e-Ducation in environmental management

Project Leader

Dr. Hanspeter Graf
hanspeter.graf@hta-bi.bfh.ch
NDS Umwelt
Hochschule für Technik und Architektur
Seevorstadt 99
2501 Biel

Project Coordinator

Dr. Hanspeter Graf
hanspeter.graf@hta-bi.bfh.ch
NDS Umwelt
Hochschule für Technik und Architektur
Seevorstadt 99
2501 Biel

Project Partners

Summary

The need for additional education in environmental management systems to improve sustainable development in all kinds of organizations is given taking into account that less than 10% of the potential users of such systems have it already. The potential users of such a formation are already in business and are interested to spend as less time as possible away from their working place. It is therefore desirable to offer it in form of webbased courses. But also students in higher semesters are more and more interested to learn new topics by doing it in a playful way and over the internet.

The project wants to combine these different aspects by creating a webbased course in environmental management. It will be based on a model (virtual) company where the system can be implemented from the students by themselves after a face to face introduction. After entering it into force the system can be tested with several simulations - incidents, client complaints, stakeholder complaints, environmental reports, ...- where the students can be active as environmentalist of the organization.

It is planned that the model company will be created on the web within the first 8 months of the total project duration of 1 year with extended graphic enhancement. After an extensive test a pilot course will be held, which will show if this kind of a webbased training is suitable for introducing environmental management systems on a broad base and if and how the idea of a model company can be improved. The project is done in close cooperation with different schools (Universities of applied sciences of Biel, Winterthur and Sion, University of St. Gallen, ETHZ, University of Economy Lucerne) and interdisciplinary through scientific, technical, economic, informatics and artistic oriented people. A broad support of the course and the model company is ensured because the different schools involved already offer courses in this direction and are interested to test new education tools also for other students in the appropriate schools. The total costs are estimated to be around Fr. 475'000.- where of the amount of Fr. 188'500 will be asked to be funded by Swiss Virtual Campus.