English
Blue Science
Open for Every Student from Anywhere in the World - Blue Science – a transdisciplinary course discussing social and ecological responsbilities - Thursday - 12.00 > 16.00 CEST - Starting on 18 April 2024
Blue Science is an online course designed to reflect our personal and disciplinary approaches to science and transformation - what are our tools - by choice and by habit - for finding meaningful knowledge about the world? What do different approaches look like? And could they be combined for the better?
Blue Science is a seminar-style course where frontal teaching hardly ever occurs. Through highly interactive didactic methods, students engage in dialogue with each other. Once a week, all students take part in the video conference and prepare assignments via a digital learning platform. In the second half of the semester, students work in small groups to develop a research design for a transdisciplinary project.
What to expect: Weekly synchronous online course meetings using Zoom online video software (Thursdays, 10am - 2pm Berlin Summer Time / GMT+2, 12 meetings in total). - Highly interactive course design with almost no lecture-style teaching - you will be interacting with other participants most of the time. Be prepared to speak in English and activate your camera. - Reading assignments between sessions - Several small individual writing assignments throughout the semester - One or two larger group assignments
6 ECTS graded course for TU Berlin students
If you are interested, please send an email to Anton Schaefer (he/his) a.schaefer@tu-berlin.de.
Blue Science - Course Description
Learning Outcomes
Knowledge of:
- social and ecological crises
- internationally agreed sustainability goals and their metrics
- approaches to the socio-ecological transformation of society
- discourses on transformative science
- concepts of inter- and transdisciplinarity
- toolboxes for transdisciplinary research
Skills:
- in leading discussions in groups
- in working together in small, interdisciplinary and international groups
- in choosing good research questions
- in communicating possible research projects
Competencies:
- to reflect on personal perspectives on social and environmental responsibility
- to reflect on specific perspectives and methods of one's own discipline
- to collectively reflect on the heterogeneity of perceptions and knowledge related to social and ecological crises
- to reflect the roles science could, should and does play in processes of transformation
- to identify possible contributions of the individual sciences to the development and achievement of global sustainability goals
- to collaboratively design transdisciplinary research projects
- to cooperate with others for a just, social and ecological transition
- to cope with the dilemma arising from the ideals of transformative science and the strive for scientific neutrality
- to cope with the decision-making dilemma arising from personal, disciplinary and societal responsibility
Contents
- learning and values in interactive courses.
- social and environmental crises
- the scientific method – background and disciplinary differences
- classification systems for academic disciplines
- transformative science – idea and critique
- personal and disciplinary *lenses*
- multi-, inter- and transdisciplinarity
- diversity of perspectives in the course
- possible contributions of one's own discipline
- possible contributions of the other disciplines represented
- development of a transdisciplinary research question