Examination arrangement

Course content

RFEL3081 Interdisciplinary Project for Environmental Sustainability, is a course for students admitted to the master program Natural Resources Management. This is a course in which the students with different disciplinary and cultural backgrounds apply their academic competence in interdisciplinary project work to learn teamwork skills to prepare them for working life with specific focus on issues in natural resources management. Typically, a project focuses on challenges related to sustainable management of a natural resource, to assess the consequences of different management strategies, the conflicts of interests among stakeholders and the socioeconomic aspects at different levels. Through the semester the project groups will develop an interdisciplinary report within the focal subject. An objective of the course is to increase insight into the distinctive characteristics of other academic disciplines and their ways of working. At the same time, the course is intended to strengthen the students' own academic identity, through the interaction in the team and the way in which their academic competence contributes to the project. Through team-based reflection, the students will gain increased insight into their own and other group member’s role in the communication within the group, which is important in order to achieve positive results in interdisciplinary project work.

Learning outcome

After completing the course, the student should be able to:

• Explain and discuss aspects concerning the management of the natural resources in question, the environmental consequences and the conflicting interests among different stakeholders involved.
• Applicate the experience of how other relevant academic disciplines approach to management of the natural resources in question.
• Demonstrate knowledge, discuss and explain about the importance of communication among group members and group processes that are essential in order to achieve positive results in interdisciplinary project work.
• Critically evaluate alternative management strategies and to some extent identify their environmental impacts as well as the consequences for stakeholders with overlapping and/or conflicting interests.
• Critically evaluate his/her own role in the group collaboration situation and apply knowledge about communication and group processes in a constructive way to enhance the outcome of a group work situation.
• Disseminate knowledge and communicate both among peer-colleagues as well as to a broader audience in written and oral presentations in English
• Communicate the student's own academic discipline and thereby strengthen the students' own academic identity.
• Work on a project independently and in collaboration with others in interdisciplinary groups with expanded perspectives of the prerequisites for good interdisciplinary teamwork

Learning methods and activities

• Lectures and seminars
  • Lectures: 16 hours
  • Seminar: 3 days stay at field station (mandatory participation)
• Supervised groupwork
• Mandatory participation of group project work
• Mandatory participation of oral group presentation of the project
• Mandatory participation in seminars in communication and group process
• Mandatory participation on min. 75% of the course

Compulsory assignments

• Participation in project work

Further on evaluation

In case of failed group project a revised version from last teaching semester can be submitted for new assessment.

For improvement you will have to follow the course again and submit a new group project.

Specific conditions

Required previous knowledge

Admitted participant in Master of Science in Natural Resources Management.

Course materials

To be announced.