Strengthening Energy and Climate Literacy with Microlearning and Open Educational Resources

This master’s thesis is motivated by the desire to actively engage Slovenian youth in co-creating our energy and climate future. The background is the growing interest in the effective energy transition on the national, EU and global levels, and we specifically focus on the role of education in achieving it. The main problem we address is the need for improvement of energy- and climate-related non-formal youth education to increase their interest in the topic, and motivate their engagement as future leaders in public discussions and the policy-making processes. To tackle this problem, we use the existing En-ROADS energy and climate interactive simulation tool and the accompanying online training series and complement it with new learning materials and learning activities, developed in our educational project. Our approach focuses on open education practices and the co-creation of open educational resources (OER), supported by microlearning via social media (Instagram). We develop a novel approach to solving the problem by involving youth in a non-formal open educational process where they are invited to co-create the content and format of the learning materials, decide about the technologies used, and affect the implementational process of the key learning activities.
The main contributions of the thesis are the developed OERs, which can be adapted, reused or remixed by other stakeholders in energy and climate education, and the recommendations for educators in other topical fields. The main methodological finding of the thesis focuses on the importance of flexibility and adaptation of learning materials and activities according to the expressed interests and expectations of young learners. Their feedback needs to be carefully gathered and integrated into the implementation of the project.