Course Description

[This is a certified Communication-intensive (CI) Course which meets all of the requirements endorsed by HKU’s Senate, including (i) the teaching assessment of visual and digital communication ‘literacies’; and (ii) at least 40% of the course grade assigned to communication-rich assessment tasks.]

Climate change is not only a scientific problem. It is also a crisis of imagination, communication and collective action. This course asks students to treat Hong Kong 2100 as a living design brief: What futures are possible, who benefits, who pays, and how can evidence be turned into public arguments that move people to act?

Through weekly debates, role play, research, visual communication and reflective writing, students test mainstream and controversial responses to climate change. Topics include AI and energy demand, food systems, fashion and life-cycle assessment, renewable energy and transportation, cities, climate economics, misinformation, oceans, climate displacement, systems thinking and the new space race. Students learn to fact-check claims, tell real human stories, use digital and GenAI tools responsibly, and translate evidence into persuasive public communication. The course culminates in an interactive Art & Science exhibition in which students present individual visual works, reflective essays and video essays that share their own response to climate change.

Course Learning Outcomes

On completing the course, students will be able to:

1. Research, describe and explain environmental, social, technological, economic challenges and design approaches to address them.
2. Critique and debate with their peers, think critically and diversely.
3. Develop and communicate their own design solutions to address local and global challenges.
4. Research, document and communicate their thought processes as well as the making of, and testing of, their designs in the real world.

Offer Semester and Day of Teaching

First semester (Wed)