Implementing a class in Climate Change Economics: A case study how online resources facilitate interdisciplinarity in higher education

Tackling human-made Climate Change is among the main global challenges today and in the coming decades. Due to the interdisciplinary structure of the topic, the integration of Climate Change into the relevant higher education programs still lags behind. Online teaching resources such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) might contribute significantly to overcoming this deficiency. In this paper, we describe the design of a class in “Climate Change Economics†and how we implemented it in a BA program at the International School of Economics at Tbilisi State University (ISET) in Tbilisi (Georgia). Our main focus is the integration of a MOOC on Climate Change and further online material as main teaching resources. Our main conclusion is that the MOOC, supplemented with videos on special topics, is a suitable tool to facilitate an interdisciplinary introduction into Climate Change within an academic class in, e.g., Economics. The results of our evaluation show that online resources are highly motivational for students and encourage an efficient studying process. Based on our experiences, we offer recommendations for further strengthening Climate Change as a topic in higher education. We provide suggestions on how online resources such as MOOCs might contribute to that aim.