• Week 5 - Sustainability and Cooperation

    • In this week's Education Design Lab, you will explore a range of concepts and teaching materials around the theme of cooperation in a self-directed way.

      Discuss and decide in your project group, how you want to best explore the content. Consider making decisions on the content that seems most relevant or interesting, and consider distributing the learning into sub-groups, with each group responsible for reporting about what they have learned and how it might be connected to your group’s project. 


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      Week 5 Presentation: Overview of Week 5 Page
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      Reflection and discussion about sustainability and cooperation Forum

      Go to the discussion thread on the topic that you explored and answer the questions.

      • How is this topic relevant to sustainable development (e.g. ecological, social, economic sustainability and/ or well-being of individuals, communities, societies)? Describe the role of this topic in a specific sustainable development problem you care about.
      • How can this topic or teaching method help develop important competencies in students? Tip: consult these competencies.
      • Identify at least one connection of this topic to your curriculum standards (any subject and any grade).
      • What important things did you learn regarding the teaching of this topic (helpful methods and materials, challenges etc.)?
      • What questions do you have regarding this topic?

      After you have posted your response, you can see the others' responses. Reply to at least one other post. 

    • Cooperation Games Content Anchor Cooperation Games icon

      The challenges of cooperation and social dilemmas can also be explored in the classroom with simple games.
      Explore these lesson materials for examples of games. They all are about the same concepts and understandings but are just a bit different in how the games are implemented and how abstract they are. With the help of such games, students can experience the conditions and behaviors that foster or hinder cooperation, and they can critically transfer their understandings to real-world situations.

      Concepts: cooperation, competition, social dilemma, collective action, sustainability, conditions, behavior, fairness, transparency, communication, rules, punishment, trust

      Competencies: cooperation competency, self-regulation competency, evaluation competency, interdisciplinary thinking competency

      Subjects: social studies, ethics

      Lesson materials


      Behavioral scientists also play games with people of different cultures and ages to explore the conditions that allow or hinder humans to cooperate. The following lesson material allows students to reflect on some of these experiments and their outcomes and transfer their understanding to the real world. 

      • Do humans share with a stranger - the Ultimatum Game and Dictator Game (English, German)
      • The Public Goods Game (English, German)

      Recommended readings

        • Teacher Guide p. 59-63

      •  Ancient Ancestors content anchor iconCross-species comparisons content anchor iconEvolution and Cooperation

        For a deeper understanding of the concept of cooperation and its role in sustainability, it can be great to explore the behavior and evolution of other species and to explore our own evolutionary history. Students can learn to understand that cooperation runs deep in our evolutionary history, that we have evolved many traits that allow us to avoid and solve conflicts in small groups, to transfer deeper principles of cooperation in biology, and to reflect on why cooperation can be difficult in today's societies.

        Concepts: evolution, fitness, competition, conflict, mechanisms, behavior

        Competencies: cooperation competency, interdisciplinary thinking competency, systems thinking competency

        Subjects: biology, (social studies, history)

        Lesson materials to explore the evolution of cooperation

          Recommended readings

          • Governance of commons content anchor iconCase Studies of Common-pool resource management 

            Political scientist Elinor Ostrom studied many different communities around the world to understand how they manage their shared resources and if they succeed to use their resources sustainably. It can be great to explore such case studies with students to help them understand the conditions and behaviors that allow humans to achieve ecological, social, and economic sustainability.

            Concepts: natural resources, regrowth rate, rules, governance, conflict

            Competencies: cooperation competency, interdisciplinary thinking competency, systems thinking competency

            Subjects: biology, geography, social studies

            Lesson materials



          • Computer simulations content anchor iconComputer Simulations

            The challenges of cooperation and sustainability in social-ecological systems can also be explored in the classroom with the help of computer simulations, specifically agent-based models.  These allow students to explore and observe processes in social-ecological systems. We develop agent-based models for classroom use using the free NetLogo modeling software. Our NetLogo models focus primarily on themes and concepts of evolutionary biology, behavioral ecology and economics, cooperation and sustainable use of resources in socio-ecological systems.

            You can download the NetLogo software for free at http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo

            Concepts: (social-ecological) system, behavior, competition, sustainability, population growth

            Skills and competencies: planning, running, documenting and reflecting experiments; systems thinking 

            Subjects: math, informatics, biology, social studies, geography

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            Presentation: Introduction to NetLogo Page

          • Below are two simple models that help students understand the concepts of social dilemma and tragedy of the commons.

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            Two Foresters Model URL

            This is a computer simulation of two foresters which harvest from either their own private forest or a shared forest. With such so called agent-based models, students can explore the concepts of social interactions and social dilemmas, that is, how the behaviors of individuals interact to create certain outcomes in the short-term and in the long-term.

            This html file version runs in the browser. Click to open in a pop-up window, or right-click and open in a new tab. For better engagement, we recommend using the NetLogo software.


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            Evolution of resource use (forest) URL

            This model lets us explore what happens when agent can reproduce and their behaviors have outcomes for their reproductive success.
            We can observe how evolutionary processes of variation, selection based on accumulated resources, and reproduction and inheritance, change the agent population and the sustainability of the social-ecological system.

            This html file version runs in the browser. Click to open in a pop-up window, or right-click and open in a new tab.


          • For more information on using these models in the classroom, as well as more models that add other dynamics and more complexity, you can explore these modules on OpenEvo:


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            Computer Simulations: Readings and Resources Page

          • Teaching Tool: The Payoff Matrix

            One analytical tool that behavioral scientists, evolutionary biologists, economists and sustainability scientists use is the so-called Payoff Matrix. It is used to represent the costs and benefits that people (or other animals) get from a behavior in a particular situation. 

            Using payoff matrices in the classroom helps us reflect on the possible motivations and consequences of behaviors in particular situations, especially in social interactions, and helps us to identify social dilemmas.

            Concepts: social interaction, social dilemma, motivation, costs, benefits, short-term and long-term consequences

            Skills and competencies: systems thinking, evaluation competency, cooperation competency

            Subjects: social studies/economics, ethics, (biology)


            Lesson material

            Introduction to social dilemmas and the payoff matrix (English, German)

            Recommended readings 

            • Teacher Guide: p. 106-109

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            Lesson: The Payoff Matrix

          • Nudging Cooperation

            One kind of intervention that is used more and more often to make people behave in a more cooperative way is "nudging" (English nudge, German: anstupsen). The idea is that we can slightly change some factors in the environment or the way things are communicated such that people intuitively behave in a way that is better for them and society in the long-term. Nudges are also used to motivate more sustainable behaviors such as saving energy. However, there are discussions about the ethics and effectiveness of these methods. The concept of nudging can be introduced in the classroom to have discussions about the causes of human behavior as well as about how to address various sustainability problems through behavior change. 

            Concepts: social cognition, face perception, intuition, environmental stimuli, social dilemmas, shared resources, cooperation, reputation, monitoring, punishment, evolutionary causes of behavior, proximate causes of behavior, nudging

            Competencies: cooperation competency, evaluation competency, self-regulation competency

            Subjects: social studies, ethics, (biology) 

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            Presentation: Nudging Cooperation Page

          • Lesson materials to explore the concept of nudging and its relation to sustainability

            • Lesson plan: Perception of eyes and prosocial behavior (English, German)
            • Lesson Plan: What motivates people to save electricity (English, German)

            Recommended readings 

            • Teacher Guide: p. 64-65