ubc dmcc for upcea 2011

Certificate in Decision Making for Climate Change UBC Continuing Studies Centre for Sustainability

UPCEA 2011 1

CENTRE FOR SUSTAINABILITY | UBC CONTINUING STUDIES

Decision Making for Climate Change

Multi-University Partnership for 100% Online Professional Development

UPCEA 2011 “Doing What Matters”Toronto, CanadaApril 7, 2011

William KotyDirector, Centre for SustainabilityUBC Continuing Studies


About this talk

� Program

� Certificate in Decision Making for Climate Change

� Jointly offered 100% online by:

� University of Washington Professional and Continuing Education

� University of California Irvine Extension

� Northwestern University School Continuing Studies

� University of British Columbia Continuing Studies

� Main topics of this talk

� Climate change as an educational domain

� Managing a collaboration

� Curriculum

� Administration


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� Winter 2008: Initial proposal

� David Szatmary, Vice Provost, University of Washington Educational Outreach

� July 2008: Partners committed

� Northwestern

� UC – Irvine

� UBC

� UW

� Fall 2008: Program design finalized

� Spring 2009: Program launch

� Fall 2009: First cohort of 25 students

� Spring 2010: Second cohort 30 students

� Fall 2010: 85 students had been accepted into the program

Decision Making for Climate Change | A brief history


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Is global warming really man made?

Am I going to look like a schmuck?


� US National Academy of Science

http://dels.nas.edu/Climate/Reports-

Academies-Findings

� American Association for the Advancement of

Science

http://www.aaas.org/news/press_room/climat

e_change

� UK Royal Society Climate Change

http://royalsociety.org/Energy-Environment-

and-Climate-Change

� US Government's Global Change Research

Program http://www.globalchange.gov

� European Union Climate Change

http://ec.europa.eu/clima/news/index_en.htm

� NASA Global Climate Change

http://climate.nasa.gov

� Chinese Government Climate Change Info-Net

http://www.ccchina.gov.cn/en/

� Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs

http://www.mofa.go.jp/POLICY/environment/w

arm/cop/index.html

� Government of India, Ministry of Environment

and Forests:

http://www.envfor.nic.in/cc/index.htm

� UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change: http://www.ipcc.ch

� UK Met Office

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange

Organizations that confirm man-made climate change


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� Australian Academy of Sciences

� Royal Society of Canada

� Russian Academy of Sciences

� Academy of Science of South Africa

� Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Italy

� Academia Mexicana de Ciencias, Mexico

� Deutsche Akademie der NaturforscherLeopoldina, Germany

� Académie des Sciences, France

� Indian National Science Academy

� Science Council of Japan

� Chinese Academy of Sciences

� Indonesian Academy of Sciences

� Royal Irish Academy

� Academy of Sciences Malaysia

� Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand

� Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

� NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS)

� National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

� Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

� Royal Society of the United Kingdom (RS)

� American Geophysical Union (AGU)

� American Institute of Physics (AIP) National

� Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)

� American Meteorological Society

� Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS)

� Australian Academy of Sciences

� American Association of State Climatologists

� Geological Society of America

� American Astronomical Society (AMS)

And a few more…


� Shock

� “WTF!”

� Denial

� “No, the scientists got it wrong.”

� Bargaining

� “Maybe I can offset my flight to Toronto?”

� Fear

� “I might lose my job!” “What kind of future will my grandchildren have?”

� Anger

� “Damn oil companies.”

� Despair

� “We can’t change. It’s human nature. The system is the way it is.”

� Acceptance

� “We can work together to create a better way.”

Climate change understanding | Seven stages of grief


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"People only accept change in necessity

and see necessity only in crisis.”

~Jean Monnet


Certificate in Decision Making for Climate Change


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� Four courses

� One from each university

� Climate Literacy: Navigating Climate Conversations (UBC)

� Climate science and causes of global warming

� Policy Responses and Options (Northwestern)

� Global look at government policies and options

� Strategic Planning for Adaptation to Climate Change (UW)

� Scenarios, long-term planning, risk assessment, cost analysis

� The Business of Mitigating Climate Change (UC-I)

� Financial, environmental and business aspects of mitigation

� $900 per course

� Each course is 30 hours

� Receive 12 CEUs for completion of the program

About the program | Courses


Initial target audiences

� Municipal, Regional, State and

Federal Officials

� Environmental Planners

� Environmental Managers

� Corporate Managers

� Utility Managers

� Consultants

Additional ones that showed up

� Educators

� Students, teachers and administrators,

K-12 to lifelong learning

� Natural and applied scientists

� Chemical and biological engineering,

meteorology, ecology, geology, forestry

� Community planners

� Urban design, transportation planning,

community outreach, land-use planning

� Manufacturers

� Supply chain, marketing and PR

� Financial analysts and economists

About the program | Target audiences


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� Upon completion of the program, participants will be able to:

� Understand key concepts and terms surrounding climate change

� Analyze scientific, demographic, economic and political factors

concerning climate change

� Examine government policy development and enforcement in a variety

of countries and contexts

� Assess an organization’s or community’s impact on the environment

� Make strategic decisions about adapting to, and minimizing the effects

of, climate change

About the program | Learning outcomes


Collaboration ― a dance of fools?


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� It’s scary

� A potential lack of control

� Non-hierarchical

� No direct control over partners

� Carrot and stick controls

non-existent

� Prone to challenges

� Often not perceived as

strategic or core operations

� Out of sight, out of mind

� Problems are not always obvious

My views on collaboration


� Our collective heads of departments support partnering

� New topical area with little educational history

� Access to subject-matter experts

� Rapid development

� Risk mitigation

� Market reach

� Positioning

Why collaborate on Decision Making for Climate Change?


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� No agreement was ever signed

� No MOU, no partnership contract

� Shared sense of necessity and opportunity

� Informal policy developed

� There was a perception of lots of big issues that would have to be sorted out

� The reality was that normal internal processes within each institution were

adequate

� Each institution had similar functions, though their implementation differed

slightly, but it didn’t matter (for the most part)

� Initial tentativeness towards the collaboration turned out to be mostly ease and

simplicity

Some surprises


� Partnership “management” is critical

� Shared vision important

� Mutual respect a necessity

� Communication is everything

� Good program coordinators a must

� Passion for shared vision helpful

� Empowered to make decisions

� Program needs to be successful to maintain momentum

Partner insights and conclusions


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Challenges

Solutions

&


� Curriculum

� Program design

� Instructors

� Development

� Delivery

� Administration

� Finance

� Marketing

� Student information

Key challenges


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� Course selection

� Knew we had four courses

� Each university indicated their preference

� Instructor selection

� Only one university had a challenge finding subject-matter expertise

� Course development

� Advisory committee worked on high-level design

� Instructors shared course outlines

� Online content versus text books

� Delivery

� Common versus diversity of learning management systems

� Three universities use Moodle and one uses Blackboard

Curriculum challenges


� Revenue sharing

� Each institution keeps its own revenue

� $900 per course

� Based on averages among institutions

� Exchange rate independence

Administrative challenges | Finance


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� Marketing

� Many questions about how best to market

� Create a partnership website?

� Joint brochure?

� Joint press release?

� Joint budgets?

� Decided to each his own

� No one had to do anything different

� Individual websites and collateral material

� Normal operations with no additional costs

� Though we did do a joint press release to formalize the collaboration

Administrative challenges | Marketing


� Program applications

� Selected one university’s process

� Small application fee covers cost

� Applications uploaded to shared server

� Course scheduling

� Originally cohort based, once a year

� One course per term per institution

� Moved to four intakes per year (anytime)

� Normally two courses available in any term

� Student tracking

� Each institution keeps its own records

� At the end of each course, completion records compiled into a master list at UW

Administrative challenges | Student Information


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� Assessment and grading

� Differentiated standards

� E.g. UBC has a 60% pass number grade, UC-I a letter grade and UW pass/fail

� Certificate-wide standard was problematic

� Each institution follows its own grading policy

� Generation of diplomas

� A unique certificate was developed containing the logos of all four universities

� Northwestern volunteered to print and distribute

� Sense of community

� Student engagement was a concern

� Student profiles are essential

� Group assignments have become the norm

Administrative challenges | Student Information continued


Insights


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� Huge growth area (in the future)

� Beginning the anthropocene epoch in geologic time

� Every society, jurisdiction and business will be affected

� Current social-political interregnum in N.A. between denial and acceptance

� Adaptation strategies will be big

� Particularly in areas at risk, e.g. coastal lowlands and desertification

� Mitigation efforts more tenuous

� Dependent on international collaboration

Insights | Climate change education



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When not to worry

� Partners are peers

� Reputation not an issue

� Don’t normally compete

� Money isn’t controversial

� Common pedagogy exists

� Using similar delivery platforms

(LMS)

� When you have good people

involved

When to worry

� Staff are not communicating with

each other (or you)

� Staff turn-over

� Student workload and grading

� Differentiation and perceived

unfairness breeds contempt

� With the details

� Marketing

� Registrations

Insights | Managing a collaboration


When to collaborate

� Shared values, shared vision exist

� Definable opportunity

� Similar business models

� Expertise isn’t local

� Extend market reach

� Diversity contributes to learning

When not to collaborate

� If revenue maximization is critical

� When large markets exist

� When credibility isn’t an issue

� When trust is not present

� When the boss doesn’t care

� When you’re not having fun

Insights | Deciding to collaborate


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� My favourite climate change websites and blogs

� NASA (http://climate.nasa.gov )

� DeSmogBlog (www.desmogblog.com)

� Real Climate (www.realclimate.org)

� Climate Change (http://chriscolose.wordpress.com)

� Deep Climate (http://deepclimate.org)

� Climate Progress (http://climateprogress.org)

� Climate Now (www.climatenow.net)

� Climate Science Watch (www.climatesciencewatch.org)

Insights | Stay informed


Questions?

Comments?


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Thank you!

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