MOOC for promoting the SDG’s
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (or Global Goals for Sustainable Development) are a collection of 17 global goals set by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015. The SDGs are part of Resolution 70/1 of the United Nations General Assembly: “Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.” That has been shortened to “2030 Agenda.” The goals are broad and interdependent, ye
t each has a separate list of targets to achieve. Achieving all 169 targets would signal accomplishing all 17 goals. The SDGs cover social and economic development issues including poverty, hunger, health, education, global warming, gender equality, water, sanitation, energy, urbanization, environment and social justice.
Education for sustainable development (ESD) is explicitly recognized in the SDGs as part of Target 4.7 of the SDG on education. UNESCO promotes the Global Citizenship Education (GCED) as a complementary approach. At the same time, it is important to emphasize ESD’s importance for all the other 16 SDGs. With its overall aim to develop cross-cutting sustainability competencies in learners, ESD is an essential contribution to all efforts to achieve the SDGs. This would enable individuals to contribute to sustainable development by promoting societal, economic and political change as well as by transforming their own behavior.
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are free open education offered through online platforms. The (initial) philosophy of MOOCs was to open up quality Higher Education to a wider audience. As such, MOOCs are an important tool to achieve Goal 4 (“Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”).[ At the same time, MOOCs also contribute to Goal 5, in that they are gender neutral and can give women and girls improved access to education.
NGO Knowledge Harvest took a part in the process of promotion the SDG’s and Agenda 2030 in Republic Macedonia. In order to promote the SDG’s more successfully, an online teacher training course has been created, in order to increase the teacher’s competences for education for sustainable development. The course is designed through three modules. The first and second module ending with a quiz. The candidate can pass the module two, and module three if she/he successfully passes the quiz.
In order to complete successfully the course and obtain a certificate, the candidate should offer his/her own lesson plan/ activity related with ESD. After approval by an expert, the lesson plans/activities are uploaded in database which will be freely available to all registered participants.
Link to the course: http://sdg.digitalschool.mk/?redirect=0