Connected through a screen, two classes that are an ocean apart take the same course and do the same assignments. Our course “ The Global Village” is a globally networked learning environment (Starke-Meyerring and Wilson, 2008) where students from two different universities work and learn together using technology. They meet in a virtual classroom in synchronous sessions through web conferencing; they also work together in intercultural teams through Google Hangouts/Skype, wikis, blogs and email. After exploring their local communities, students identify global connections by comparing their results with their intercultural team members. Teaching in this type of experiential environment required us to adapt our teaching strategies. What better way to share our teaching and learning experience than through a Digital Showcase?In: IT and digital connectedness – digital showcase. International Conference Improving University Teaching (IUT), Vancouver, 23-26 juni 2014
A comparison between caring communities in Wedde (Groningen) and a rural community in Northwestern Germany. Motives, setbacks and changes for two small rural communities where citizens take charge of the care in their community
The transformation from the current energy system to a decentralized renewable energy system requires the transformation of communities into energy neutral or even energy producing communities. Increasingly, citizens become 'prosumers' and pool their resources to start a local energy initiative. In this paper we present an in-depth study of networks that recently developed, which challenge the established way of centralized decision-making on energy resources. Many local communities are eager to promote sustainable energy production, to use local financial resources for the local community and to employ democratic governance of energy production and supply. Furthermore, we study how these co-operations are linked to local, regional and national networks for community energy. We use both Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Social Movement Theory (SMT) to investigate the initiatives, as this allows a dynamic analysis of collective strategies. We discuss the obduracy of the energy system and how this system is challenged by new connections between communities and global networks and by new types of energy providers that are rooted in social networks. Furthermore, we draw attention to the way community energy networks provide a social innovation while realizing a decentralized and decarbonized energy system.
Supermarkets are essential urban household amenities, providing daily products, and for their social role in communities. Contrary to many other countries, including nearby ones, the Netherlands have a balanced distribution of supermarkets across villages and urban neighbourhoods. However, spatial supermarket patterns, are subject to influential developments. First, due to economies of scale, there is a tendency for supermarkets to increase their catchment areas and to disappear from peripheral villages. Second, supermarkets are now mainly located in residential areas, although the urban periphery appears to be attractive for the retail sector, perhaps including the rise of hypermarkets. Third, today, online grocery shopping is still lagging far behind on other online shopping products, but a breaks through will dilute population support for in-store supermarkets and can lead to dramatic ‘game changer’ shifts with major spatial and social effects. These three important trends will reinforce each other. Consequences are of natural community meeting places at the expense of social cohesion; reduced accessibility for daily products, leading to more travel, often by car; increasing delivery flows; real estate vacancies, and increasing suburban demand increase for retail and logistics. Expected changes in supermarket patterns require understanding, but academic literature on OGS is still scarce, and does hardly address household behaviour in changing spatial constellations. We develop likely spatial supermarket patterns, and model the consequences for travel demand, social cohesion and real estate demand, as well as the distribution between online and in-store grocery shopping, by developing a stated preference experiment, among Dutch households.
The population in rural areas in the northern provinces are aging in a much higher pace than in other parts of the Netherlands. Many young and higher educated citizens move out of these provinces. Quality of life in rural villages decreases likewise and the inhabitants that stay behind are more vulnerable, with lower income and educational levels. Recent decentralization policies put a larger burden on local constituencies to guarantee the quality of the living environment but a lot of them lack sufficient knowledge and capacity to tackle this complex issue.The initiators of this application have joined their knowledge and experience to put together a consortium with the aim to support these smaller constituencies in rural areas in the three northern provinces with a new and innovative methodology: the GO! approach. This approach was developed in the neigborhoods of Utrecht municipality and will be used for the first time in rural communities with a comparable size .This approach consists of the following steps:• First to identify possibilities to create a healthier living environment by analyzing available data on pollution, spatial layout and social cohesion.• To discuss the result of this analysis with local citizens and other local stakeholders in order to link the data with local experiences• To prioritize into major themes as a result of the combination of all this available information.• To link these major themes to combinations effective measures available from RIVM and international databases.• To present these combinations to the local government, their citizens and other local stakeholders in order to let them choose for an effective approach and inplemant it together in order to create a local healthier living environment.The GO! approach will provide local citizens and professionals with the necessary tools and knowledge to work jointly and effectively to realize a healthier living environment. The project partners that jointly started the consortium will put in effort during this first year to build and formalize the consortium and to make arrangements with several constituencies in the three northers provinces to formulate their own specific knowledge agenda as a basis for concrete project proposals in the second stage to be implemented with the support of the formalized consortium.
The main aim of KiNESIS is to create a Knowledge Alliance among academia, NGOs, communities, local authorities, businesses to develop a program of multidisciplinary activities in shrinking areas with the aim of promoting and fostering ideas, projects, workforce, productivity and attractiveness. The problems affecting peripheral territories in rural or mountain areas of the interior regions, compared to small, medium or large population centres and large European capitals, are related to complex but clear phenomena: the emigration of young generations, abandonment and loneliness of elderly people, the loss of jobs, the deterioration of buildings and land, the closing of schools and related services, the disappearance of traditions and customs, the contraction of local governments, which in absence of adequate solutions can only generate worse conditions, leading to the abandonment of areas rich in history, culture and traditions. It is important that these communities - spread all over Europe - are not abandoned since they are rich in cultural traditions, which need to be preserved with a view to new developments, intended as "intelligent" rebirth and recovery.The focus of KiNESIS is to converge the interest of different stakeholders by recalling various skills around abandoned villages to make them "smart" and "attractive".Keeping in mind the triangular objectives of cooperation and innovation of research, higher education and business of the Knowledge Alliance action, the project aims are: i) revitalising depopulated areas by stimulating entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial skills; ii) creating local living laboratories, shared at European level, in which the exchange of knowledge, best practices, experiences can help promote social inclusion and entrepreneurial development;iii) experimenting new, innovative and multidisciplinary approaches in teaching and learning; iv) facilitating the exchange, flow and co-creation of knowledge at a local and global level.
