Rethinking Sustainable Societies: Urban Lab

Course manual 2021/2022

Course content

This course is developed around a pressure cooker format that mimics a climate-proof planning process and integrates design thinking. This practice-based approach is also particularly suited to develop skills around cooperation, project management, design thinking, and stakeholder analysis. The course will take place in four weeks of intensive cooperation. It will start with an introduction day with the client and content and skills workshops. Students will then actively cooperate in the first week on the analysis phase, The second week will again start with a workshop and reflection session and then students will continue with the second phase of visioning. The third week will again start with a workshop and reflection session, after which the students will work on the third phase of plan development using a backcasting and prototyping approach. The fourth week will focus on elaboration and refinement. It will start again with a workshop and reflection session, and end with the presentations of the plans to the client.

Study materials

Literature

• Provided through Canvas and Library

Objectives

• apply concepts from the minor to concrete urban practices
• effectively organize and cooperate in group work
• apply design thinking to an urban sustainability issue
• apply a planning process to an urban sustainability issue
• develop a coherent plan and present it in both oral and written form

Teaching methods

• Seminar
• Presentation/symposium

Learning activities

Attendance

Additional requirements for this course:

Students need to be present at the start of the sessions. a maximum of 2 can be missed. After that, 1 point per session will be subtracted from the final grade/ 

Assessment

Inspection of assessed work

Feedback on summative assessment is provided through Canvas. Continuous feedback on the project and presentation is possible during the tutorial sessions. Please make use of those moments. 

Assignments

The course assignments consist of a final presentation and a report. Descriptions and rubrics are provided on Canvas.

The group will receive one grade. Students can then distribute their grades in such a manner that the average remains that grade. E.g. If a group of 3 students receive a 7, they can choose to all keep a 7, or distribute the grade such as for example student A:6. B:7, C:8. This enables students to more fairly attribute grading to their input to the project that the lecturer is unable to assess.

Please note that exceeding the number of words significantly has a negative impact on your score (Individual assignments: -0.5 points per 50 additional words, Group assignment: -0.5 per 100 additional words).

Handing in your assignment late will lead to subtraction of 0.5 points per half hour (e.g 1-

30 = -0.5, 31-60 =-1, …)

Fraud and plagiarism

This course adheres to the general rules on ‘Fraud and Plagiarism` as set by the UvA. Students are expected to have familiarized themselves with these rules.

The terms Fraud or Plagiarism are to be interpreted as the copying of the work of peer-student and/or the copying of (scientific) sources of information, without explicitly referring to its source.

Fraud/plagiarism is forbidden and actively checked by staff. When one is suspected of having committed fraud/plagiarism, the exam committee of beta-gamma and future planet studies will be informed. The highest punishment for fraud/plagiarism involves the student to be disallowed to partake of any exams or examination activities within the future planet studies programme, for the duration of a whole academic year, or may even face dismissal from the programme. More information about Fraud and Plagiarism can be found at: www.uva.nl/plagiaat

Course structure

Timetable

The schedule for this course is published on DataNose.

Additional information

• Right of inspection/ Collective Assessment Evaluation

Up to 20 working days after the announcement of the result, students have the right of inspection of their work (all forms of assessment). The student can request a copy of his/her work by e-mailing the teacher/course coordinator.

Feedback will provided through Canvas and in the closing session. Students can request a meeting with the teacher by emailing them to discuss the feedback.

Please note: you lose the right of feedback from the examiner when you don’t attend the Collective Assessment Evaluation without good reasons. For more information about the right of inspection, please refer to OER part A FNWI, article 4.9.

After the above mentioned 20 working days have expired the entire exam package must be handed over to the IIS Service Desk after which the work will be archived.

Last year's course evaluation

In order to provide students some insight how we use the feedback of student evaluations to enhance the quality of education, we decided to include the table below in all course guides.

Contact information

Coordinator

• dr. M. Giezen