Lived Experience of Climate Change E-learning
Welcome to the Lived experience of climate change: interdisciplinary e-module development and virtual mobility website - LECH-e for short. This project brings together nine European Higher Education Institutions across six countries, creating a community of scholars, students and citizens to make a major contribution to sustainable development education.
Supported by the European Union Lifelong Learning Erasmus Programme, the project will develop online curriculum resources and virtual learning communities. These resources will support Masters dissertations in the broad area of the lived experience of climate change -- how individuals and organisations conceive and respond to its perceived local impacts, for example extreme weather or biodiversity changes. They can be used flexibly by Universities to complement existing postgraduate programmes. At the end of the project in May 2011 they will become open educational resources for any University to use.
Two virtual learning communities are planned. One will be for students undertaking dissertations in the area and their supervisors. It will essentially comprise a virtual mobility space across Europe for interactions of students and supervisors. The second will additionally include the individuals, communities and organisations with which students are engaging in their research activities, thus contributing to an effective, informed European citizenry to complement the crucial understanding provided by the scientific community over the years.
The dissertations produced by students will form an essential knowledge base on citizen behaviour and potential to contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation. Their key findings will be used to influence EU policy on climate change.
Conceived deliberately as an interdisciplinary project involving natural and social scientists, and technologists and engineers, the curriculum resources will be designed to support students from any disciplinary background who wish to undertake a dissertation in the area.