Course syllabus for Exploring grand societal challenges

The course has been discontinued
The course syllabus contains changes
See changes

Course syllabus adopted 2025-02-14 by Head of Programme (or corresponding).

Overview

  • Swedish nameExploring grand societal challenges
  • CodeTRA470
  • Credits3 Credits
  • OwnerTRACKS
  • Education cycleFirst-cycle
  • DepartmentTRACKS
  • GradingUG - Pass, Fail

Course round 1

  • Teaching language Swedish
  • Application code 97185
  • Minimum participants8
  • Open for exchange studentsYes

Credit distribution

0124 Project 3 c
Grading: UG		 3 c

    Examiner

    Go to coursepage (Opens in new tab)

    Eligibility

    General entry requirements for bachelor's level studies

    Course specific prerequisites

    At least one year of studies at bachelor¿s level. Applicants must have completed 30 ECTS at the time of application. Selection is based on an overall assessment of the applicants' merits.

    Aim

    The course aims to enable students to develop basic skills for working with challenge-driven cross-disciplinary problems in mixed teams.

    Learning outcomes (after completion of the course the student should be able to)

    • Engage with stakeholders to understand, define, and reframe challenges
    • Collaborate effectively in interprofessional Nordic teams, integrating diverse disciplinary insights to define and reframe challenges
    • Analyze complex societal challenges
    • Identify and apply appropriate methods for ideation
    • Identify ethical aspects and discuss and assess their consequences in relation to a specific challenge
    • Communicate and convey information, problems, methods, and development processes, both orally and in writing

    Content

    This project-based course, in the form of a Blended Intensive Program (BIP), focuses on interdisciplinary reframing of demographic challenges on the municipal level in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The course combines online lectures and preparatory work with on-site workshops and group work in teams with mixed competences.

    The course highlights demographic challenges from different areas such as healthcare, service provision and city planning, and encourages participation from a broad range of disciplines to get new perspectives on issues which are otherwise often discussed only within the disciplines traditionally seen as most affected.

    Organisation

    The course format consists of on-line teaching and learning as well as self-study of the competences and skills necessary for the task prior to the on-site activities. The course will have participant from higher education institutions in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The course is run by an interdisciplinary teaching team from the involved higher education institutions and the practical on-site activities will be conducted at Chalmers during five days.

    The workshops and teamwork are centered around one concrete challenge per team, defined by the teams themselves with input from the municipalities in Norway, Denmark and Sweden. The workshop output should be a reframing of the challenges, which may be further developed in solutions in coming courses at each participating higher education institution.

    Literature

    Literature will consist of online articles, reports, etc. The Literatur will be announced 8 weeks before the course starts.

    Examination including compulsory elements

    The course is evaluated by criteria for the learning outcomes based on the process and the results of the team project through continuous assessment at the end of each day during the on-site week. The examination consists of oral presentations and a final written report.

    The course examiner may assess individual students in other ways than what is stated above if there are special reasons for doing so, for example if a student has a decision from Chalmers about disability study support.

    The course syllabus contains changes

    • Changes to course:
      • 2026-01-30: Discontinued Changed to discontinued by UBS/UOL
        The course is discontinued
      • 2025-05-07: Litterature Litterature changed by UBS/UOL
        Updated information about literature
    • Changes to course rounds:
      • 2025-04-30: Examinator Examinator changed from Mikael Enelund (mien) to Ida Gremyr (idagre) by Adm
        [Course round 1]