United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals and Co-Creation

About

This Summer School unfolds the United Nations’ sustainable development goals through student participation in a cross-cultural and cross-educational context. The goals derive from the United Nations’ international agreements on processing towards explicit sustainability in 2030.

They are unique in that they call for action from all countries; poor, rich and middle-income alike to promote prosperity, all the while protecting the planet. The course will focus on global topics related to the sustainable development goals.

As an important part of the summer school the participants will get real-life challenges from co-creative partners form outside VIA University College. The co-creative partners can be NGOs, private companies or public authorities. Students are free to choose among several challenges all related to the UN’s 17 SDG. Students wil work in close co-operation with the partners to find relevant and useful solutions to the challenges. The solutions will contribute to the partners daily activities.

Method
A great part of the teaching is based on the pedagogical concept: Problem-oriented project work. The teaching wil deal with real-life challenges and solutions related to UN’s 17 SDG and a large part of the teaching and the learning processes will take place outside the classroom. Fieldwork is used as an important method of bringing data into the classroom. During the course students will visit companies who work with UN’ 17 SDG in their daily operations.

The methods of working are based on presentations, discussions and dialogue. Therefore, it is necessary that students taking part in this course are ready to use their competences in spoken English from day 1.

Full attendance and active involvement in the teaching, field visits, presentations etc. is expected as a prerequisite for taking the examination and passing the course.

Social programme
In afternoon and evenings, VIA Summer School will arrange a variety of social and cultural events to expand your knowledge of Denmark and the other participants at the VIA Summer School courses. You can decide for yourself the extent to wish you want to participate in these activities.

Maximum enrolment: Maximum 50 participants. If there are more eligible applicants than available seats, they will be distributed according to first-come, first served basis.

Dates and prices are subject to change.

Target group

Students from all fields are the target group for the interdisciplinary summer school as long as they have an interest in working with a hands-on approach with the sustainable development goals by United Nations. Students must have completed 1.5 years of study at bachelor level.

Course aim

The objective of the elective module is to provide students with the opportunity to develop innovative ideas for small improvements and solutions for the real life challenges; thereby, combining theoretical and practice-based knowledge with innovative study and work forms.

The course aims to:

facilitate student community involvement
develop students’ co-creational community skills, focusing on citizenship (and citizen involvement)
provide cross-cultural skills through differentiated themes, projects and ideas
build relationships between participants representing different cultures

Fee info