Earlier this year, we started a new development project in the ABS network. The project is called Co-creative curriculum development, and it is done in close collaboration with the highly successful joint Nordic Master in Environmental Changes at Higher Latitudes (EnCHiL).
The specific aims of the project are to find sustainable solutions to two branches of challenges in EnCHiL. First, the studies in EnCHiL include a mandatory online teaching period, and due to many reasons, neither the students’ experience nor their learning outcomes are optimal. Second, the mandatory field course in Greenland has suffered perpetually from organizational difficulties.
To co-create these solutions in a manner that is both sustainable and confidently on-target, we are utilizing a three-round eDelphi method. To our knowledge, this method has not yet received wider utilization in such a manner at higher education joint degree programmes. However, it has various beneficial qualities for such a specific purpose. For example, it allows diverse perspectives from various stakeholder groups to be voiced out while still aiming through a democratic and facilitated process towards an applicable consensus.
After the two-year project, we are hoping this approach to be repeated annually with similar stakeholder representative groups, or taken to new groups—all accumulating to the stock of core knowledge on how the programme could be further developed.
And last, importantly, we want to share what we learn during this process to the wider community of educators and learners as we hope that this practice and its results will be utilized by other education programmes all over the Nordic countries and beyond. We are planning to publish at least one open-access paper about the results of the projects.