Understanding Scale in Wicked Problems …
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The work environment of most graduates and our common wicked problems
demand that students are prepared; the accessed courses were electable, not mandatory. If a university wants to elicit problem-handling as a basic skill, it must introduce
this as a mandatory element of their programmes. Our students actively requested
a problem-based approach to teaching and learning in interdisciplinary projects for
such a course. Some universities are at the beginning of the process (for example
Hochschule Darmstadt is getting to a join understanding of the problem itself). Other
universities understood this to be a major challenge for teaching and requirement for
universities and developed their own approaches (e.g. Weiser et al. 2018).
Key aspects that enable understanding of scale and support the acquisition of the
competence to assess scale independent of discipline are:
• Using real world problems in teaching and learning. These should be society’s
actual wicked problems at regional or global scale, not some abstract or historical
case.
• Project based learning and grading based on the project outcome—constructive
alignment helps to communicate clearly, as this demands that the learning outcome
is aligned with the grading criteria (Biggs and Tang 2011).
• Teach and demand a methodical approach to addressing problems. Discourage
early fixation on a single approach. Request views from different disciplines or
perspectives, which should include a comparison of different possible solutions.
• Include in teaching and expect in assignments relevant generic concepts like lifecycle thinking, systems thinking, feedback-loops in interacting systems.
• Demand quantitative assessment and discussion of relevant scale-effects; provide
basic methods.
• Teach underlying skills, like accepting interdisciplinary approaches and seeking
input from beyond their own discipline; investigating and finding good sources;
the ability for systematic scaffolding of their own knowledge.
• Broad contextual knowledge helps with fast erection of own knowledge scaffolds,
a simple way to introduce this is by interdisciplinary co-teaching.
These are generic skills independent of a disciplinary view. One can specify this
in more detail, if climate-crisis, biodiversity loss, or sustainable development with a
focus on vulnerable communities is the context of a course. Relevant issues evolve
from the content:
• The basics of the earth-system, especially energy- and mass flows, climate,
harvestable energetic flows of the earth system, ecosystem dynamics (in depth
Kleidon 2016, bachelor level Linow 2019).
• Energetic basics of human society, especially power and energy, energy density,
energy returned on energy invested (Hall and Klitgard 2018), resource demand
for (energetic) activities.
• Dissipation of energy and material in human activities.
After defining the problem, providing criteria for good solutions, and getting to a
relevant possible solution, the next step is implementation, which will be the harder
task in more reluctant organisations.
67
The work environment of most graduates and our common wicked problems
demand that students are prepared; the accessed courses were electable, not mandatory. If a university wants to elicit problem-handling as a basic skill, it must introduce
this as a mandatory element of their programmes. Our students actively requested
a problem-based approach to teaching and learning in interdisciplinary projects for
such a course. Some universities are at the beginning of the process (for example
Hochschule Darmstadt is getting to a join understanding of the problem itself). Other
universities understood this to be a major challenge for teaching and requirement for
universities and developed their own approaches (e.g. Weiser et al. 2018).
Key aspects that enable understanding of scale and support the acquisition of the
competence to assess scale independent of discipline are:
• Using real world problems in teaching and learning. These should be society’s
actual wicked problems at regional or global scale, not some abstract or historical
case.
• Project based learning and grading based on the project outcome—constructive
alignment helps to communicate clearly, as this demands that the learning outcome
is aligned with the grading criteria (Biggs and Tang 2011).
• Teach and demand a methodical approach to addressing problems. Discourage
early fixation on a single approach. Request views from different disciplines or
perspectives, which should include a comparison of different possible solutions.
• Include in teaching and expect in assignments relevant generic concepts like lifecycle thinking, systems thinking, feedback-loops in interacting systems.
• Demand quantitative assessment and discussion of relevant scale-effects; provide
basic methods.
• Teach underlying skills, like accepting interdisciplinary approaches and seeking
input from beyond their own discipline; investigating and finding good sources;
the ability for systematic scaffolding of their own knowledge.
• Broad contextual knowledge helps with fast erection of own knowledge scaffolds,
a simple way to introduce this is by interdisciplinary co-teaching.
These are generic skills independent of a disciplinary view. One can specify this
in more detail, if climate-crisis, biodiversity loss, or sustainable development with a
focus on vulnerable communities is the context of a course. Relevant issues evolve
from the content:
• The basics of the earth-system, especially energy- and mass flows, climate,
harvestable energetic flows of the earth system, ecosystem dynamics (in depth
Kleidon 2016, bachelor level Linow 2019).
• Energetic basics of human society, especially power and energy, energy density,
energy returned on energy invested (Hall and Klitgard 2018), resource demand
for (energetic) activities.
• Dissipation of energy and material in human activities.
After defining the problem, providing criteria for good solutions, and getting to a
relevant possible solution, the next step is implementation, which will be the harder
task in more reluctant organisations.