Postgraduate Course: Energy & Society II; Methods & Applications (PGGE11251)
Course Outline
| School | School of Geosciences |
College | College of Science and Engineering |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This is a core course for the masters in Energy, Society and Sustainability. The course provides the ontological and epistemological basis for the MSc and introduces different research methods that are useful in the study and development of ¿energy literacy¿, which in itself consists of three domains; cognition, affect, behaviour. Through the analysis of real world case studies, students develop experience in the use of these different methods. The case studies are focused on individual consumption and everyday life. This course is unique in its effort to combine three important aspects of sustainability education; (1) understanding what drives unsustainable levels of consumption, (2) developing research skills for the participative analysis of (energy related) consumption at individual and household level (3) developing research skills for the participative analysis of environmental exposure through digital technologies.
The course explores three interlinked issues. The methodological focus on digital technologies is transformative in our future abilities to track and understand consumption and how it relates to externalities in our everyday life. Secondly, the course links energy to other material consumption (rather than studying ¿only¿ energy) and thirdly, the course explores how citizens engage with data, how knowledge can be co-produced when citizens and researchers collaborate, and how this may affect behavioural change by the citizens involved.
The fieldtrip serves to link up the class-based, consumption focused learning with supply-side and transport issues faced by grid energy. It explores the scale of behavioural change required to achieve transformative change in our energy
system. The fieldwork thus addresses both scalar issues (from individual small consumers to large scale grid actors) and the (often hidden) geographical heterogeneity of the grid.
The course is designed to engage with the rapid evolution of smart meters, mobile sensors, tracking devices, mobile phones and wearable technologies in the global north and south. Given the current state of technologies and their prices, the course will be able to examine (with regards to consumption:) domestic energy use and food purchasing/intake, and (with regards to environmental exposure) indoor and outdoor air quality, temperature, humidity. |
| Course description |
Week 1: Introduction, epistemologies and ontologies of different disciplines.
Week 2: Selection of research methods; fit & purpose.
Week 3: Interpreting qualitative data.
Week 4: Decision support tools and assessment methods in different disciplines & professions.
Week 5: Introduction to big data (analytics, management)
Week 6: Serious games for sustainable consumption.
The India field trip will offer students on the MSc in Energy, Society and Sustainability programme an unparalleled opportunity to reflect on the relationship between energy, society and sustainability in a unique and challenging global context. Home to over 1.2 billion people and currently one of the world's fastest growing economies, India is critical to our global energy challenges and futures. Ongoing commitments to a fossil fuel economy overlap with India's international commitment to produce 40% of energy from non-fossil fuels by 2030. This fieldtrip will offer an insight into how India's energy revolution plays out in Odisha, one of India's most mineral rich and energy poor states.
Over 9-days the fieldtrip will offer students an opportunity to analyse and research issues of energy security, energy justice, sustainable energy supply and demand. Organised in partnership with Centurion University, Bhubaneswar, the fieldtrip will combine specialist guest lectures with site visits to a rural micro-grid and an urban smart energy project. Students will use the fieldtrip to design and develop an independent research project, and will submit a pre-fieldwork review essay and a post-fieldwork research plan.
Field course locations may change for a variety of reasons, including security risks, increased costs or inability to access field locations. Any changes to the main destination of the field course will be announced as soon as possible
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- understand the driving forces of unsustainable consumption and barriers to adoption of clean energy technologies and practices in the global north and south.
- experience the use of digital technologues to monitor, assess and critically evaluate levels of personal and household consumption and/or environmental exposure during everyday activities
- experience citizen science, self-directed fieldwork and public engagement
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Reading List
Banks, M. and Zeitlyn, D., 2015. Visual methods in social research. Sage.
Boyd, D. and Crawford, K., 2012. Critical questions for big data: Provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon. Information, communication & society, 15(5), pp. 662-679.
Denzin, N.K. and Lincoln, Y.S., 1994. Handbook of qualitative research. Sage Publications, Inc.
Kitchin, R., 2013. Big data and human geography Opportunities, challenges and risks. Dialogues in human geography, 3(3), pp.262-267.
Maisonneuve, N., Stevens, M. and Ochab, B., 2010. Participatory noise pollution monitoring using mobile phones. Information Polity, 15(1, 2), pp.51-71.
Manovich, L., 2011. Trending: The promises and the challenges of big social data. Debates in the digital humanities, 2, pp.460-475.
Patton, M.Q., 1990. Qualitative evaluation and research methods . SAGE Publications.
Rode, J.A., Toye, E.F. and Blackwell, A.F., 2004. The fuzzy felt ethnography¿understanding the programming patterns of domestic appliances. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 8(3-4), pp.161-176.
Sofaer, S., 2002. Qualitative research methods. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 14(4), pp.329-336.
Swan, M., 2013. The quantified self: Fundamental disruption in big data science and biological discovery. Big Data, 1(2), pp.85-99.
Schwartz, T., Betz, M., Ramirez, L. and Stevens, G., 2010, October. Sustainable energy practices at work: understanding the role of workers in energy conservation. In Proceedings of the 6th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Extending Boundaries (pp. 452-462). ACM.
Schwartz, T., Denef, S., Stevens, G., Ramirez, L. and Wulf, V., 2013, April. Cultivating energy literacy: results from a longitudinal living lab study of a home energy management system. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1193-1202. ACM.
Van der Horst D., Harrison C., Staddon S. and Wood G. (2016). Improving Energy Literacy through Student-Led Fieldwork - at Home. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 40(1), 67-76
Wood, G., van der Horst D. et al. (2014). Serious games for energy social science research. Technology Assessment and Strategic Management 26(10), 1212-1227.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Energy,Society |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Dan Van Der Horst
Tel: (0131 6)51 4467
Email: Dan.vanderHorst@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Susie Crocker
Tel: (0131 6)51 7126
Email: Susie.Crocker@ed.ac.uk |
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