Course: Behavior Change for Collective Climate Action

Practitioners, educators and students planning sustainability careers need multiple skills to be effective systems change agents towards a sustainable world. Behavior change is an essential ingredient of the systems change needed (Levin et al., 2020). Behavior change skills help motivate and accelerate sustainability actions by the general public, private sector, and public sector (Vaughter, 2016). Students, educators, and professionals need both the understanding and the ability to apply behavior change techniques appropriately. This course focuses on collective action, which amplifies climate impact and provides the scaffolding necessary to support governmental and business change. In this online course, we will show you the theory of collective action and how to incorporate behavior change principles into your programs and courses, all while you advance your own professional goals. The course presents state-of-the art interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research behind the tools presented. Evidence-based behavior change tools include: social norms, social identity, increasing efficacy, and legacy motivation. The course concludes with a brief overview of how to get to scale. The course comprises brief multimedia lectures with practice exercises and active student responding modules to help you master the skills.

Learning objectives include:

• identify and discriminate behavioral barriers to pro-climate behavior;
• select examples of the proper application of behavioral tools that counter these behavioral barriers;
• identify the appropriate behavioral tool for specific audiences and situations; and
• identify effective strategies for outreach and communication to ideologically different audiences.

Key Details

Schedule:

The course will meet over 4 sessions on Tuesdays from 3-4:30 p.m. ET: October 28, November 4, 11 and 18. All sessions will be recorded and made available to registered participants.

Registration fees:

• Individual (non-student) associated with an AASHE member organization: $160
• Individual (non-student) not associated with an AASHE member organization: $200
• Student: $75
• Groups: full price for first registrants and 20% off for each subsequent registrant

Registration deadline is October 27.

Learn more and register now.