By focusing on urban resilience, InCLIMATE addresses one of the new priorities of the Erasmus Programme and one of the most urgent topics in the EU, where most countries are dealing with climate risk management issues, but lack a holistic and common approach to resilience. HEIs have an important responsibility in delivering this common approach. However, they are often too sectoral, slow to respond to changing needs, and do not provide future urban planners, geographers, architects, environmental experts, policy makers and officers with adequate, integrated knowledge on climate resilience, preventing them to become active leaders in the strengthening of territorial responsiveness to climate change impacts. International cooperation seems the best-fit environment to develop joint learning tools, undertake in-depth research and support policy makers. An urban resilience framework calls for a process that brings together diverse disciplines and sectors to identify appropriate measures, responses and recovery. It needs transversal competences, e-skills, creativity and flexibility. The project aims to take on the challenge by increasing HEI staff’s and students’ interdisciplinary skills through the development of innovative educational approaches to planning and allied disciplines to rise to the challenge posed by Climate Change. Furthermore, it aims to bring the challenge within the core of urban governance, by directly and indirectly training professionals and officers to shape resilient policies. To attain these goals, the project proposes an alternation of desk activities and workshops targeting both teaching staff and students, aimed at the collective production, development, sharing, testing and dissemination of Open Educational Resources (OERs), based on the use of collaborative Concept Maps. More specifically, the project foresees: - Training of 11 lecturers/trainers/researchers on project topics, methodology and tools, during a workshop promoting a holistic approach to climate resilience (taking into consideration spatial, environmental and technological aspects), the use of OERs as part of the regular teaching and training practice, and the use of concept mapping as an effective method to transfer meaningful, interdisciplinary knowledge on climate resilience topics. - Testing of the project methodology at partner level, with the involvement of around 400 students in partner universities and 10 Maltese public officers, who will be trained by partners on the use of concept maps for climate resilience planning and policy design. - Involvement of 40 students of different academic backgrounds in an intensive course/workshop based on concept mapping and interdisciplinary group work, where students are encouraged to break the barriers of their disciplines and learn to build a shared knowledge and cooperate for the sake of climate adaptation. The Intensive course intends to represent a model of collaborative educational experience – a laboratory for interdisciplinary and cross-fertilizing collaboration among lecturers and students that can be replicated in other courses, faculties and HEIs in partner countries and beyond. - Production of OERs on climate resilience based on concept mapping, organized in modular courses and made freely available on the project e-learning platform, where they are expected to empower HEIs courses and provide targeted training for professionals, public officers, and policy makers. Project outputs will challenge the complex and interconnecting issues related to urban resilience, and contribute to transfer resilience concepts into operational capacities in local government, civil society and professional communities. The project is expected to primarily benefit HE students, who – within a stimulating learning environment - will acquire interdisciplinary knowledge and skills in the fields of climate resilience, which in the medium-to-long term could result in more opportunities for research or employment and better professional placement in the public and private sectors. HE lecturers will benefit from networking opportunities at national and international level, useful for the development of future research and cooperation projects, while public officers trained during the project will acquire additional knowledge and soft skills that will support them in their ordinary activities related to urban and regional planning, policy-making, etc. All target groups (academic and non-academic, within and outside the consortium) will gain access to a wide range of open access materials and OERs on climate resilience, which can be freely exploited and customized for research and professional activities, skills upgrading, professional refreshment or training, far beyond the end of the project. Finally, the project will establish a network among involved EU countries and beyond, crucial to transfer results and findings to an operational policy perspective at different territorial levels.
Overall Objective: Development of innovative educational experiences to enhance urban resilience to fight against climate change effects Specific Objectives: 1) Building a common knowledge base on climate adaptation and resilience; 2) Helping the modernization of higher education curricula directly and indirectly related to spatial planning (by integrating them with issues such as climate risk management, social resilience, strategic planning, environmental monitoring and assessment, etc.) and increasing lecturers’, researchers’ and students’ knowledge and skills in climate resilience; 3) Shaping innovative educational methodologies and practices through an alternation of desk activities and workshops aimed at the collective production, testing and practical application of Open Educational Resources and supporting the dissemination of best practices in environmental, social sciences and technology education; 4) Creation of a network among EU Universities aimed at establishing a “climate change oriented” culture in HEIs, which can lead to a “paradigm shift” for HE in related issues, building a strong knowledge base with practical and policy implications at different territorial levels.
1) Environmental and climate goals: The project is centred on climate change adaptation and resilience. The aim is: i) to increase inter-disciplinary knowledge on climate change effects, adaptation and urban resilience; ii) and, to develop, test and implement a teaching & learning method 2) Tackling skills gaps and mismatches: Our first priority was to deal with this issue by innovatively applying the pedagogic approach based on concept mapping, in the context of climate adaptation and urban resilience. The project provides innovative technical and methodological competences to form new professionals able to adopt an interdisciplinary approach integrating expertise in urban and regional planning, environmental assessment and management. 2) Supporting individuals in acquiring and developing basic skills and key competences: The project has been developed on the boundaries between disciplines, promoting the use of concept mapping approach within multi-disciplinary working groups. It managed to engage HE lecturers and students in the production of concept maps as collaborative ICT-based Open Educational Resources (OERs), which can be freely adapted to teaching & learning needs, continuously edited, enriched and updated.