CliVEx: Climate Action Project

When generating Climate Action Project ideas students are given three potential project ‘tracks’ to help them focus their efforts. These tracks are:

• Social Action – projects that affect people’s behaviour to be more sustainable, and use ‘people power’ to enact change for the good of the community and the climate. They are concerned with educating, influencing, promoting understanding, motivating, or building relationships. 
• Political Action – projects that influence people in power to take action for the planet. They are concerned with leveraging institutions and authorities to make concrete action in terms of political leadership, laws, policies, or institutional norms.
• Environmental Action – projects that directly improve the local environment. They are concerned with making observable differences in community or natural spaces, and encouraging people in the community to get involved in caring for nature.

Students refine their ideas and form teams with others who share the same interests. Each team submits a detailed project plan, and receives constructive feedback from course staff. They continuously communicate and meet throughout the project to collaborate on shared tasks and support each other in individual implementation. At the end of the course, they deliver a presentation about their Climate Action Project that includes what they achieved and evidence of impact. 

The first two semesters of the CliVEx Climate Justice Virtual Exchange have led to impressive outputs from student teams. Collectively, students have designed and implemented 109 different Climate Action Projects. They include: 

• A podcast that “makes climate issues accessible and engaging for a young audience by connecting them to trending topics, current events, and the zeitgeist.”
• A youtube video titled Rising Temperatures, Rising Injustice: Women in the Climate Crisis, which tells the ‘herstory’ of climate change and educates audiences about the unique situations faced by women in both their experience of climate change and in climate activism.
• A series of community dialogues in Palestine, Kazakhstan and Italy that achieved high levels of growth within their participants in regard to knowledge of climate change and climate justice, concern for the environment, and reduction of eco-anxiety. 
• A series of coordinated clean-ups in France, Italy and Palestine and a research project on how the war in Lebanon is affecting the environment.

Outcomes of the CAP assignment have included:

• Concrete measures taken in the areas of sustainability and youth-led climate action.
• The improvement of local environments across Europe, Southwest Asia and North Africa, including trash clean-ups, planting olive trees, and rehabilitating natural areas of cultural importance. 
• The exposure of citizens around the world to accurate and compelling information on climate change and what manageable steps they can take to combat it, which many CAP presentations have demonstrated has led to significant changes in knowledge of and attitudes towards climate change and climate action. 
• Cross-border cooperation, which has the potential to build the foundation for future ties between them and their institutions or communities, as well as a model they can draw on to enhance any future coordinated endeavours they take part in with people from other countries. 
• The continued implementation of several projects beyond the end of the course, which magnifies the long-term outputs of the projects.  

Throughout the duration of the CAP assignment, students have also shown improvement in the following values and competencies: 

• The ability to brainstorm, communicate and work effectively in remote multicultural teams, which sets them up to excel in online, English speaking, or international/intercultural team environments. This gives students advantages in many areas including academic achievement and employability.  
• The value and practice of active citizenship, brought about by active participation in their communities, regional governments and local/national institutions. 
• The value and practice of acting for sustainability, brought about by participation in action on climate change and getting others involved.
• Leadership, communication and interpersonal skills.
• Project planning and management skills. 
• Teamwork and team building skills.
• Digital skills, which can lead to improvement in closing the digital skills gap.
• Strong improvements on sustainability competences measured through the Greencomp: European sustainability competence framework. See more about these developments in our blog on Climate Justice in 2024. 

CliVEx: Climate Justice in 2024

Participation

“A completion rate of 39% / 70% is high for an online course. Regular online courses have completion rates between 5-15%.“

Over the first two iterations, we had 806 students who registered for the course, of which 318 (39%), successfully completed the programme, achieving the minimal participation requirements of attending 8 out of 10 dialogue sessions and obtaining at least 40 points. If we look at the completion rate of only the students who attended at least one synchronous meeting, the completion rate jumps to 70%.

A completion rate of 39% / 70% is high for an online course, offered at no cost to the participant. Regular online courses have completion rates between 5-15%. Climate Justice has elements that are proven to increase completion rates, such as a paced structure, deadlines and moments for required attendance, synchronous with asynchronous learning elements, and teamwork between participants. That said, the virtual exchange course bears no cost to the participant and there is not an application process participants need to complete in order to be admitted, two mechanisms known to be the most effective to increase participation and completion rates of online courses. A 70% completion rate of students who actually start the course is thus to be considered a great score, even considering the format of the virtual exchange. 

Besides a limited number of students who are not affiliated to any of our partner institutions, most students (97%) in the Climate Justice virtual exchange participate through one of our partner universities. Our partners have actively supported the climate justice programme by integrating the learning experience into their curricula and offering credits to students who successfully complete the programme. The list of participating partners and corresponding number of students they recruited in the Climate Justice virtual exchange are presented in the table below. 

“It is remarkable to note that in 2024 our Palestinian partners Bethlehem University and An-Najah University score 2nd and 3rd respectively as partners with the highest the completion rates.”

In the table above, we observe variations in completion rates between universities. Based on last year’s experience, and previous virtual exchanges we organised, we know that retention and completion of our programme is positively impacted by the way universities integrate the course into their curricula. 

Elements that boost engagement are:

• Number of credits offered.
• Whether the host-course for the virtual exchange is a mandatory / elective course (as opposed to the virtual exchange being a stand-alone course).
• Amount of  regular check-ins by local teachers with their students about their experience in the virtual exchange.
• English proficiency of students who are offered the opportunity to participate in the virtual exchange.

2024 will be remembered as the year in which a genocide in Gaza took place. Our partner the Islamic University of Gaza was therefore not able to participate in the course. However, it is remarkable to note that our Palestinian partners Bethlehem University and An-Najah University score 2nd and 3rd respectively with the highest completion rates of their students. This shows that our virtual exchange programmes are able to engage students who face barriers to international travel and/or exposure, or who are located in (protracted) conflict areas. 

See our course syllabus for more details on points matrix and corresponding assignments. For more details of the demographic of participants and their participation in the two iterations, see our Engagement reports for Climate Justice Spring and Fall 2024. For information about participation in the upcoming cycle, view the course page for Spring 2025.

Climate Action Projects

“In 2024, participants in the Climate Justice virtual exchange developed 109 Climate Action Projects.”

Unique to this Climate Justice virtual exchange is the Climate Action Project (CAP). A CAP is a project aimed at combating climate change, which is designed and developed by a multicultural team of students who then implement the project simultaneously in their local communities and assess its impact. The assignment is completed over the course of seven weeks, and students are supported in their endeavours by facilitators, course staff, and helpful resources and toolkits.

When generating CAP ideas, students are given three potential project ‘tracks’ to help them focus their efforts. These tracks are:

• Social Action – projects that affect people’s behaviour to be more sustainable, and use ‘people power’ to enact change for the good of the community and the climate. They are concerned with educating, influencing, promoting understanding, motivating, or building relationships. 
• Political Action – projects that influence people in power to take action for the planet. They are concerned with leveraging institutions and authorities to make concrete action in terms of political leadership, laws, policies, or institutional norms.
• Environmental Action – projects that directly improve the local environment. They are concerned with making observable differences in community or natural spaces, and encouraging people in the community to get involved in caring for nature.

Students refine their ideas and form teams with others who share the same interests. Each team submits a detailed project plan, and receives constructive feedback from course staff. They continuously communicate and meet throughout the project to collaborate on shared tasks and support each other in individual implementation. At the end of the course, they deliver a presentation about their CAP that includes what they achieved and evidence of impact. 

In 2024, participants in the Climate Justice virtual exchange developed 109 Climate Action Projects. The projects vary in type, geographic spread and impact. We have highlighted some of the projects that have led to impressive outputs from student teams in a different blogpost.

Impact

“Participants made significant strides in embodying environmental values and taking action based on what they learned during the course.”

The Climate Justice virtual exchange aims to facilitate intercultural dialogue on issues surrounding climate change and finding just and inclusive ways to respond to the climate crisis. This raises the question, did participants develop competences that foster environmentally responsible behaviours and attitudes? To answer this, we have evaluated the impact of the Climate Justice virtual exchange on changes in participants’ learning and engagement over the course of the programme on four key sustainability scales: Embody, Embrace, Envision, and Acting. These scales have been developed based on the Greencomp: European sustainability competence framework. The specific questions asked to participants to measure the four sustainability scales are listed in the Evaluation Guide of the CliVEx project. 

The four scales have the following definitions:

The competence area ‘Embodying sustainability values’ encourages learners to reflect on and challenge their own personal values and world-views in terms of sustainability. This area advocates equity and justice for current and future generations, while supporting the view that humans are a part of nature.

The competence area ‘Embracing complexity in sustainability’ is about:

• empowering learners with systemic and critical thinking, and encouraging them to reflect on how to better assess information and challenge unsustainability.
• Scanning systems by identifying interconnections and feedback. 
• Framing challenges as sustainability problems, which helps us learn about the scale of a situation while identifying everyone involved.

The competence area ‘Envisioning sustainability futures’ enables learners to visualise alternative future scenarios and identify actions to achieve a sustainable future. It is essential that learners acquire the competence of ‘adaptability’ while coping with uncertainty about the futures and trade-offs in sustainability. Applying creative and transdisciplinary approaches to our way of thinking can foster a circular society and encourage learners to use their imagination when thinking about the future.

‘Acting for sustainability’ encourages learners to take action at individual and collective level to shape sustainable futures, to the extent possible. It also invites learners to demand action from those responsible to make change happen.

“We have evaluated each iteration separately, but the results of both programmes are very much alligned, suggesting a consistent effect of our programme on the participants.”

For both programmes we observe significant positive differences on three of the four scales: Embody, Embrace and Acting. Both Embody and Acting show moderate large effect sizes (d = 0.74 and d= 0.69 for Spring and d = 0.64 and d = 0.69 for Fall respectively) while for Embrace we see a smaller moderate effect size (d = 0.43 for Spring and d = 0.33 for Fall). No significant effect was found for Envision. 

The differences observed in the Embody and Acting scales suggest that participants made significant strides in embodying environmental values and taking action based on what they learned during the course. The difference in the Embrace scale suggests that participants improve their systemic and critical thinking towards issues surrounding climate change, better enabling them to identify its interconnectedness. These results highlight the programme’s positive impact on fostering environmentally responsible behaviours and attitudes among participants.

For more details about the evaluation we conducted, and the process of data gathering and analysis, please review the Impact Reports of the Spring and Fall iterations.

Satisfaction

“Satisfaction of various dimensions of the programme is very high.”

In addition to the impact of our programme on participants, we evaluated participant satisfaction levels with several aspects of the programme. This shows us that satisfaction with various dimensions of the programme is very high. We asked participants to rate their satisfaction on a five-point Likert scale from “Very Dissatisfied” to “Very Satisfied”. Below is a table showing the percentages of participants indicating “Satisfied” or “Very Satisfied” on the different dimensions of the programme.

The above satisfaction levels are based on the post-programme evaluation survey. During the programme’s implementation, students were offered the chance to evaluate their experience directly after each online dialogue session in so-called “30-second feedback forms”. These results largely confirm the satisfaction levels shown in the post-programme survey, as can be seen in the table below. 

For more detailed information about the evaluation on satisfaction and methods of data collection, we refer to the Impact reports of both programmes linked above.

Participant testimonials

“This experience has been very enriching and has given me a lot as a person. I’ve gained self-confidence and I’ve grown as a person. I was already very aware of current climate issues, but hearing the concrete testimonies of other students like me, but whose situations are so different, really opened my eyes and gave me the desire to take more action and get more involved in the fight against climate change.”

Participant, 21, France

“It made me more aware of the interconnectedness of environmental issues and human rights, encouraging me to be more proactive in my actions towards climate justice. Additionally, I noticed an improvement in my English skills and my ability to interact with people from different cultures.”

Participant, 22, Palestine

“I noticed I took a lot more initiative than I would normally do in my own classes. This has impacted me to make more decisions and be more straightforward. I also became more open-minded towards certain topics and opinions.”

Participant, 22, The Netherlands

Like, Comment, Discriminate: Racist Discourse on Dutch Instagram

The Sharing Perspectives Foundation and Build Up believe the answer lies in dialogue. By engaging in open and honest conversations and by posting alternative, unifying narratives, we can foster empathy and understanding while dismantling harmful beliefs and stereotypes. This theory forms the foundation on which we build The Digital Us: an online training program designed to empower young people to intervene in racist discourse on social media.

The Digital Us brings together people who have experienced racism online with those who have not. It offers young people a safe online space to engage in conversations around topics such as ethnicity, representation and privilege. Together, they learn how to best intervene in racist discourse. Bystanders become upstanders, and the burden of addressing online racism is no longer solely on the shoulders of its victims.

This week is an exciting week for The Digital Us as the first group of participants will embark on their learning journey. To be able to guide them not only on how to intervene but also on where to intervene, we carried out a social media analysis. The findings of this research, which focused on Dutch Instagram, unequivocally reaffirms the relevance and importance of The Digital Us, with nearly 4% of the 309,083 comments in our dataset found to be likely racist.

The social media analysis also provides us with valuable insights, including:
– National news media attract the largest number of racist comments;
– News reports about crime are the most common and also attract the most racist comments;
– A disproportionate number of racist comments are posted under messages about Islam;
– Each type of racist commentary follows specific discursive patterns.
For more findings, check out the full report.

Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange as a new form of education

As one of my case studies, I focused on the Virtual Exchange format of the Sharing Perspectives Foundation as I noticed they were aiming to do something different with their online courses. I talked to staff members about the design of the format and studied the daily operation of the courses. I tried to understand what is specific to the SPF format and consider the educational implications of these specificities. In the end, the purpose of my study was to give a more detailed view on the way open online education initiatives could work, and formulate some more grounded claims about their role in the educational field. 

What I found is that, in many respects, the Virtual Exchange format of the Sharing Perspectives Foundation does something totally different than traditional education. Digital technologies are implemented in such a way that young people from all over the globe share resources about complex issues that play at a global level, like the videos and reading materials. Next to that, the Virtual Exchange format integrates discussions about local effects of these global issues, by encouraging participants to describe their personal experiences, to give local examples, and to share interviews with their friends or family members about the discussed topics. These activities in the Virtual Exchange give a stage to differences between participants who are from various geographical regions and have different backgrounds. But they may also cast light on surprising similarities: participants from different parts of the world may share passions, aspirations, experiences, or even linguistic expressions. What the Virtual Exchange format introduces, in this way, is a continuous connection between the local and the global, online and offline, personal and common, or differences and similarities. 

The image visualizes how differences and similarities unfold during the dialogue sessions, like a ‘color wheel’ or a fan. That is, on the one hand, this unfolding shows dissimilarities (in the image, the different lines making up the circles. On the other hand, these differences are held together through commonalities (in the image, the ‘joint’ or hinge keeping the different circles together). Image retrieved from: van de Oudeweetering, K., & Decuypere, M. (2020). In between hyperboles: forms and formations in Open Education. Learning, Media and Technology, 1-18 (Advance online publication). doi: 10.1080/17439884.2020.1809451

As much as digital technologies establish these new connections, they are not without glitches. Poor internet connections, hardware issues, or overburdened servers frequently interrupt the dialogue sessions, and sometimes prevent participants from entering the dialogue sessions. I experienced this myself one time when there was a power cut in my street and my apartment. Luckily, there is a technical team offering support in these cases and facilitators try to integrate these technical problems in the dialogue session: they encourage participants to think about the fragility of digital connections, and how the ability to connect online often heavily depends on local contexts.  

Besides these specific characteristics of the Virtual Exchange format of SPF, I also noticed that the online design bears similarities with ‘traditional’ school settings. For example, the small dialogue groups give the same safety as a class, the online meeting rooms are designed to create a similar feeling of commonality as in a classroom,  and there is a course outline that structures the learning materials like a regular curriculum. In this sense, the Virtual Exchange format of SPF integrates various characteristics of education that we are familiar to. Moreover, it is this continuity that makes the format work: we need closedness to build bonds, we need some sort of place and time to come together, and we need a timeline to commit to a learning trajectory. Therefore, this study helped to see that the format does not introduce a radical disruption from or for traditional forms of education, but establishes new dimensions and connections to existing, formal education settings. 

The study is accessible via https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17439884.2020.1809451, but subscriptions or university networks are required.

About the author

Karmijn van de Oudeweetering is a 29-year old PhD student at the KU Leuven in Belgium. Her research is focused on open online education initiatives, how they are embedded in European education policy, and how they are consequently realized. Furthermore, the research focuses on describing and visualizing forms of space and time that come into being through these online educational developments.

Virtual Exchange or Virtual training?

Methodological principles

A virtual exchange

A designed interactive process in which the learner is leading. Learners interact synchronously under the guidance of facilitators to engage on contemporary themes. Through the interactive process learners implicitly develop various skills. However, to which extent they develop those skills is flexible and dependent on their own needs and previous experiences. Participant’s curiosity might be triggered and stimulated, their self-esteem can be enhanced, their previously held beliefs and viewpoints may be challenged and their listening skills might improve. The assignments learners engage in are solely designed to deepen the learning process. Submitting assignments is sufficient to pass the course as meta-analysis on learning outcomes for all participants together show us that the overall learning outcomes are being met at a certain level of participation and assignments submission.

A virtual training

Is designed around specific content or skills. Learning outcomes are explicit and equal to all participants. Learners are instructed, and engage in the training through readings and video-materials and interact with peers or instructors both synchronous and asynchronous to support their comprehension of the content. Assignments are used to control for this comprehension and can be failed after submission. Trained skills and taught content are timeless and do not necessarily have a link to contemporary issues. 

Learning objectives

Typically, through virtual exchanges learners develop what is referred to in literature as soft skills, transversal skills or 21st Century skills. Such skills include curiosity, self-esteem, tolerance to ambiguity, serenity, resilience, critical thinking, listening skills, or cross-cultural competences. Through virtual trainings, participants typically develop more concrete or ‘hard’ skills, like digital competences, foreign language skills or media-literacy. This also clarifies the difference in learning outcome measurement. It is at least unethical but arguably impossible, to fail a participant on a low level of self-esteem or by not being curious enough. It is possible to measure someone’s ability to use online tools, such as Google sheets or to measure a certain language proficiency or the ability to distinguish between real and fake news. The above is not exclusive, but illustrative to a typical learning outcome for each model.