CLIMATE-ORIENTED TRAININGS in the field of Climate Services, Climate CHANGE ADAPTATION and Mitigation

The Erasmus+ ClimEd (2021-2023; http://climed.network; “Multilevel Local, Nation- and Regionwide Education and Training in Climate Services, Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation”) project is aimed at the development of competency-based curricula for continuous comprehensive training of specialists in the field of climate services and additional education in climate change for decision-makers, experts in climate-dependent economic sectors, and public.

Some of the goals and objectives of the project are closely related to the Pan-Eurasian EXperiment (PEEX; www.atm.helsinki.fi/peex), and especially with multi-disciplinary, -scale and -component study climate change at resolving major uncertainties in the Earth system science and global sustainability issues.

The ClimEd Trainings (http://climed.network/events/climed-trainings), in total 7, will be carried out during the project and will be focused on training the faculty/ teaching/ research staff and postgraduates at the ClimEd partner institutions and collaborating organizations in advanced educational and information-and-communication technologies for building a flexible multi-level integrated practice-based education system in the field of Climate Services, Climate Change  Adaptation and Mitigation.

Due to COVID pandemic situation, the originally planned face-to-face first trainings (in Estonia, Ukraine, and Finland) were converted into online training. Such online trainings were divided into 3 consecutive blocks: (i) online lecturing, (ii) home-work-assignments (HWAs) as group projects with established internal communication between the member of the groups and with an option of zoom-consulting during remote work, and (iii) final oral presentations (projects’ defenses) of HWAs with evaluation and feedback, discussions, and awarding certificates (corresponding to ECTS credits) with achieved learning outcomes. The majority of HWAs are based on the ClimEd main themes linking climate change vs. agriculture, energy, technical design and construction, urban economy, water management, health care; although other themes of interest can be selected by groups. Trainings also include questionnaires distributed among participants: evaluation of the training, and evaluation of own learning outcomes. Technically, the Moodle system, Zoom-hosting, e-evaluations, etc. are actively utilized in such trainings. All materials of the trainings are always publicly accessible online at the ClimEd project website as well as long-term stored at the Moodle system for each training.

The outcomes/ summaries – including the lecture topics and learning outcomes, information resources, themes of group projects, feedbacks and training results, established network-community of the training participants (trainees and lecturers and teachers of HWAs) – of the online training approach will be presented for the ClimEd Trainings. Summaries are available for: 1^st training “Competence-Based Approach to Curriculum Development for Climate Education”; 19 Apr – 12 May 2021; http://climed.network/events/climed-trainings/climed-training-1-online); 2^nd – “Adaptation of the Competency Framework for Climate Services to conditions of Ukraine” (29 Jun – 26 Aug 2021; http://climed.network/events/climed-trainings/climed-training-2-online); 3^rd – “Digital tools and datasets for climate change education” (26 Oct – 12 Nov 2021; http://climed.network/events/climed-trainings/climed-training-3-online); and 4^th “Developing learning courses in climate services considering needs of different users” (7–11 February 2022; http://climed.network/events/climed-trainings/climed-training-4).