Interpersonal leadership, self-awareness, and psychological flexibility which deals with personal qualities, values and behaviour, self-awareness and psychological flexibility. The module focuses on the individual within its own environment. In this module, students mostly engage with ‘who they are’ and how they act within their environment, i.e. contributing to their intrapersonal or self-awareness competencies as well as their values-thinking competencies. Students will reflect on and take responsibility for their own development by understanding their personality traits, core values, and desired areas for enhancement. In this module, students will develop the competencies on how to enhance the desired developments.  

Module 2: Transformational leadership, collaboration and prosocial behavior. The second module builds on module 1 by focusing on working sustainably and effectively in diverse teams. In this module, students mostly engage with how they are embedded in groups, how they work in groups and how groups collaborate with other groups to improve their ability to reach certain goals. Students will learn about taking a leading role by defining group purposes and group dynamics, building a shared vision, and enhancing fairness, intrinsic motivation and effectiveness within and beyond teams. Non-violent, culture-sensitive communication will also be part of this module.

Module 3: Transformative action, stakeholder engagement and community co-design. The third module focuses on engaging with stakeholders and in community co-design. In this module, students will learn how to navigate complex interactions with different societal groups with different knowledges, values and worldviews (interpersonal competencies). They will explicitly build their learning experiences on the insights and reflection from module 1 and 2

How? Methods, pedagogies:

In this course, students will engage in a variety of teaching methods. Throughout the whole course, students will continuously engage in discussion and (self-)reflection under the supervision of trained coaches. In addition, this course entails a strong flipped-classroom element, that is students will read or watch course materials to build a conceptual base that students can use in applied settings of their own group. Further, they will be asked to apply the insights from the materials and coaching sessions in daily life, in-house projects (e.g. when reflecting on prosocial behaviour in study groups), as well as in field-based projects (e.g. when collaborating with societal stakeholders to engage in community co-design).

For which results? Assessments, evaluations:

For this course, we use a competencies-based assessment, following the framework of key competencies in sustainability (Brundiers et al. 2021, Wiek et al. 2011). During the course, students will continuously collect evidence for their learning in a portfolio. In this portfolio, they can e.g. create their own dynamic learning agenda or audio-visual learning history and use feedback logs. In the assessment, we will then evaluate the written/recorded products in the portfolio and engage in dialogue-based assessment. The end results of the course is a pass/fail. This is also in line with similar courses at UU, such as those at the skills academy.

Sources:

Ashoka. (n.d.). Changemaker skills. Retrieved 15.01.2024, from https://www.ashoka.org/en-us/collection/changemaker-skills

Brundiers, K., Barth, M., Cebrián, G., Cohen, M., Diaz, L., Doucette-Remington, S., … & Zint, M. (2021). Key competencies in sustainability in higher education—toward an agreed-upon reference framework. Sustainability Science, 16, 13-29.

van Rijnsoever, F. J., Sitzler, S., & Baggen, Y. (2023). The change agent teaching model: Educating entrepreneurial leaders to help solve grand societal challenges. The International Journal of Management Education, 21(3), 100893.

Vervoort, J. M., Rutting, L., Kok, K., Hermans, F. L. P., Veldkamp, T., Bregt, A. K., & van Lammeren, R. (2012). Exploring dimensions, scales, and cross-scale dynamics from the perspectives of change agents in social–ecological systems. Ecology and Society, 17(4).

Wiek A, Withycombe L, Redman CL (2011) Key competencies in sustainability: a reference framework for academic program development. Sustain Sci 6(2):203–218. https://doi.org/10.1007/s1162 5‑011‑0132‑6

Interested?

The program is open to all master students of the Department of SD. This includes the masters Energy Science, Innovation Sciences, Sustainable Business and Innovation, Sustainable Development, and Water Science and Management. Participation is voluntary. The program is extracurricular, there are no EC points. Over the year we expect that you will spend about 28 hours on the program. This does not include time for activities that you undertake to develop specific skills, such as participating in workshops. Students that participated in a similar module last year, indicated that it was a very valuable addition to their personal development. 

When you participate in the program, we expect you to continue throughout the courses you decided on. Space might be limited, so we are looking for students who take program seriously.

If you are interested in this unique opportunity to broaden your own skillset, please send an e-mail to Kristina Bogner.

When?

In every period, there will be three meetings of 2 hours each. We schedule these meetings together with the students.