Learning approach

This course runs over two weeks and each week takes a slightly different learning approach. Step 1.1 outlines the content of each week and in this Step, we give an insight into how we are inviting you to engage with the materials on offer.

Week 1

This week provides a lot of the key background information which we feel may be useful to know before diving into Week 2 and the ‘live’ content. As we have a rich and varied learning community on the course, we have tried to provide an opportunity to explore some of the broader context of COP26, other key frameworks such as COP15 (The UN Convention on Biological Diversity) and interlinked global targets such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals. As this course will exist post-COP26 as a legacy resource, we felt it may be useful for us to include such background information should these resources prove useful after November 2021.

Throughout Week 1 you will find opportunities for both Personal Reflection and Community Discussion in response to the course materials.

• Personal Reflection: Here we invite you to take a critical stance and personally reflect upon the starting point or stimulus provided. In most cases, we have provided some questions or points for reflection to help you get started.
• Community Discussion: Here we have created a space for you to share your thoughts and critical reflections on the course materials, topics covered and your personal reflections during the week. In these spaces we encourage you to take a respectful but critical approach. We should all feel able to share our views and challenge constructively.
• Update: We will bring you delegate reflections and updates direct from the first week of the Conference.

Week 2

This week takes us into the ‘live’ content where we offer a series of starting points on particular themes relating to COP26. There are five core learning approaches, namely:

• Insight: Each of these short videos offers an insight into what COP26 means from different international, national, organisational and personal perspectives. This provides a point for reflection as we begin to think about what COP26 may mean to us as individuals, communities and organisations. We recognise that these may form a particularly Scottish-centric perspective and so we invite you to share your insights and perspectives too with our learning community.
• Spotlight: During the Spotlight steps we focus on a current educational, community or youth-led response to COP26. These highlight a starting point into the many ways in which groups and individuals are organising for action. Again, these Spotlights have a particularly Scottish-centric focus as most of the responses share a Scottish perspective.
• Community Discussion: At these points we have created a space for us all to share our thinking and responses to the content shared. We invite everyone within the learning community to air the challenges that we may face within our diverse range of contexts when thinking about how we – individually and within communities – might take action.
• Update: Here we aim to bring direct updates from COP26 from a range of perspectives. The content offered will be dependent on what arises during COP26 and our ability to work with our contacts and media! We encourage you to keep returning to these Steps as content will be added throughout the course.
• Sharing: This is a space for us all to share learning tools and resources that we may use, have experienced or be aware of. We recognise that we may all have a different experience of teaching and learning influenced by factors such as power dynamics, culture and the value placed on various forms of knowledge. We wish to honour such diversity by creating a space to comment and share and we warmly welcome your contributions.

We strongly value the power of our global community discussion spaces. We believe that this sense of community helps us all to feel part of a kind of collective action. Throughout the course, we have taken a form of activist stance by encouraging everyone (ourselves included) to think critically about how we respond to the starting points, insights and perspectives shared with us and consider how we may respond ourselves within our context and within our communities.

Top tips to get the most out of community discussion

Join in! – We are keen to create a generous learning community within this course. Please share your thoughts and perspectives if you feel comfortable doing so. The more we share and discuss, the more opportunity we have to learn with and from one another.

Be respectful – Always treat others with respect and kindness, and only ever post something that you would be comfortable saying if you were face to face.

Chat – Our discussions are designed to be interactive, so please check back in regularly to see if anyone has replied to you, or whether there are new posts.

Stay on topic – Long posts can increase the time you spend working through the course, so try to make your posts short (around 200 words max. is a good guide) and stick to the discussion topic.