project seminar

Our seminar take place every week in the summer semester. The students have the possibility to design and implement their own project in the frame of sustainability. At the end of the term a presentation takes place to show the results. 3 credit points can be earned.

Summer term 2019:

At the SoSe 2019 the Seminar took place at campus Maulbeerallee again. The students made up their mind for two projects. One group of three students decided to determine all plant species on the four natural meadows on the campus.  The other group decided to design a survey “How sustainable is our university”. All students and the employee of the university build up the target group. A focus should be placed on the context of the "Fridays for Future" movement. At the end of the semester, a presentation of the individual projects took place, where the students presented and reflected their project from planning, implementation and to evaluation.

summer term 2018:

This semester our students worked on a project for “Greener education” by Julia Posadowska (juliaposadowska@gmail.com). They elaborated a lesson for schools about the environmental education and sustainability. This lesson contains a unit about clothes and their manufacturing background and a unit where the kids going to make a flew market to change old but still good clothes. The kids should be sensitized for sustainable shopping and using what they wear and learn how to upcycle old clothes.

summer term 2017:

This time the students worked on an upcycling project in cooperation with the “Wirtschaftswerkstätten” which pronounced a competition on that topic. Our students participated with two groups.  They collected old parts of bicycles especially the chains and wheels and cleaned up everything. At the end they tinkered a chandelier and a coat rack. The students didn’t win the competition, but their ideas found favor at the jury and they learned how much fun it is to upcycle.

winter term 2015/16:

At our second seminar the students decided not to split into groups but elaborated two project one after the other. In the beginning they worked out the application for admission for a lecture seminar which should took place in the summer term. They get to know the effort of organization and were able to place their own ideas.
Afterwards they started a survey about sustainability at the university of Potsdam and went along with a workshop about sustainable and regional consumption. This workshop introduced the concept of a Sharing Economy and the bad consequences of consumption for example the produced garbage. The studies visited a biological company in Potsdam and discussed about new sustainable ideas. All in all, the students learned there still exist a big gap between theory and implementation of sustainability in real-life.

winter term 2014/15:

In our first seminar the students splitted into two working groups. The one group was engaged with food waste and worked out some background knowledge on this topic. The implementation was carried out with the building up of an “fairteiler” at the Lesecafe at the Campus Potsdam. The idea was to introduce a place where food which is still good but not used shared with others. The other group was engaged with the use of plastic ware in the cafeteria. The abolishment seemed to be not possible in one semester therefore they just informed themselves about the background of plastic pollution. They found out that the single used of plastic ware is more sustainable than the use of porcelain. All in all, the repeated use of porcelain or multifunctional coffee cups have fewer lasting effects on our nature.