Sustainable Development, Changing Climate and Me? (Master) (5cr)

Objectives (course unit)

After completing the course, the student - knows basics of climate change and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals - understands the systemic nature of action on climate change, their magnitude and holistic implementation and their long-term societal importance - is able to assess critically information sources on climate change and also understands deliberate misleading - knows the Human Security approach and is capable to preliminary assess the impacts of the measures in a pre-selected context (related to one's own work, hobby or similar)

Content (course unit)

Changing climate is affecting everyone on earth and its sustainable development. This course deals with reliability of information sources on climate change, its basics, impacts, mitigation and adoption.  What individual citizen, organization and society should do? The course introduces Human Security Approach and teach how preliminary impact assessment of the planned measures can be done in student’s own work, hobby or life. The course is multidisciplinary and suitable for everyone with previous higher education qualification. - Reliability of the climate change information and the IPCC - Greenhouse effect - Climate change impacts, mitigation and adaptation - Human Security Approach (people centered, true knowledge and impact assessment) - Ex ante impact assessment of the measures, presentation of the method and exercise

Prerequisites (course unit)

No prerequisites

Assessment scale

Five step scale

Teaching methods

- 100% online studies - Evaluation: Pass or Fail - The course is open from 1st of September 2025 to 31st July 2026 in the academic year 2025 - 2026. - Registration for the course must be completed by May 17, 2026. - The student must register in InTo and then send a request to set up the PRIA environment by email to the course coordinator by May 31, 2026. - Assignment required for the completion of the course may be submitted to the course submission folder at any time. They will be assessed within four weeks following each official submission date. The submission dates are: 2 November 2025, 18 January 2026, 12 April 2026, and 31 July 2026.

Learning materials

Content, materials and links to external resources (all in Moodle)

Student workload

The student’s total workload of 135 hours is divided as follows: 20 hours for studying background materials, 15 hours for investigating their own case, and 100 hours for working on their decision analysis assignment.

Further information

The course fee for students of the Open University of Applied Sciences is 75 euros. Alternatively, there is an annual fee of 350 euros, which covers 12 months of course fees. Graduates from Savonia's degree programs can start their studies free of charge at Savonia's Open University of Applied Sciences within one year of graduation. The right to study is valid for one year.