Teaching
As an applied, industry-oriented Master's, the Sustainability Leadership for the Built Environment Master's is designed to support personal and professional development. It comprises a blended approach to learning, with six week-long residential workshops in Cambridge and remote learning coordinated through a virtual learning environment. In addition to attending the residential workshops, it is estimated that students need to undertake eight hours of work every week to complete the programme successfully.
The following are key features that underpin CISL’s distinctive approach to learning:
Flexible: Programmes are designed for professionals working full time; hence the intensive workshops are blended with remote working on assignments and other course-related activities.
Thought leadership: The speakers, lecturers and facilitators are leading experts and practitioners from academia, business, government and civil society.
Practical relevance: Business case studies and hearing from leading industry figures are an integral part of the taught content, and assignments are focused on real contexts; thereby developing skills needed to translate cutting-edge insights into practice.
Topical: The content includes developing a robust ‘business case’ for sustainability, a focus on sustainability leadership aims and responses, and covering both established and emergent experiences.
Interactive: The learning approach is highly interactive, collaborative, interdisciplinary, and designed to encourage reflection and debate.
Diversity of perspectives: Students come from a wide range of functions, disciplines, and geographies; hence provide a wide spectrum of insights and opportunities to benchmark against how other organisations are responding to sustainability.
Peer-learning: Shared learning and networking between peers, and the extensive range of contributors, together provide a rich co-learning environment.
Support and mentorship: A dedicated CISL team and expert supervisors support the learning journey, including providing feedback on assignments that are focused on real-world challenges and opportunities.
Personal application: Students are encouraged to identify personal opportunities for leadership and engage in reflective practice throughout the programme, supported by peers and supervisors.
Each residential workshop comprises an intensive programme of formal lectures (from leading practitioners and university academics), workshops and seminars. A design project relating to the theme of the week is undertaken in small interdisciplinary teams, which present their design proposals to reviewers at the end of each of the weeks. Through the design project students apply and implement what they have been taught, as well as benefiting from the knowledge and expertise of their team members; in this, the design projects support experiential learning.
In preparing the four individual written assignments (one 4,000-word case study; one 3,000-word essay; one 7,000-word group project; and a 15,000 word dissertation in the second year) students are supported by academic supervisors whom they meet on an individual basis. The assignments are progressive in that they help to build the capacity to write clearly and concisely, to reflect on experience, to undertake a formal literature review on a given topic, to frame research questions, to conduct an investigation involving the collection and analysis of data, and to draw evidence-based conclusions.
| One to one supervision |
9-12 hours per year |
|---|---|
| Seminars & classes |
20 hours per year |
| Lectures |
35 hours per year |
| Practicals |
45 hours per year |
| Small group teaching |
Six hours per year |
| Journal clubs |
None |
| Literature Reviews |
Some assignments and the dissertation require literature reviews. |
| Posters and Presentations |
Group Studio Project Presentations at workshops 2 - 6, pecha kucha presentation in the first year, oral dissertation presentation in the second year. |
| Taught/Research Balance |
Predominantly Research
|
Feedback
Students are given formal feedback on their assignments and informal feedback throughout their course, including during supervisions. Dissertations supervisors provide termly reports during year 2.
Assessment
Thesis / Dissertation
In Year 2 of the programme students undertake a dissertation of not more than 15,000 words on a subject approved by the Degree Committee. The assessment of the dissertation will include an oral presentation of the work on which the dissertation is based.
Essays
The reflective case study (4,000 words) is the opportunity for the student to reflect on and to critically analyse a recent project on which they have worked in practice. Students are expected to account for the successes and difficulties encountered, provide commentary on the effectiveness of the team and offer conclusions of relevance to other practitioners.
The literature review essay (3,000 words) develops research skills in searching, analysing and writing a critique of the academic literature. There are no prescribed titles; however the focus must be built environment related. Students are encouraged to venture beyond the boundaries of their home disciplines.
The group research project (5,000 – 7,000 words) is produced collaboratively by members of a group of 5-7 students. It represents the outcomes of an original piece of research undertaken collectively. It is up to the group – guided by a tutor – to choose a topic for the research.
Practical assessment
In five out of the six course weeks students are asked to work in small multidisciplinary groups to think, discuss, draw, write and persuade in order to come to a unified solution to the set problem over the course of a few half-days. At the end of each week all teams present their solutions to their fellow students and a review panel of studio leaders and stakeholders.
Other
Each student gives a presentation on an aspect of the their first year learning to their fellow students and the course directors.