The current economic system is socially and environmentally unsustainable. In the past decades, more and more voices have been raised to express the necessity of rethinking the way we, as citizens, organisations and policymakers, interact, consume, create and live. To do so, we have to develop alternatives for the current system that are less resource-intensive, generate less inequalities, and, to put it simply, are sustainable for both people and the planet. Circular economic models offer this opportunity. One issue is that these models are not sufficiently taught to students, both in higher education and secondary schools. The “Rethinking pedagogical approaches and digital tools to teach circular economy” project aims at creating open source tools that help to teach and learn about circular economic models. The project gathers three partners: Université Libre de Bruxelles, the second largest French-speaking university in Belgium and the leading institution on this project, Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin, Berlin's largest university of applied sciences, and the Stars Are Circular foundation, whose mission is to facilitate the learning of circular economic models by children. This project will result in the development of four complementary digital tools that will together constitute a ready-to-be-implemented module that could fit in higher education courses related to circular economy, social entrepreneurship or sustainable development. However, the tools can also be used separately, in the frame of a course or not. The first tool will consist of videos that retrace the path of several social entrepreneurs. These videos will confront the students with real-life situations of social entrepreneurs, and will explain their motivations as well as the obstacles faced. The videos can be used as a case study, either as an exercise or as the basis for a class discussion. The second tool will also take the form of videos, but will this time more theoretical ones. These content videos will present in a playful way the different alternative economic models that are sometimes regrouped under the term “circular economy”. These videos will be accompanied by pedagogical content to facilitate their implementation in courses. The third tool will consist of an online game allowing the students to take part in a serious game which includes elements of role play, simulations and framed economic experiments, focusing on circular economy. The participants will have the opportunity of representing an economic agent (government, entrepreneur, citizen, NGO, etc.) and will be able to experience the causal links of their acts. The fourth tool is a circular toolkit platform where higher education students will have the responsibility of teaching a part of the acquired knowledge to secondary school students. The higher education will be put into relation with one or a group of students from secondary school and will have to transmit the knowledge they will have acquired from the previous tools. These four tools are highly complementary and rely on different innovative pedagogical concepts. During the first year of the project, the target group will consist of a minimum of 500 students distributed between ULB, HTW Berlin,and associated professors in UMons, UNamur In Belgium and in Utrecht in the Netherlands. Then, we will expand the use of the tools to other higher education institutions in the partner’s countries and abroad, but also internally (to other faculties of HTW Berlin and ULB). We aim at implementing the tools in at least 10 more higher education institutions, reaching 2.500 students. The expected impacts of the project have different time perspectives. In the short term, the objective is to provide teachers with useful digital tools to increase student interest in circular economic models. In the medium term, the expected impact is to increase the number of social enterprises and enterprises with a circular business model and to influence policymakers towards a more circular view of economics. In the long run, the objective of this project is to transform the European economy to make it circular and therefore ensure a better and safer future for both the planet and the ones living on it.
With the project objectives we wanted to develop digital learning tools, combined with promoting circular economy principles and disseminate these tools not just to higher education institutions, but also to secondary schools. O1: Provide teachers and students with tools adapted to digital learning, available in several languages, which would allow them to have a real engagement around online classes. O2: Promote the learning and adoption of circular economy, by developing and disseminating new digital tools allowing students to acquire, develop and transmit new competences and knowledge about those models. O3: Disseminate awareness and knowledge of the circular economy by translating knowledge and tools from higher education to secondary school audiences, because education is compulsory until the age of 16 and therefore reaches every social class.
The past years were characterized by ecological disasters and social protests, which highlighted the need for a disruption in existing economic and business models. The European Commission claims that implementing alternative models, e.g., circular economy (CE), will make a significant contribution to achieving climate neutrality by 2050. Also, the Covid-19 pandemic forced millions of students to follow digital classes, which have the problem of being a mere transposition of the physical class. Current tools for digital learning are often neither engaging nor adapted to student needs, and there is no digital platform on CE that gathers advanced content. Also, new generations of students are keen on interactive pedagogical tools. Thus, our team aims at implementing a platform that combines learning modules with real-life availability of higher education students and social entrepreneurs to create engaging learning journeys. Consequently, an effective transfer of knowledge is stimulated, true collaboration is encouraged and participants can be challenged to develop circular solutions applicable in the real world. In this way, connections between people are promoted, and role modeling, tutoring and coaching are supported.