DigiChem
DIGICHEM – Towards a Digital International Study Program in Sustainable Chemistry
Sustainability is one of the major challenges facing both the economy and society in the future. International organizations, along with national agencies, have identified sustainability as a key challenge of the 21st century. In the European Union, the Green Deal has set a fundamental goal of achieving sustainability across all sectors of life, economy, and society. The European Parliament, in its recent resolution on the Chemical Strategy for Sustainability, has highlighted critical issues such as zero pollution, resource efficiency, circular economy, risk management, and sustainable research.
To address these challenges, there is an urgent need for new skills among academic and industrial researchers, particularly in the field of chemistry, which plays a central role in developing innovative sustainability solutions and is a strategic sector for industry. These experts must be capable of solving complex problems within multidisciplinary, international teams. However, many existing study programs do not yet adequately meet these needs. Through this project, we aim to address these gaps and begin developing a study program that will generate the future experts needed in sustainable chemistry.
The long-term goal of our consortium is to establish a joint, fully digital international study program in sustainable chemistry. The DIGICHEM project was envisioned as the first step toward achieving this goal. During this project, we aimed at developing digital modules that could be integrated into various study programs at the partner institutions. This would allow each university to benefit from the expertise and courses offered by the other partners, leading to a broader range of available modules and additional content in sustainable chemistry for students at each institution.
Our objective was to unite experts from different areas of sustainable chemistry to collaborate in teaching. The project's goal was to develop and deliver four modules through international cooperation, featuring joint teaching and learning. These modules cover key topics such as circular economy, product life cycle, sustainable raw materials, polymers, sustainable chemical synthesis, recycling, sustainable energy materials, waste management, and water management. The modules will be accessible to students through an electronic platform, and the developed module descriptions are intended to serve as a "best practice example" for others.
As a first step towards a joint study program, we developed module descriptions for the sustainable chemistry modules. These joint module descriptions are the key output of the program. Students from all four partners studied based on these module-descriptions and got the courses accepted as parts of their local study programs. Furthermore, the module descriptions have been fully or partially implemented into the study programs of the four partners. These modules are accessible to various international students through JLU’s Virtual International Program (VIP) on the ILIAS platform. We taught these modules to a group of international students from different study programs, assigning them tasks to solve in international teams.
The full teaching content for these modules, including the lectures, is available digitally on the learning platform, accessible to students from all partner institutions as well as other international students through the VIP. Over the past year, we have been teaching these modules via VIP, and we will continue offering them in the future.
DownloadDownload the full module plan here: Download PDFContactProf. Dr. Richard Göttlich |
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