HEC Montréal, Canada

Sustainable back casting: Utopia drives action - action drives utopia

The Sustainable Development and Management (SDM) course aims to develop and strengthen sustainability skills. The originality of the approach consists in the integration of "back casting", which allows students to appropriate a vision of the future ("utopia") from practical partners through assignments. In groups, students use a variety of tools to develop pathways to a desirable future.

This course uses a variety of pedagogical approaches including individual reflection, class discussion, experiential exercises, participation of relevant and recognized guests, among others. The originality of the approach is to develop partnerships to analyse different urban infrastructure projects that require the collaboration of public, private and community actors. The students carry out an important sustainability exercise, namely back casting, which consists of identifying the steps necessary to achieve a desirable future. In this respect, we will use a method of ethical impact analysis, stakeholder identification, forward planning (Future Radar) and values and principles analysis.

The collaboration broadens the students' learning experience and promotes innovation. 

Top 3 Learnings

1. The approach encourages students to actively engage in the learning process, and to have a concrete impact on the course partners.
2. The back casting approach helps us as teachers to make sustainability challenges accessible through the assignments that students work on during the course.
3. Working with partners is not required by regulation but is an additional effort on the part of the teachers.