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S. Linow
make them more accessible for teaching and learning is often only possible by setting
specific assumptions (and being open about these assumptions), but their scale is one
of the fundamental characteristics that must be understood and assessed.
The question addressed here is which discipline would gain from dedicated
courses in higher education that teach how to systematically grasp and assess scale
of urgent problems as a dedicated learning outcome (Biggs and Tang 2011). The
question arose in a workshop attended by teaching staff and students at Hochschule
Darmstadt during the 4th international climate action week in 2019.
Hochschule Darmstadt has a dedicated and well established Sozial-und Kulturwissenschaftliches Begleitstudium for engineers and other non-social sciences, with
the purpose of teaching about social impacts of technology. Thus, the question could
be framed differently as to who gains from a dedicated course teaching the basics of
technology, natural sciences and basic methods for quantifying scale in the (superwicked, Levin et al. 2012) problems of our time: only the non-technical disciplines,
or all students? The argument is structured by first trying to understand the context
of competences for problem solving into which assessing scale belongs. A second
perspective comes from real student’s assignments from different disciplines.
2 The Meaning of Scale
Scale refers to the physical characteristics of a system in the wider sense; and is
measurable and comparable. The scale of a problem can be assessed in many different
ways, where physical measures (e.g. size, volume, mass, energy, power, temperature,
composition) are one relevant set of indicators, the dynamic of the system (e.g. growth
rate, velocity, emission rate, diffusion rate, reaction rate) another. Both are typically used in an engineering or natural-sciences perspective. Indicators from social
sciences (e.g. well-being, migration rate, resilience, vulnerability) or health science
(e.g. toxicology, exposure, emission, prevalence, body weight) provide a different
perspective about scale that may or may not match with other approaches. Economic
indicators (e.g. income, wealth distribution, monetary benefit, cost) instruct about
scale as well.
Activities like weighting the relative importance of problems or assessing possible
solutions needs the identification and understanding of relevant scales. From a
different perspective, it is the inability of most of us to grasp scale, that leads to
successful greenwashing, or the implementation of non-evidence based measures in
politics.
As an example of scale: it is hard to grasp that some 100 m of glass tubes filled
with algae and today painstakingly mended by scientists will in the near future be
able to provide approximately 6 km
3 or 6.000.000.000.000 l of gasoline the global
economy combusts in a year.
S. Linow
make them more accessible for teaching and learning is often only possible by setting
specific assumptions (and being open about these assumptions), but their scale is one
of the fundamental characteristics that must be understood and assessed.
The question addressed here is which discipline would gain from dedicated
courses in higher education that teach how to systematically grasp and assess scale
of urgent problems as a dedicated learning outcome (Biggs and Tang 2011). The
question arose in a workshop attended by teaching staff and students at Hochschule
Darmstadt during the 4th international climate action week in 2019.
Hochschule Darmstadt has a dedicated and well established Sozial-und Kulturwissenschaftliches Begleitstudium for engineers and other non-social sciences, with
the purpose of teaching about social impacts of technology. Thus, the question could
be framed differently as to who gains from a dedicated course teaching the basics of
technology, natural sciences and basic methods for quantifying scale in the (superwicked, Levin et al. 2012) problems of our time: only the non-technical disciplines,
or all students? The argument is structured by first trying to understand the context
of competences for problem solving into which assessing scale belongs. A second
perspective comes from real student’s assignments from different disciplines.
2 The Meaning of Scale
Scale refers to the physical characteristics of a system in the wider sense; and is
measurable and comparable. The scale of a problem can be assessed in many different
ways, where physical measures (e.g. size, volume, mass, energy, power, temperature,
composition) are one relevant set of indicators, the dynamic of the system (e.g. growth
rate, velocity, emission rate, diffusion rate, reaction rate) another. Both are typically used in an engineering or natural-sciences perspective. Indicators from social
sciences (e.g. well-being, migration rate, resilience, vulnerability) or health science
(e.g. toxicology, exposure, emission, prevalence, body weight) provide a different
perspective about scale that may or may not match with other approaches. Economic
indicators (e.g. income, wealth distribution, monetary benefit, cost) instruct about
scale as well.
Activities like weighting the relative importance of problems or assessing possible
solutions needs the identification and understanding of relevant scales. From a
different perspective, it is the inability of most of us to grasp scale, that leads to
successful greenwashing, or the implementation of non-evidence based measures in
politics.
As an example of scale: it is hard to grasp that some 100 m of glass tubes filled
with algae and today painstakingly mended by scientists will in the near future be
able to provide approximately 6 km
3 or 6.000.000.000.000 l of gasoline the global
economy combusts in a year.