Nature-Based Climate Shelters in Schools: Empowering Teachers for Sustainable Education

About

The course presents the concepts of Nature-based climate shelters in schools and Urban nature-based solutions (NBS) through the prism of design thinking. Nature-based climate shelters in schools are green spaces in schoolyards accessible to both students and the broader community that help mitigate the impacts of climate change, while offering a space for outdoor learning.   
Through Nature-based climate shelter interventions (CSIs), educators engage students in the design of a nature-based climate shelter in their own school to allow them to develop agency in improving their surroundings, 21st century skills and environmental awareness.

Objectives

During this course, participants will:

  • Gain knowledge of the concepts of Nature-based climate shelters and Urban nature-based solutions by exploring the value and advantages associated with these concepts, while reviewing state of the art knowledge, learning materials and practical case studies.
  • Learn to design and implement greening activities within your school, through the analysis of best practices and collaboration with other participants.
  • Discover innovative ways of engaging students in the learning process through a methodical exploration of the design thinking approach and how it aligns with the development of a climate shelter intervention. 
  • Engage in a collaborative learning experience with your peers and co-develop a Nature-based Climate Shelter in School Action Plan for designing a CSI or greening activities with your students.

Modules

  1. Understanding Nature-based Climate Shelters in Schools, opens on 1 April 2024
  2. Empathize and Ideate, opens on 08/04/2024
  3. Experiment and Evolve, opens on 15/04/2024
  4. Deploy, Review and Assess, opens on 22/04/2024

To earn a course certificate, course participants need to submit their Nature-based Climate Shelter in School Action Plan and review three Action Plans of other participants. The final deadline to complete all activities is 08 May 2024, 23:59 CET. 

Register for this MOOC

Promotional Materials

Whether you are a course participant, a Ministry of Education, or a network organisation in the educational field: we welcome your support in spreading the message on this free online course.

You can do this in various ways, including:

  • Use the suggested social media messages and visuals for the dissemination of the course and registration information on your social media channels, which you can download in the promotional pack below.
  • Use the information provided in the promotional pack to promote the MOOC via any other dissemination channels you may have available to you (for example, newsletters, bulletins, digests, blog articles).
  • Circulate information to relevant contacts: members of your network, organisations that you know are active on the topic and individual contacts.

To find all the promotional materials combined in one compressed file, please click on the button below. This promotional pack (in English) includes detailed information on how to promote the course in communications with your networks and audiences, as well as all visuals and suggested social media messages.

Download the promotional pack

One-pager

 

 

(Click on the image to download the one-pager)

Social media

Some useful hashtags for social media messages:

  • Course hashtag: #nbsclimateshelters
  • Project handle: @P_Coolschools
  • Service hashtag: #EUNAcademy
  • Funder handles: @scientix_eu @JPIUrbanEurope @Innoviris

Behind the MOOC

This MOOC is organised by COOLSCHOOLS in partnership with Scientix. 
COOLSCHOOLS (March 2022-Feb 2025) is a transdisciplinary applied-research project aiming to analyse the multiple co-benefits of implementing Nature-based Solutions (NBS) for climate adaptation, or what we call nature-based climate shelters in school environments. Scientix is the community for science education in Europe (www.scientix.eu) and is an initiative of European Schoolnet (www.eun.org), the network of 34 European Ministries of Education. EUN aims to bring innovation in teaching and learning to its key stakeholders: Ministries of Education, schools, teachers, researchers, and industry partners. 

Disclaimer

This MOOC, coordinated by European Schoolnet (EUN), is part of the COOLSCHOOLS project, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under GA No. 101003758, the Spanish Research Agency (AEI), Innoviris (Brussels Capital Region), Dutch Research Council (NWO), The Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO), and Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR). The MOOC is supported by Scientix, an initiative of European Schoolnet. The content of the webpage is the sole responsibility of the organizer and it does not represent the opinion of the European Commission (EC), and the EC is not responsible for any use that might be made of information contained.