Higher Education Interdisciplinarity: Addressing the Complexity of Sustainable Energies and the Green Economy
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The topic of the paper is interesting and the analysis of it is unique, but it affects a very special area. It would be necessary to improve the literature review with further sources. I appreciate the used methodology, but I suggest to check the figures number in the text and below them. You have two figure 1 (line 101 and 314), and after all of the numbers are not correct. I would like to ask you to check the percentages in table 1, because in the column "Job position" I have never found 100%. I agree your results, but as I wrote at the beginning it is a narrow research area.
Author Response
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Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript is focused on the introduction of project called DALILA, respectively the results of the solving of this project. The text is dividing into typical chapters for this kind of manuscript/article. Toward content and to suitability of the manuscript for the journal, it is possible to say, that journal is appropriate for the journal like Sustainability is. The text is written in understandable form. I can say, that the character of manuscript can bring ideas for potential readers, which are focused for similar problematic and they can see guidelines how to solve the similar project.
I have not got any comments, because they could lead to decrease the level of the manuscript.
Author Response
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Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors,
The manuscript addresses a major general challenge to higher education nowadays - the introduction of interdisciplinary courses within a university culture based on disciplinary faculties to be able to acknowledge and study the complexity of real-life processes. The efforts of higher education in African countries to approach energy transition as a prerequisite for climate change mitigation and sustainable development, are insufficiently studied yet. DALILA project could be considered an important step in building a fruitful international partnership between a broad variety of academic and non-academic institutions.
The manuscript, however, sounds rather as a project report with a lot of descriptions, numbering of parts and bullets, than a critical reflection on the process and its results; a clear focus and an analytical approach are still needed. If the claimed aim of the manuscript is to share a developed didactic approach “that can be replicated in different contexts”, then a reflection on the peculiar cultural context of the processes described, and on the replicability of results would be expected. The manuscript says nothing about the traditions, strengths, and weaknesses of the existing programmes in the African universities participating in the project and how the new courses were integrated there. The Dublin descriptors referred to in the manuscript, alongside the Bologna process and the ERASMUS programme, are also part of a culturally rooted European process. It would be interesting to know what each of the project partners learned in the project – or if it was rather a north-south transfer of knowledge and know-how.
Some detailed comments:
Title. A broader field of study has been claimed here than the actual one. The title mentions “complexity of transformations”, but the project discussed in the manuscript is about ”sustainable energies and green economy”.
Abstract. The strategic role of universities is claimed here in the transformations for a sustainable future, mainly in terms of addressing the complexity in scientific research. No scientific research is however discussed in the manuscript. The claim for introducing interdisciplinary courses in universities organized along disciplinary faculties needs to be supported in the text by a description of the university structures of the partner universities and how new courses were integrated there - how interdisciplinarity is practically achieved.
- Introduction. The claimed aim of the manuscript could be re-formulated - “identifying the main phases” of an almost finalized project does not seem relevant aim here as the structure, phases and expected results should have been already described in the project application stage. Claiming the development of “an innovative pilot didactic approach” would require a more detailed explanation about the context and aspects of the innovation.
2.1. Macro analysis of local needs (ex-ante evaluation). The comprehensive macro-analysis outlines a number of specific regional topics to address and the key official national and international documents building the policy frame; it could be further clarified how this important knowledge was integrated in the project development. E.g., if “four modern technologies have been identified as those with the highest potential in Africa: biomass for cooking, hydropower, wind, and solar power” (lines 161-162) it would be interesting to discuss how this further influenced the development of the courses structure and contents.
2.2. Field micro investigation of local needs (in itinere evaluation). The investigation methodology and process need to be explicitly stated - the investigation of local needs has been going alongside awareness-raising at different levels to be able to precisely formulate problems and needs and discuss possible responses. The data in Table 1 on how the project motivated the degree of active participation on behalf of students and institutions could be also analysed in more detail.
- Step 2 – Definition of Interdisciplinarity and Internationality in DALILA Courses. No sound arguments are presented for using “interdisciplinary” and “multidisciplinary” as synonyms in the manuscript (lines 282-285). The didactic approach “framed as a circular flow made up of 4 main objectives that are strictly interconnected” (lines 304- 305, Figure 2) would need some further explanation as it is currently unclear. Three technical- and engineering-oriented courses and three economics- and business-oriented courses are mentioned (line 326), it is however unclear if there are common parts and how links are built among them, i.e., how multi-disciplinarity is practically ensured?
3.1. Creation of the common syllabi of interdisciplinary courses. The manuscript describes a process where each university defined autonomously a list of subjects and connected sub-subjects for each course (line 345) and these were then collected by the coordinator and a draft version of the courses created and further discussed. Does it mean that a final unified version was produced? No “interdisciplinary” approach is either described or discussed in this section.
3.2. Creation of Teaching Notes as a common reference framework. If the sub-section starts with Covid-19 impacts and the urgent need for virtual contact space, i.e. the than its caption needs to be re-considered. The teaching notes as a teaching support tool are to be more clearly described and then their usefulness discussed with regard to estimated needs and complexity challenges.
4_Step 2 – Step 3 – Booster the connection between universities and local labour market. A key message about the ambitious project goal “to form high quality students to be the engine of a positive change at a local level, maintaining a competitive advantage in the global market” (line 425) remains hidden here among numerous details about project activities.
- Conclusions. If the manuscript is about complexity as claimed in the title, this section should comment on what has been learned about tackling complexity instead of going back to general statements already addressed in the introduction. A very important issue about providing the needed new teaching capacity in the universities is to be also discussed.
References. The current list seems to be too brief and insufficient for outlining the context of the current study. An enormous amount of literature on higher education for sustainable development - and explicitly with a focus on multidisciplinary and international networks and partnerships, has been published since the start of the United Nations Decade of education for sustainable development (DESD) in 2005.
Tables. The caption of Table 2 should be re-considered - there are no “Renewable Energy/Climate Change” results quoted there. Table 3 mentions “Engineering unit” while Figure 3 speaks about “Technical syllabi” – how are these different or synonymous?
Figures. The numbers of all the figures after Figure 2 are mistaken. The overall number of survey participants in Figure 2 should be somewhere indicated. Figure 3 presents no links between the technical and economics syllabi – how is interdisciplinarity achieved?
Author Response
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Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors
Thank you for taking into consideration my comments and recommendations. I believe that the manuscript has been considerably improved in terms of clarity and precision of the text and in outlining the key steps and achievements of a very important project of international collaboration.
Some minor changes could be still recommended:
The claim that “DALILA project can be seen as best practice in the creation of international alliances” (line 34) should be rather moved to the conclusion as such an estimation needs the evidence provided in the manuscript. It would be instead useful to explain the structure of the manuscript in the introduction.
Subsection 2.1 seems rather too long and, following the logic of the evaluation methodology described in Figure 1, a subsection 2.3 on ‘ex-post’ evaluation would be probably expected.
Instead of repeating the already stated project aims in the conclusion (lines 684-685), it would be useful to discuss how far they have been achieved, what lessons the partners have learned and if there were any new challenges (or probably inspirations for future work) during the project implementation.
It would be also useful to provide a link to the project website for those who would be interested to follow its further development.
Author Response
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