Module Objectives

• To provide evolving course content and material that stays up-to-date with current events, policies, and scientific research.
• To facilitate opportunities for international collaboration and knowledge co-development.
• To offer creative course materials and assignments that cater to a variety of learning styles and foster critical transdisciplinary thinking.

Our modules are transdisciplinary units of content geared towards providing international multicultural perspectives and up-to-date science on complex global environmental and social issues through the lens of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, international relations, and climate negotiations. We designed these modules as a platform to connect international faculty and students in order to foster the type of collaboration and innovation needed to address these problems.

These modules are meant to provide lecturers and students across the globe resources and suggested course content that foster international perspectives and facilitate international collaboration. These modules guide lecturers on developing related courses and can be used in sequence as a basis for an entire course or as stand-alone material to be integrated as is useful. Throughout we provide suggestions on how to integrate the provided material.

Through our module development we employ the Constructivist Learning Framework which posits that the learner is an active participant in the construction of knowledge, that knowledge is socially constructed, and that participants learn and make meaning of their experience by filtering the education event through their worldview and past experiences. Therefore, our curricula incorporate a few key principles based on a constructivist learning model. First and foremost, they rely on active and experiential learning rather than solely on lectures. We suggest classes integrate inquiry-based and problem-solving activities in a social and collaborative setting. Lastly, our proposed activities encourage reflection on past experiences and assumptions when learning and applying new information.