Sustainable ICT in practice line-up (course)

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Me and my colleague Elina have just finished giving our brand new master's level course, "Sustainable ICT in practice" (DM2720) for the very first time. We met our students for the very last time at the beginning of the week, but they have yet to hand in the final report and we have yet to read and grade it.

We did not know how many students would take the course up until less than a week in advance and we did in fact not even know if we would be able to give the course up until then since there is some minimum number of students necessary to get permission to give a course. We did know that if we reached a double-digit number of students (i.e. 10 or more) it would be ok and it turned out that no less than 17 students chose to take the course. That might not sound like much but it is, especially taking into account that this is the first time the course is given. Our other master's level sustainability-and-ICT course has upwards to 60 or 70 students taking it each year but that course is more or less compulsory for a relatively large group of students, while this course is optional and only chose by student who are really interested in the topic. Of the 17 students who took the course, no less than 75% had just finished reading our previous course (which ended at Christmas).

Giving a course for 17 students (with a higher-than-average interest in the subject matter) rather than for a group of 70 students (of which some will invariably be indifferent) is of course a very different experience - I even invited these students and my colleagues to a cocktail party in my home last month!

I will later write a separate blog post where I further analyze the course (i.e. a "course analysis"), but sufficient to say for now is that these students are a close as currently possible to being "our" master's students and we will for sure target them during the autumn when we will start to recruit students to write sustainability-related master's theses during the first half of 2018. The remainder of this blog post will list the lectures and the (guest) lecturers we had visit us in the course.

Week 1:
- Mattias Höjer (ABE & CESC), "ICT and Environmental Sustainability - How are they connected?"
- Åke Walldius (MID), "Value Sensitive Design"

Week 2:
- Sören Enholm (TCO Developmenet), "Sustainable IT and certifications"
- Elina Eriksson (MID & CESC), "Sustainable Software Engineering"

Week 3:
- Hanna Hasselqvist (MID & CESC), "Sustainable interaction design"
- Tina Ringenson (ABE & CESC), "What are Smart Sustainable Cities?"

Week 4:
- Anna Björklund (ABE), "Life Cycle Assessment"
- Sofia Ritzén (ITM), "Sustainable Business Models"

Week 5:
- Hanna Hasselqvist (MID & CESC, "Design for Sustainability"
- Mia Hesselgren (ITM), "(Sustainable) Branding"

Week 6:
- Anna Uleander (User Experience Design and Sustainability, Valtech), "Sustainability and CSR at Valtech"
- Susanna Elfors (Sustainability Expert, Sustopia), "Can ICT work as a catalyst for local activism and contribute to the renaissance of the suburbs?"

Week 7:
- Cancelled
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