Group project blog

The brainstorm session:
This week on wednesday we had a brainstorm session with our tutors to better define the big idea that we wanted to tackle. In this column we will shortly share the thought process that we had during this brainstorm session on September 6th 2023.

On September 6th all 5 members of the team met at the design lab on campus of the university of Twente with the goal in mind to decide on a topic which we could further explore in the coming weeks. During this session our tutors helped us become closer as a team by providing us with team building exercises which facilitated us in forming a tighter bond between the members. The exercises asked us to pick a character out of a list that described us the most.This allowed us as a group to take a closer look at what roles the others were best suited for during this 10 week long project.

After the team building exercises we were asked if we could name 2 topics which interested us the most, we discussed briefly around the table which topics had our preference. Of Course we had already discussed this at length the day before, however we decided to do one more short discussion to make sure that everyone was onboard with the 2 big ideas we had chosen. The 2 big ideas chosen were (un)sustainable food practices and fast fashion with a preference towards the topic of (un)sustainable food practices. We were asked by our tutors to make 2 mind maps with these 2 topics as the focus. The result of this is below this paragraph on the blog page. For (un)sustainable food practices we discussed topics like the terrible amount of food that is wasted and thrown away in our society. When discussing that one member of the team mentioned that this was a clear example of the unequal division of food in our world. Meaning that we in the West have so much food that we throw a lot of it away whereas there are parts of the world in which food is extremely difficult to come by. Mass production was discussed as well since we saw this as bad for the environment and not sustainable looking into the future. Other topics of note were the enormous amount of meat that is consumed which we assume leads to high amounts of methane in the air and the production of meat is extremely water intensive. Lastly we discussed fertilizer use which if done improperly could lead to land being unable to be farmed on in the future.

Next, we discussed our second big idea which is fast fashion. When thinking of fast fashion we came to think of the sweat shops which employ children to create clothing for almost no money. This led into our next idea which was the unlivable wages of the people that work in the production of fast fashion. We also suspect that the materials used in fast fashion are bad for the environment and contribute to global warming.

Finally we had some ideas that could theoretically fit both big ideas.These would be the assumed poor work conditions of people in both the food production and fast fashion production industries, shipping which we assume is bad because of carbon emissions, and water use because we assume both the production of fast fashion and the production of for example meat take up a lot of the world's water supply.

At the end of the brainstorm session we unanimously came to the decision that (un)sustainable food practices will be our main idea of interest for this module. We believe that there are a lot more interesting things to learn about in this area. We mainly already found this out while doing the “5 times why” exercise because we noticed we were all interested in the topic
Furthermore, we’d like to mention that around the end of the brainstorm one person from our team actually left to join another team to work on the big idea of energy poverty. We wish him all the best and good luck with the rest of this minor in his new team.

CBL as a pedagogical approach:
In this challenged based learning minor called Global Crises, Local Challenges we, the students, will become familiar with the global climate and ecological crises we, the humankind, are facing. Next to this we will be introduced to the methods scientists and citizens take in order to help make these problems heard by a bigger crowd.
For us this minor will be the first time that we get introduced to challenged based learning. To us it sounds rather interesting, but before we can say anything more about it we will take a look at what CBL actually is, how it differs from the “normal” style of learning we are used to and why CBL is a fit and innovative approach for the challenges we face today.
Challenge-based learning (CBL) is a form of education where students will be confronted with real world challenges or problems and need to try and find a solution. This education style encourages students to actively engage in the learning process by applying their knowledge and skills to address the challenges. Some of the basic characteristics of CBL is that the group is multidisciplinary, students are in control, making mistakes is only another way of learning and there is continuous sharing and reflecting within your group as well as outside your group. In our situation this means the following, our particular challenge is about (un)sustainable food practices, in our visions a broad topic with a lot of different perspectives and room for improvements. We have a multidisciplinary team with expertise on communications sciences, psychology and international business and on personal characteristics there is also a diversification to be seen.
Challenged based learning knows three main phases, engage, investigate and act.
Engage, it starts off with a big idea, this idea can be a lot of different things, as said before our big idea is the (un)sustainable food practices. With this big idea you need to ask yourself multiple times the question why. Why is this a problem? Why is it unfair? After doing this you can form an actionable challenge.
Investigate, in this phase is it essential to gather as much information as possible on the subject. This can be done by doing literature research or following the news, but next to these options can you also think about asking questions to someone who is already knowledgeable about the topic, an interview so to speak. It is important to analyze the information and to critically assess it
Act, in this phase are you really going to design a solution, you will need to generate ideas, set criteria and propose a solution. After this you need to (build and) implement your solution in real life. When this is done you need to carefully monitor and evaluate it. Did the solution have the designed impact, did it also affect other things, is the problem solved and didn’t new problems arise.
It is important to continuously Document, Reflect and Share throughout all the phases.
Engaging in Challenge-Based Learning is great for addressing today's complex problems as it develops practical problem-solving skills, interdisciplinary collaboration, and ethical awareness. Another reason for the effectiveness of CBL is that today’s problems can be so extremely broad and big that there won’t be one correct solution, and CBL promotes exploring all different kinds of paths and solutions for the same problems.

Big idea to the global crises:
We would like to look into the big idea of (un)sustainable food practices. This is a broad idea that can be narrowed down over the course of the upcoming weeks. The big idea of (un)sustainable food practices can be defined as a problem when we link them to global crises such as the climate crisis and ecological crisis.
Within the subject of unsustainable food practices, livestock is partly responsible for the climate crisis that we are facing. The large amount of cattle that is used for meat, and dairy production emits great amounts of methane into the atmosphere. This is worrisome, because research shows that these great amounts of methane are already responsible for at least 25% of today’s global warming.
An interesting chapter of The Climate Book (2021) about this subject is chapter 2.3. In this chapter it becomes clear that methane is a powerful warming agent. It differs from CO2 in a sense that methane lasts less long than CO2 in the atmosphere. 80% of methane gets removed from the atmosphere by chemical reactions within twenty years. Furthermore, the book suggests that cutting methane will result in near-immediate temperature declines.
Furthermore, the agricultural sector adds to the ecological crisis as well. The before-mentioned effect of livestock on global warming causes an indirect impact on loss in biodiversity. Additionally, livestock is also directly impacting biodiversity. Natural habitats are being converted to agricultural land, which leads to loss of biodiversity habitats.
Chapter 2.19 of The Climate Book (2021) emphasizes the importance of biodiversity. We need biodiversity to help ecosystems slow climate change, because ecosystems can store CO2. However, over time humans have deliberately reshaped ecosystems to meet our needs for food, to the point that humans no longer managed ecosystems but dominated them. This resulted in a population bloom that needed even more land for farming.
Another factor within the agricultural sector that is contributing to global warming is the export of food. The transportation of food comes with great CO2 emission.
In addition, not only the food itself is something we should worry about but also the packaging of these products. Numerous products are wrapped or packed in plastics. Some of these packaging might be recycled, however still a lot will end up in nature. The Climate Book (2021) states that fifteen to forty per cent of mismanaged plastics will end up in the sea each year. This is already a very high amount, nonetheless this is still increasing every year. This amount of plastic pollution is not only ugly for the eye, it also has sever risks. One of these risks is the suffocation and starvation of sea animals, for example, whales, and sea turtles. A less obvious consequence of the plastic pollution is that the microplastic particles absorb radiation. It has been shown that microplastics are possibly just as disruptive to the ocean oxygen levels as global warming.