Our guiding concept

The mission
The Collegium for the Management and Design of Sustainable Development gGmbH is a trans-disciplinarily and inter-disciplinarily operating research and educational institute, and an institution for consultation, planning and implementation of the design processes of sustainable development. Since its foundation in 1998, the Collegium has specialized in the development of implementation strategies for projects in the following areas:

• Education and communication for sustainable development
• Modernization of government and society; participation of civil society; governance
• Complex, regional developments and transformations
• International research and educational cooperation for the generation of knowledge and network building.

The educational and consultation program is an important cross-sectional task of the Collegium in this context. Its goal is the conveyance and the training of key skills in real work and life contexts, as well as the strengthening of capabilities for the management and control of transformation processes. Design skills are an important element here.

Values
Knowledge is conveyed at a high level and close to practice. The responsibility of the instructors is oriented toward the moderation of the learning process. In the selection of teaching personnel, the Collegium ensures that they meet high professional, educational and methodological quality standards. We have implicitly assumed – and we communicate – that the staff support a structure of values and standards based on the Enlightenment, the humanistic view of humankind, and a development perspective based on justice. The Collegium is dedicated to the principle of equal opportunity. The focus of all further training activities is on the learning people and their special expectations and needs.

Target groups
The Collegium orients its educational and learning program toward people who

• have already completed their formal educational,
• are at some point of transition in their lives, i.e. from school to the professional world, at some point of transformation in their career, or in the transition to their third phase of life, or
• are interested in updating, deepening or complementing their own knowledge.

The Collegium develops special programs for institutions and companies which would like to provide specific professional further education for their employees.

Goals
The educational and consultation program of the Collegium has the goal of conveying skills for the design of sustainable development, and training people in those skills. We especially want to strengthen the capacity to manage and control transformation processes. Key elements of that include:

• Lifelong self-organized learning
• Learning in informal learning cultures
• The conveyance of practical professional contents and knowledge-based, professional and design skills for various activities in the design processes
• Organisational learning and learning cultures
• Evaluation, conceptualisation and implementation of blended learning projects
• Procedures and instruments for the evaluation of acquired skills
• Education for sustainable development and global learning.

The activities of the Collegium in further education and consultation are basically structured in such a way that they provide support for both practical and academic work. For this purpose, we develop and implement courses, seminars and workshops, as well as concepts for the consultation of learning. The Collegium wants to make its contribution to the current socio-political and educational discourse. For this reason, it carries out regular exchange and good co-operation with other institutions of education and policy, at the local, state, federal and international levels.

Capabilities
The interdisciplinary team of the Collegium is composed of economists, social scientists, engineers and natural scientists. It can develop and implement competent concepts in the areas of scientific professional further education. It intensively pursues current tendencies in the educational landscape. The Collegium is a professional partner in the planning, organization and implementation of further-education opportunities and projects.

Services
The array of services provided encompasses on-the-job further education with qualifying certificates, seminars and seminar series. The educational courses offered by the Collegium are often so-called “blended-learning” concepts which combined online learning with phases of attendance classes. This commitment should primarily be seen in the context of supporting and promoting lifelong learning as an important element of the strategic implementation of educational opportunities for sustainable development. The educational program of the Collegium also includes meetings, workshops and in-house events.

Resources
The Collegium has target-group-specific databases which support acquisition and seminar management, and also a Further Education Centre in Mecklenburg which is technologically well-equipped. The Collegium is financed both by public funds and from participants’ fees. Moreover, the Collegium staff consists of an extremely dedicated team of professionals, which co-operates with a large and continually growing network of partner institutions.

Successful learning consultation
For the staff of the educational department, learning is successful if the learning people gain the appropriate knowledge and skills which will permit them to independently deal with problems at work and in their lives. In the centre of the learning process are the ‘professional interest’ learning requirements and expectations on the part of the learning people, who moderate the process with their professional, methodological and educational skills. That process is supported by appropriate conditions. Successful learning places the learning people in the situation of controlling their future learning process themselves.