Green skills for Underwater Technologies – MOOC
WWF Portugal
Reference Teacher: Cátia Nunes
Teacher(s): Cátia Nunes and Madalena Lopes
This course aims to promote the development of green skills among its participants. It gives a general overview on topics related to sustainable development, environmental challenges, stakeholders’ engagement and nature-based solutions. The main goal is to allow the participants to be able to ideate new sustainable tools to be implemented within the underwater technologies sector.
The modules and methodologies can be adapted to different target groups but aims to focus on Bachelor, Masters and PhD degrees; and professors/trainers. The modules of the MOOC can be integrated within different Masters or PhD curriculum among partners. It can also be adapted to trainers/professors.
Students will develop skills and knowledge for Identifying the major environmental challenges and the role of green skills in addressing these challenges.
Students will develop knowledge and know-how to apply basic principles of sustainability and green thinking to develop Nature based solutions for real-world problems.
Students will enhance their ability to analyze the ethical implications of environmental decisions and policies.
Students will develop communication skills by presenting their Nature-Based Solutions, highlighting the benefits of green skills for the environment, economy and society.
Students will develop their learning skills by engaging in continuous reflection and self-assessment to improve their understanding and application of green skills.
The course focuses on lifelong learning education. It’s not essential but a previous knowledge of nature sciences can be helpful for an easier understanding of the contents of the course.
MOOC (e-learning course)
Small tests will be created within each module to evaluate the level of knowledge and skills developed.
This course will be developed after the uBlueTec piloting. It aims to adapt all the modules from the pilot to an e-learning platform as a MOOC version.
This course contributes to SDG 11 (Sustainable cities and communities), SDG 13 (climate action), SDG 14 (Life below water) and SGD 17 (Partnerships for the goals).
If you are interested in developing one, or more, of these modules, please reach out to Cátia Nunes (cnunes@wwf.pt) or Madalena Lopes (mlopes@wwf.pt).
The MOOC is currently available online.
Course Modules: The educational material and syllabus include:
- What is climate change and how does it affect people and the planet?
- Direct and indirect impacts on human health and wellbeing
- Main drivers of climate change: energy, industry, land use, transportation, buildings
Marine ecosystems environmental challenges: Climate Change, Pollution, Invasive Species, Over-harvesting and Habitat Loss.
- United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
- UNESCO Key competencies on Education for Sustainable Development
- Green skills concept and global trends
- Lifelong learning: hard and soft skills
- Green skills relevance for underwater (UW) technologies
- Overview of ecosystem services – participatory methods
- Water and land main uses: resources
- Under water main uses: resources
- What are the main threats and impacts for nature & people?
- How can these resources be managed in a responsible way?
- Nature based solutions
- Best practices in UW techs to minimize impacts (such as, material selection, energy efficiency, waste management, supply chain ethics, and regulatory compliance)
- UW mapping technologies for biodiversity conservation and habitat protection.
- Active citizenship definition and examples
- Capacity building: bottom-up and top-down approaches, ladder of involvement
- Leadership approaches
- Connecting active and affective citizenship with nature protection and UW technologies
- Connecting citizenship with nature protection and UW technologies
- Community engagement importance and strategies
- Stakeholder identification, mapping, and engagement
- Discussion: are we including people and communities in nature-based solutions?
- Case study: Co-pesca fisheries management project
- Basics of project management and key steps (ideation to celebration)
- Theory of Change and SMART goals
- Design thinking and the COM-B model for behavior change
- Using the knowledge from the course to design a sustainable underwater technology solution addressing a marine environmental challenge, then evaluate your own work using clear criteria. Steps to follow:
- Choose an Environmental Challenge
- Create Your Solution
- Set SMART Goals
- Cooley, S., D. Schoeman, L. Bopp, P. Boyd, S. Donner, D.Y. Ghebrehiwet, S.-I. Ito, W. Kiessling, P. Martinetto, E. Ojea, M.-F. Racault, B. Rost, and M. Skern-Mauritzen, 2022: Oceans and Coastal Ecosystems and Their Services. In: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [H.-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, M. Tignor, E.S. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, A. Alegría, M. Craig, S. Langsdorf, S. Löschke, V. Möller, A. Okem, B. Rama (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA, pp. 379–550, doi:10.1017/9781009325844.005.
- IUCN (2020). Guidance for using the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions, First edition. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN.
- WWF (2022) Living Planet Report 2022 – Building a nature positive society. Almond, R.E.A., Grooten, M., Juffe Bignoli,D. & Petersen, T. (Eds). WWF, Gland, Switzerland.
- WWF (2023) A Behaviour Change Toolkit [online: https://sites.google.com/wwf.panda.org/wwfbehaviourchange/home]