Digitalization in a changing world

<p><strong>Part of international Summer School</strong><br /> <br /> This course is part of University of Gothenburg’s international Summer School for Sustainability. The Summer School gathers Swedish and international students and offers a broad extra-curricular program to which participants can attend.</p> <p>The Summer School for Sustainability is a chance to act on sustainability and deepen your understanding of global challenges and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. All during five inspirational summer weeks in Gothenburg. </p> <p>More information on our web <a href="https://www.gu.se/en/summer-school-for-sustainability">https://www.gu.se/en/summer-school-for-sustainability</a></p> <p> </p> <p>The purpose of this course is to prepare students as self-aware, responsible agents of change in the world, such that you are able to apply critical thinking and a long-term systemic perspective to the plethora of development opportunities provided by digitization. The course supports SDGs 3 (health & wellbeing), 9 (innovation) and 11 (sustainable communities).</p> <p>We discuss sustainability and sustainable development concepts in class and relate them to climate change, world economics, systems thinking, and technological development. This builds the foundation for critically assessing the potential and risks of digitization in a changing world - i.e. when new ideas come around, you will be able to judge them well. To make this very applicable in your future, we also conceptualize and develop prototypical IT systems that support sustainable development.</p> <p>The course is carried out via: </p> <ul> <li>Development of and reflection on a personal sustainability practice. That means we try practices like yoga, meditation, walks in nature and reflect on the effects - yup, we have a well-qualified professor for that in IT, see below; </li> <li>Flipped classroom for introducing concepts. You will be watching a short documentary or reading a research article as preparation and then we discuss them in class and reflect on how to use these concepts in our work.</li> <li>A team project will be carried out in small teams over the extent of the course to apply all the new concepts (so you are comfortable at integrating your new sustainability knowledge into technology development), including requirements engineering, design, and prototyping of an IT service or product to explore sustainable development.</li> </ul>