Building Sustainable Communities and Economies

Catalog description

In this simulation-based online course, students learn how to use leverage points and win-win negotiation as crucial tools in efforts to build sustainable communities and economies worldwide. Students spend most of the course engaged in a series of role-playing simulations set at the local, national, and global levels. In Camelot, students play the role of citizens and officials trying to build a sustainable future for a U.S. city plagued by social, economic, and environmental problems. In Stratagem, they play the roles of government officials in a less developed country trying to chart a course of sustainable development for that country over a period of 60 years. In C-ROADS, students play the roles of diplomats trying to negotiate a global agreement to avert catastrophic global climate change. They do their work in these roles primarily using perspectives informed by systems thinking.