CONTEXT The 2030 Agenda states 17 sustainable development goals which are integrated, indivisible and balance the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development (UN, 2015). Such integration of the goals and the three dimensions requires a systemic approach (Stafford-Smith et al., 2017). Sustainability issues show the characteristics of complex systems, as they are part of the continuously changing, self-organising, interdependent and adaptive systems in our world. Essential for a complex system is that the response of a combination of factors cannot be inferred from the response of each individual factor (van Mil et al., 2014). The Cosy project focuses its intervention on providing undergraduate students with opportunities to learn about complex systems, as well as providing short courses to lifelong learners active in agencies engaged in the 2030 Agenda. This will, in turn, benefit the organizations employing these students, and hopefully, improve the contributions to the 2030 Agenda and the sustainable development goals. OBJECTIVES The objectives of Cosy proposal are: - Strengthen the collaboration among academic institutions, starting from the project partners and provide them with a clearer picture of the range of opportunities between the universal and the particular, regardless if the differences lie in academic subjects and settings or in national and local cultural situations. - Achieve an in-depth investigation of current practices of complex systems thinking in the partner countries and institutions within their respective academic subjects, and identify similarities and differences that might be related to the national and local contexts. - Provide academic lecturers and managerial staff with knowledge, skills and tools for adapting their educational activities with a specific focus on sustainable development by integrating complex systemic thinking (in curricula, courses, lectures, exercises and seminars, and in modes of examination) - Provide undergraduate students with competences on complex systems thinking as a basis for sustainability action and make them employable in organizations interested to meet the sustainable development goals. RESULTS and OUTPUTS The Cosy project expects to reach the following results: - It will enhance undergraduate students opportunities to master complex systems thinking, and, thus, improve their employability in occupations that engage in sustainability issues. - provide university lecturers and decision-makers improved abilities to support students learning on complex systems thinking - promote and enhances collaborative approaches between lecturers from different disciplines and enhanced dialogue in the education process that are fundamental for the improvement of education of complex systems thinking. - improve academic teaching staff in conducting lectures, seminars, using digital learning support and provide the students with learning tasks for applying complex systems thinking on real-life sustainability challenges. - provide lecturers with new approaches for setting up educational goals that cover learning on complex systems as regards knowledge, skills and values and redefine assessment criteria to cover holistic approaches. For the purpose the Cosy project will produce 3 intellectual Outputs: - An Inventory on complex systems implementation in academic training (IO1) that will raise awareness academic decision-makers and lecturers on the importance of planning and implementing complex systems teaching through an interdisciplinary approach and motivate them to implement degrees, curricula and courses on the matter to improve the employability of undergraduate students. The inventory will provide motivation and guidance for designing new courses specialized on complex systems thinking as well as for the integration of systems thinking through interdisciplinary approaches in existing courses. The inventory will provide ideas on the formulation of curricula and syllabus, as well as templates for lectures, seminars and student tasks, and suggest readings and online resources. - A Toolkit for implementing an interdisciplinary approach to sustainable development teaching (IO2) providing Higher education lecturers with methods and operative teaching sources to be used in their lessons to teach Sustainable Development related issues according to interdisciplinary approaches. The Intellectual Output contents consist of a set of media-based teaching tools focused on Sustainable Development issues addressed to a multidisciplinary approach involving both scientific and humanistic courses. - A Joint Curriculum in Sustainable Development (IO3) engaging Higher education decision-makers, experts and lecturers in defining a shared complex systems and system thinking based interdisciplinary learning path and related curriculum in Sustainable Development and build on them to reach agreements on Double and Joint Degrees.
The Cosy project aim was to enhance undergraduate students opportunities to master complex systems thinking, and, thus, improve their employability in occupations that engage in sustainability issues while bridging the existing gaps to make learning systems thinking more related to real-world problems that now students and then future workers will encounter in working life. The specific objectives that the Cosy project successfully pursued were: - Provide undergraduate students with competences in complex systems thinking as a basis for sustainability action and make them employable in organizations interested in meeting the sustainable development goals - Provide academic lecturers and managerial staff with knowledge, skills and tools for adapting their educational activities with a specific focus on sustainable development by integrating complex systemic thinking (in curricula, courses, lectures, exercises and seminars, and in modes of examination) - Improve academic teaching staff in conducting lectures, and seminars using digital learning support and providing the students with learning tasks for applying complex systems thinking on real-life sustainability challenges - Explore the feasibility of the creation of joint curricula for interdisciplinary master education through the collaboration between different European countries
The COSY Thinking project background and rationale were and are deeply rooted in the 2030 Agenda 17 sustainable development goals and in their characterisation as integrated, indivisible and balanced. The project belief is that the successful pursuit of the goals requires a systemic approach, as also confirmed by the UNESCO program on Education for Sustainable Development, identifying complex systems thinking as one of the key competencies for sustainability. Sustainability issues need to be addressed as complex systems as to fully understand their continuously changing, self-organising, interdependent and adaptive nature. Within this framework the Cosy project focused its intervention on answering the needs of: - Undergraduate students to increase their opportunities to learn about complex systems and be able to adapt to the job market’s increased demands for competencies related to sustainable development according to an innovative and aware complex systems thinking -Lecturers, who may already be teaching in classes where systems thinking is implicit and need to gain knowledge and appropriate tools to be able to redesign or enhance course contents to make systems thinking more explicit, as regards knowledge as well as competences