Building a sustainable future is the opportunity of our time, and it requires political, economic, environmental and social momentum to tackle the complexity and the urgency of the climate crisis. It requires people from many disciplines, extending far beyond climate scientists, emissions score-keepers, and ecological experts. Climate action capacity-building is about welcoming and applying diverse knowhow to complex problems, and this is whatResilience by Design Lab has achieved through many projects.
Here is a great example….
Vivian Forssman has been program manager for the RbD Lab since Fall 2018, when she brought her knowhow into the Lab, with her willingness to craft complex proposals for project funding, complemented with expertise drawn from her previous practice in higher education, which has included educational technology project management, advocating for open pedagogy approaches and adoption of open educational resources, learning design, educational development, and knowledge management. At RbD Lab, she mixed this background with a deep dive into a personal learning journey, to understand climate action, and in particular climate adaptation.
Vivian is an example of someone who has integrated a climate lens into her disciplinary experience to make good stuff happen. She helped create climate action momentum with many universities through RbD’s Adaptation Learning Network, a project which ran from 2019-2022, where all climate adaptation courses were launched with Creative Commons “CC-BY” licenses so they might be re-used and re-purposed. In the past 2 years she has applied her energy to co-creating climate action microcredentials at Royal Roads University, and participating in an applied research project, Upskilling for Canada’s Climate Transition. (We will share that report as soon as it is published).
For more context on how RbD Lab has led the creation of open educational resources and rapid upskilling practices, all focused on climate action, all co-created through collaborations with several universities, check out Vivian’s half hour presentation at Open Education Global Conference (Edmonton Oct 2023):
ReTooling and Reschooling: Climate Action and OER – OE Global 2023 – OE Global Connect
You will hear how Vivian has brought her previous background in leading post-secondary “teaching and learning centres” and transitioned this knowhow into climate-focused program management. She is a passionate advocate for creating momentum to take on the urgency of climate change though both open learning and accessible continuing education programming. And she is an example of the re-skilling and up-skilling we all need to consider to ensure that collectively we lean into our shared responsibility to bring a climate lens to the work we do and manifest the changes we need to make to create that sustainable future.