Collective Intelligence: An Innovative Research Approach to Promoting Ocean Literacies in Ireland

Sea Change is a European project aiming to establish a fundamental “Sea Change” in the way European citizens view their relationship with the sea, by empowering them, as Ocean Literate citizens, to take direct and sustainable action towards a healthy ocean, healthy communities and ultimately a healthy planet. One aspect of the project involves hosting education conversations across eight European countries to identify the barriers to teaching 12-19 year olds about the ocean. Collective Intelligence (CI), a systems-thinking methodology, is playing a pivotal role in collecting and visualising the barriers impeding ocean literate societies whilst assisting in the design of solutions and options for the successful integration of oceans into education and outreach curricula. In this seminar, we will introduce Sea Change and detail the process of Collective Intelligence in the project. In addition, micro- and macro- pedagogical tools that were deigned to aid the infusion of marine ecology topics into the mainstream Irish Science curriculum will also be discussed.

Sea Change has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 652644.This output reflects the views only of the author(s) and the European Union cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

This seminar is one of a series of seminars in the 2016 Whitaker Ideas Forum.  The speakers will be representing the Social Innovation, Participation and Policy Research Cluster.