Environmental Decision Making

The case method of teaching was developed at Harvard Business School, and then adopted in a large number of business schools and schools of public policy (e.g. the Harvard Kennedy School). It is used to teach the art of making decisions on complicated and contested issues, resolving competing objectives while making use of sound and transparent analysis. The method relies on a set of well-researched materials (cases), which describe actual real world policy problems from the past, including information about the historical and institutional context within which the problem arose, insights into the competing objectives of stakeholders, and multiple sets of data to support quantitative analysis. Guided by the lecturer, students collectively identify the important issues implicated by the decision, and the key facts and questions to analyze. Individually and in groups, students then arrive at decisions, which they then explain and defend. They can then compare their own decisions with the ones taken in the real world.

Our intention is to develop a set of case materials that would be useful at ETH, in the context of a 6 CP course for students of environmental policy. Our starting cases are likely to include: the decision of whether to rehabilitate water quality in Sempachersee CH; how to respond to information suggesting an immediate threat of earthquakes in L’Aquila IT; whether the community of Schönau DE, should purchase the local electricity grid from the private company currently owning it; and, whether the Canton of Bern should raise the height of the dam on the Grimselsee. In each of these cases, a distinguishing element is that there are multiple environmental objectives at stake, and a great deal of scientific analysis that can be brought to bear to analyze the particular decision. A key objective (and innovation) is thus to help students with a strong background in natural science to experience through practice the extent to which science-based analysis can guide decisions, and where important criteria for decision-making may in fact be insensitive to the science.

Ultimately the success of the course that we want to develop will depend on the extent to which students learn how to resolve competing interests, making use of science-based analysis where appropriate. This in turn will depend on the realism and detail with which we can describe the relevant decisions. This realism and detail will depend, among other things, on interviews with key people who were involved in the actual decision at the time it was made. It will also lie in the ability to put together complete data sets, which students can use in order to undertake analysis to support their decisions.

• Focus on student participation (including grading)
• Constant engagement of lecturers
• Frequent repetition of group assignments

The key innovation is to take an existing teaching method — which has been demonstrated to be one of the most effective means of teaching critical thinking skills — and to adapt it in such a way as to be most useful in the ETH teaching environment. This will be by choosing and describing cases such that the role of environmental systems science is particularly important, as well as to focus on cases that have occurred in Switzerland and neighboring countries.

This project developed a case method course for ETH, which forces students to engage, over and over again, with real world decision-making problems, identifying how they would decide and backing this with solid analysis.

There is a need to diversify the classroom exercises for several of the cases.

Students were mainly enthusiastic about the class, with an average rating of 4 (out of 5) and all ratings between 3 and 5.
Students highlighted the development of skills in critical thinking, active participation in large groups, organisation of work in small groups, argumentation, and presentation.
Many students highlighted, in a positive way, that it was unlike any other class that they had taken at ETH.

• The emphasis needs to be on facilitating students’ thought processes, rather than teaching them the «right» skills or interpretation of particular cases.
• The lecturers need to be demanding, pushing students to support their arguments with quantitative analysis
• Real life stories to link these skills to concrete experiences are really helpful