Syllabus

• Week 1

  Why is effective communication needed?

  • Course Introduction

    You have likely seen good examples of climate communication that have made you think that climate change is important and even provoked you to act. Here we will help you avoid common pitfalls to effective climate communication.

  • Preconceived notions of climate change

    Climate change can evoke different reactions. Whether you are simply bringing it up in conversation around the dinner table or with friends in a cafe - you may be surprised at the variety of reactions. Let's have a look at: Why?

  • Why climate action is needed now

    We are continually bombarded with news about how the climate is changing and that we need to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So, why is it important to act now?

  • Wrapping up Week 1

    This activity is a checklist and reminder of what you have explored in Week 1 - Why is Effective Communication Needed?

• Week 2

  Principles for effective communication

  • Intro to Week 2

    In Week 1 we learned why effective communication is needed around climate change and some of its challenges. This week we will explore principles for effective communication and consider how they apply to climate change.

  • Know your audience

    The first principle for effective communication is to know your audience. Here we will have a look at what that means for climate communication.

  • Be clear and comprehensive

    Knowing your purpose in communicating, being clear about your message, and making your message as easy to understand as possible are all key tenets of successful communication.

  • Make behavioural change easy

    The purpose of effective climate communication is to inspire and enable others to act toward positive outcomes for climate change. The easier you make this, the more success you will have in engaging action.

  • Use storytelling

    Storytelling is an extremely effective mechanism to connect and engage your audience. We have devoted a whole week, Week 4, to this topic. Here we will have an introductory look into storytelling in the context of climate change.

  • Wrapping up Week 2

    Here we provide a checklist of activities you should have engaged with in Week 2.

• Week 3

  Storytelling to raise engagement for climate action

  • Introduction to Week 3

    Welcome to Week 3 of the Communicating Climate Change course. This week Dr Ria Dunkley will be looking at raising engagement for climate action. We will explore techniques for increasing engagement, including storytelling using

  • Why is a good climate story essential?

    In this third video for Week 3, we will consider storytelling's importance to climate engagement. We will begin with discussing the centrality of stories within cultures, moving on to discuss storytelling techniques.

  • Story maps for climate change engagement

    This article explores the story mapping approach for represented multimodal data to inspire climate action.

  • Wrapping up Week 3

    This video closes Week 3 of the Communicating Climate Change Course.

• Week 4

  Principles of effective communication in practice

  • Intro to Week 4

    In Week 4 we will build on lessons from Weeks 1-3 to critically explore how to make sure that communication is engaging, effective and enables our audience to act.

  • Using creative approaches to engage and enable action

    This activity explores creative ways that others have used objects, visual aides and other forms of communication to engage their audience.

  • Tangible actions that make a difference

    In this activity the spotlight is on local government and communication techniques and strategies to assist with behavioural change.

  • Storytelling that connects to your audience's values

    In this section, we have identified several different stories that use the principles of effective communication in various ways and invite you to engage in discussions on what you think works, or doesn't work.

  • Wrapping up Week 4

    In this final activity we invite you to contribute to a discussion sharing your key learnings from this programme and sharing things that might be helpful to other learners as they apply these ideas in practice...

Who will you learn with?