What an incredible, productive Spring, thanks to State University of New York (SUNY) Graduate Students!
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We’re sending a great Shout Out (!) to the State University of New York – Potsdam Business Masters Class on Policy, Issues, and Ethics for Professional Practice, taught by Dr. Amanda LeDesma, for donating an entire 13 weeks of their class to Climate Steps! Thirteen students researched policy-related subjects and then drafted policy documents for us.
A slide from student Rebecca Casselman’s final presentation, showing the evidence-based focus of their research. Shared with permission.
These Master-level students did intensive research in four requested areas:
- Responsible artificial intelligence (AI) policy for climate organizations.
- The ethical use of behavior change methods in climate action programs
- User-stakeholder analysis and the impact of ripple effects in climate actions
- Mentoring risks and other liabilities for Climate Steps
….producing 30 RESEARCH REPORTS! Each with a somewhat different, useful perspective, with some deep dives and extensive coverage. Specific reports ranged from the climate cost:benefit ratio of different levels of AI; to current and potential user backlash against AI; to the latest data and information on the social impacts of actions, and more. This work was amazing and incredibly helpful. For instance:
Photo by Lorenzo Manera, via Pexels.com
- CSteps posed that the ethics of using certain methods to encourage climate action must be considered – for instance, internet scrolling and online gaming techniques are often designed to be addictive, i.e., are unethical, especially for youth. But two students also raised the point that respecting cultural diversity in prioritizing actions is an ethical question, especially when it comes to finances. We then discussed that certain acts of civil disobedience can be unethical on several fronts – especially when some participants may suffer from the consequences more than others, such as lose their job (I personally know of a case.) The group then compiled sample “red lines not to cross.”
- But also, there are ethics to consider in encouraging our readers/members to try to change the behavior of their friends, family, colleagues, etc. What sort of behaviors are okay (supportive, fully transparent ones) and what are not (manipulation, entrapment)? Stay tuned for Climate Steps articles on these topics, with some examples and case studies pulled in by the class.
But, wait, that’s not all! The next stage consisted of these students creating 13 policy recommendation documents for Climate Steps.
And finally – 12 students each created a set of guidance documents for staff and volunteers and provided suggested presentation slides to give to our Board. These 12 sets of documents often also included email and survey templates, decision trees, suggested legal wording for the websites, etc.
Whoa.
This has been a massive set of work – and a learning experience for them and us on both ethics and policy.
In turn, we at Climate Steps reviewed each document and made detailed suggestions for improved research and writing, asked questions, and otherwise helped them grow in research and writing abilities. A big shout out to @Lisa Sherburne, a former USAID-funded behavior change specialist in health, for using her unexpected free time in helping review the Ethics on Behavior Change Methods.
We send an incredibly deep Thank You to all the students for all the work they did. And thank you to @Jordan Levy of the Capsource experiential learning platform, who made this connection for us.
Next up? Lisa, myself, and others in CSteps are merging these documents into comprehensive policy reports and guidance documents. With great data, information, and language, they are already well-formulated for us to discuss and put into our specific templates, with the students’ permission already provided, of course. There’s still more to learn, though; we’ll also add in our own literature work and seek some specialist (and legal) advice for our final policy documents.
Finally, we will be sharing the final documents with our partner EarthHero.org, the climate action app, for their feedback and also use. If your organization is interested in joining an multiorganizational discussion group on the first three topics, or know of one, please contact us. And yes, that was one of the recommendations by one of the students. 😉
“A special thank you to Climate Steps for the opportunity to work on this project together!” Student Deven Leggett