About the project
Challenge
Recent global movements (such as for instance School strike for Climate) indicate a rapidly growing awareness, frustration, and eagerness of the European youth to actively engage with securing a sustainable future for all. Even though the need for a holistic, interdisciplinary and cross-sector approach to sustainability has been increasingly recognised on research and policy levels, the trickle-down to higher education curricula and learning approaches has been slow.
Activation
In the Active8-Planet project we aim to research and experiment with unconventional approaches towards teaching and learning that would empower and mobilize students towards future-oriented climate and sustainability actions and enhance transformation of the university research and knowledge in planet-centred interventions. We provide young people a platform to act.
Paradigm shift
Moving from the expert mindset to the people-centred mindset, and from the people-centred to the planet-centred mindset. Leaving behind the egoistic mindset, in which we put solely ourselves in the centre, and grasping a more eco-driven mindset, in which we put our planet in the main focus. Through our project activities we aim to raise the first cohorts of active and passionate individuals – the so called “Planeteers” – becoming our ambassadors, who will stand for and share our key values and principles across geographical and sectoral boundaries.
Innovation
We are integrating several learning and development principles that have a stand-alone capacity and have as such been already applied in different contexts – however, our approach reaches beyond the state-of-the-art by integrating the 4 principles into a collaborative learning process. The 4 planet-centred development principles are: (1) Interdisciplinary & Intergenerational Co-creation, (2) People-centred Design, (3) University-Business Collaboration, (4) Environmental Ambition and Action.
Core Guiding Agendas
Everything that we do follows and is aligned with a set of core agendas serving as an inspiration, a guideline and a vision. These are the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the European Green Deal and Ethics in research and development. The Active8-Matrix serves us as a guiding, assessment and monitoring tool to align our research & development activities with the respective core guiding agendas.
Interdisciplinary, cross-sectoral and intergeneration 7+1 co-creation
The collaboration and co-creation activities take place in the “7+1 team projects” in which the groups of students, professors, industry professionals and other relevant stakeholders collaborate and jointly develop concepts and interventions for challenging issues, opening up possibilities for sustainable futures. The “+1” represents the servant leader who facilitates the collaboration process and ensures that members stay focused and connected to each other and to the ultimate goal.
Active8-Planet Learning Cycles
The developed Active8-Planet learning model is piloted and evaluated in the frame of two Learning Cycles in relation to 2 study years: 2021-2022 and 2022-2023. Learning cycles consists of four iterative phases: (1) challenge exploration; (2) Researching and discovering the unmet needs; (3) Analysis and interpretation of data; (4) Co-creation of concept.
Toolkit
The Active8-Planet toolkit incorporates our methodology, Wiki resource book and concrete practical recommendations on how to achieve effective and sustainable integration of the Active8-Planet approach and learning model in the existing European higher education curricula and learning programmes.
