Trinity’s Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on “Achieving Sustainable Development” is now open for registration.

After the successful first run in 2017, Trinity College Dublin and TIDI are offering the course for a second time. For week three on Sustainable Sanitation, I contributed a session on Decentralized Wastewater Treatment Systems and would love to here what you think about it. You can register for the course for free at Futurelearn. Below you find some more, official information about the course.

What challenges are we facing to create a better world?

What is the future for the world around us? What challenges are we facing collectively to stop conflict, improve healthcare, build sustainable cities, and enable access to clean water and sanitation? How do we measure our impact? Starting on the 23rd of April 2018, this free online course is open to anyone interested in the future of our world, and how we can improve it together. Trinity experts in Ecumenics, Economics, Engineering, and Medicine have come together, coordinated through the Trinity International Development Initiative, to share an innovative course exploring the challenges to sustainable development in our world.

Explore the global Sustainable Development Goals

The course explores the links between five of the global Sustainable Development Goals; peace, healthcare, sustainable cities, water and sanitation, and gender equality. Learners will examine fascinating case studies from Ireland, Uganda, Sri Lanka, Colombia, India, and Korea which look at the impact of development on real lives, and challenge how we think about making our world a better place.

Coordinator at the Trinity International Development Institute, Dr Mairead Finn, explains: “Achieving sustainable development is the collective challenge of our time. How can we work together globally to achieve peace, access to healthcare, improve sanitation, and ensure sustainable cities? Through Trinity’s work with partners around the world, we engage with some of the complex issues arising in projects related to sustainable development. This course explores five of the interconnected Global Sustainable Development Goals, launched by the UN in 2015 and evaluates the challenges we face in aiming to make the world a better place.”

Lead Academic and Associate Professor at Trinity’s School of Medicine, Dr. Martina Hennessy said: “This course is for learners who care about the future of our world, to engage in a discussion about how we can all contribute to achieving sustainable development. It has been a pleasure to collaborate with colleagues across Trinity working in Medicine, Economics, Ecumenics and, Engineering who all bring important perspectives on tackling some of the greatest global challenges that face us.”

The course will tackle complex questions on sustainable development by exploring real world examples:

• Is world peace the most important goal for sustaining development?
• How can we ensure that healthcare is available to the most vulnerable?
• What are innovative ways to provide sanitation services in cities?
• How can we measure the impact and outcomes of development projects?

Register today on Futurelearn, the social learning platform, to access this free online course starting on the 23rd of April. Open to anyone, wherever you are in the world, now you can take part in a Trinity education from the comfort of your own home.