"Interview"

We present you 3 different kinds of activities that can be implemented in different class settings and which are aimed at developing your student soft skills, their eco-conscious mindset together with the hard skills they are learning in your courses.

The first one is called “interview assignment”. The main idea is, as the name suggests, for the students to interview one or more industry experts. By doing this, the students are encouraged to take a more active role in their learning.

The learning outcomes of such activities are diverse.

• To deepen the students’ understanding of a topic or theme relevant to your course. They can be tasked to interview an expert in the field of energy storage technologies, green building and architecture, green materials, bioengineering, carbon capture and utilization.
• This activity will also develop the students' primary data research skills and analytical skills that they might also need for writing their master or doctoral thesis.
• Finally, it will encourage the students to develop their communication skills and a wider network within the business/industry community.

The profile of the person to be interviewed depends on the subject of your course, it can be for example a carbon market analyst, an environmental scientist, a sustainability manager, environmental consultant.

How they can perform this task is up to your needs and the size of your class:

• The students do this alone, in pairs, in teams.
• By identifying a suitable person to interview, your students will develop their professional network and research skills. They will also need to contact that person, agree on the interview time and mode (F2F, via Teams). They would need to handle the interview process (booking, administration, recording, consent…).
• And importantly: they will have to develop relevant interview questions which can be a challenging task for some and be discussed in class, a good practice before their master thesis if they use this empirical method.
• Finally, depending on the subject/theme of the interview and the person to interview, they can discuss and analyse the answers they received from an expert with what they see in class. They can be tasked to reflect and challenge some of the answers they received to develop their critical thinking and understanding of environmental issues and challenges.

The delivery of that analysis can be in the form of a presentation to practise their presentation skills, and/or a written report, again this is up to you and your needs for your course.

For the students to do these tasks properly, it should be part of the final evaluation of the course.