Peter Kjær Kruse-Andersen

Abstract

Kicking the Door Down to Continuing and Professional Education

The development of continuing and professional education is a high priority for the Faculty of Social Sciences, UCPH. The main objective of this project is to gather experience with this type of education to pave the way for future professional courses at the faculty. A second objective is to gather experience on teaching the target group – professional economists – to increase the quality of future courses. To achieve these objectives, I have developed and executed a professional course within climate change economics. The results show that the course design is essential to limit course preparation time. They also show that the initial course program must be developed early, and that it is somewhat binding given that participants sign up for the course based on the program. The administrative workload is substantially reduced through support from the faculty, and collaboration with faculty staff is essential for the success of the course. The evaluation revealed that the participants were more focused on policy implications compared to methodical issues. Yet, they still want information on the main methodical issues. Perhaps most interestingly, the participants were generally positive about the use of active learning methods.