Chalmers offering a MOOC on sustainability in daily life

ChalmersX will launch its second MOOC on 8 June, Sustainability in Everyday Life. The course is directed to everyone, regardless of educational level, who is interested in learning how to live in a more sustainable and environmentally friendly manner. ChalmersX's first MOOC, which pertains to the super-material graphene, has attracted just over 8,000 participants from all over the world.

Our everyday lives present us with many different choices. What food and which clothing should I buy, how should I travel and how should I choose my electricity company? It is often difficult to determine which alternative is the best from the perspective of sustainability. In order to guide individuals who would like to live more sustainably, ChalmersX is now launching the Sustainability in Everyday Life course, which is intended for anyone interested in making more conscious choices. The course is a MOOC, which stands for massive open online course. MOOCs are offered free of charge and are accessible to anyone in the world who has a computer with an Internet connection.

Anna Nyström Claesson is a researcher and teacher in environmental systems analysis, and she is responsible for the course together with two colleagues.

"We want to give people an opportunity to make a difference by making informed and responsible choices in their everyday lives," she says. The course is based on five themes that are of interest to many people around the world: energy, climate change, food, chemicals and globalisation.

She was tempted by the idea of creating a MOOC that would be attended by thousands of people globally. Consequently, the target group for the course is broad. The only requirements to participate are having attended compulsory education, being able to read and write in English reasonably well and being able to cope with modern technology and communication.

The MOOC's aim is to help participants observe, see context and gain an understanding of the systemised thinking that forms the basis for the sustainability concept – in addition to providing guidance in terms of making sustainable choices in our everyday life. The course runs over weeks and require an estimated 6 hours of work a week from the participants.

Maria Knutson Wedel is Vice President for education at Chalmers University of Technology, as well as an initiator of the MOOCs.

"Many of our employees are experts on various aspects of sustainability, including everything from energy to ecodesign, and with their teaching and research, they contribute to our vision of 'Chalmers for a sustainable future'. We consistently work to improve how sustainability is integrated into our courses. It is thus particularly gratifying that a few experts have joined forces to offer a course on what we currently know about sustainability in everyday life. The research results will be immediately useful to anyone interested," she says.

" The ChalmersX initiative is possible thanks to our foundation. It is also a natural development of public outreach. As is the case with all universities, we have a long tradition of making research results accessible through popular science seminars, for example. As a technical university, we regard the MOOC format as a new IT-based tool for this purpose."

Sustainability in Everyday Life is the second of four MOOCs that Chalmers will offer over a period of three years. The first MOOC, Introduction to Graphene, pertains to the super-material graphene. It is a specialised course with a recommendation for prior knowledge in mathematics and physics on university level. The MOOC was launched in March, and the statistics indicate that the course is working well. There are 8,024 participants, and the level of involvement has been high from the start. There are 125 countries represented among the participants. Most of the participants live in the U.S (19 per cent), India (14 per cent) and Spain (6 per cent). The average age is 27, and 17 per cent are women.

Caption: Christel Cederberg, a Chalmers researcher and teacher in sustainable land usage, is one of the sustainability course's lecturers.
Photo: Anna Nyström Claesson

Read more about the course and watch an introduction film.

Course's website

For more information, please contact:
Maria Knutson Wedel, Vice President for education at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, +46 76-879 71 29, maria.wedel@chalmers.se

Facts about MOOCs
Chalmers' MOOC initiative is called ChalmersX, and the courses are found on the EDX learning platform.
MOOC stands for massive open online course. It is a distance learning course offered free of charge. Thousands of participants can take part, and the required teacher effort is at a minimum. The MOOC concept came into being in 2008. As opposed to traditional distance learning, MOOCs do not have any prerequisites for admission. Exams are conducted by machine, and there are platforms on which participants can get in contact with each other and discuss. The courses do not generate higher education credits, but the participants do receive a certificate for completing the course.