Educating future sustainability leaders & innovators
The project is funded by the Foundation for Innovation in Higher Education.
Project duration: 09/2022 - 02/2024
Project volume: 250.000€
Project partners
Prof. Dr Christine Volkmann: Chair of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Transformation and UNESCO Chair of Entrepreneurship and Intercultural Management.
Junior Professor Dr Philipp Trotter: Chair of Sustainability Management.
Project goals
The project "Educating future sustainability leaders & innovators" aims to develop a solution-orientated teaching and learning concept for entrepreneurial education for sustainable development (ESD). To this end, the project pursues three sub-goals:
- Students learn to think systematically and interdisciplinarily while analysing complex social change processes. In order to promote interdisciplinarity, the course is aimed at Master's students from the Faculty of Business Administration and Economics as well as Master's students from the Faculties of Design and Art, Mechanical Engineering and Safety Engineering.
- Interactive, experience-based teaching and learning methods promote design skills for sustainable development, with a focus on co-creative and action-orientated learning. In particular, methods and content from education for sustainable development (ESD) are also used.
- The transdisciplinary orientation of the project enables students to work with regional companies, NGOs and civil society to develop concrete solutions in the context of sustainability (e.g. for the circular economy) and to implement them themselves through supported business start-ups.
This gives students the opportunity to gain interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary theoretical knowledge and practical experience of sustainable entrepreneurship.
The learning and teaching concept will be designed in winter semester 2022/23 and implemented in summer semester 2023. Students, lecturers and companies are already involved in the conceptualisation phase in order to design a learning and teaching concept adapted to their needs, experiences and wishes.
After the course has been held, the learning and teaching concept will be reflected on and developed as a modular kit from which lecturers can take parts for their courses. This provides lecturers from all disciplines with an innovative training programme for integrating the topic of sustainability into their courses.
Project results
The Transformative Teaching Toolbox was developed as a modular methodological toolbox as part of the project and serves as an innovative training tool for teachers of all disciplines in higher education. In particular, it contains methods and content from education for sustainable development (ESD) with a focus on co-creative and action-orientated learning. The aim is to make it easier for lecturers to integrate the topic of sustainability into their own courses.
In addition to the methods, the toolbox contains a good practice example of their application in a specific teaching format in the form of the seminar "Circular Business Innovation", in which students developed concrete solution concepts in the context of sustainability in cooperation with regional practice organisations.
Click here to access the Transformative Teaching Toolbox.
Further information
The Westdeutsche Zeitung has published an interesting article on the seminar. It can be accessed at the following address:
www.wz.de/nrw/wuppertal/ideen-zur-kreislaufwirtschaft-fuer-bergische-unternehmen_aid-93360179
The following companies are currently taking part in the course:
