Climate change economics in higher education – experiences and recommendations
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Date
2021
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University Press
Abstract
Tackling human-made Climate Change is a topic of high societal relevance and became an established branch of environmental economics research. Due to the interdisciplinary structure of the topic, the integration of Climate Change into higher education programs in Economics still lags behind. Online teaching resources such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) might contribute significantly to overcoming this deficiency. In this paper, we describe the design of a class in “Climate Change Economics” and how we implemented it in a BA program at the International School of Economics at Tbilisi State University (ISET) in Tbilisi (Georgia). Our main focus is the integration of a MOOC on Climate Change and further online material as main teaching resources. Our main conclusion is that the MOOC, supplemented with videos on special topics, is a suitable
tool to facilitate an interdisciplinary introduction into Climate Change within an academic class in Economics. The results of our evaluation show that online resources are highly motivational for students and encourage an efficient studying process. Based on our experiences, we offer recommendations for further strengthening Climate Change as a topic in higher education. We provide suggestions on how online resources such as MOOCs might contribute to that aim.
Description
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Keywords
Economic Education and Teaching of Economics (A2), Environmental Economics (Q5), Economics of Climate Change (Q54)
Citation
VI International Scientific Conference: "Challenges of Globalization in Economics and Business", Tbilisi, 2021, pp. 203-209