Radical Rethink! – The Future of Aging Societies
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Mandatory prerequisites
- Fourth semester (2nd year) BA must be passed.
- Participants must be enrolled as students at SDU and available for all program activities, especially also for the independent student projects, during the full length of the program.
- Students must not have a delay in their studies at time of start of the program.
Recommended prerequisites
- Admission to the program is competitive. Participants are enrolled individually by means of an application and selected by a selection committee
- The program is offered in Odense but it is open for students from any SDU campus. Students following a degree program at another campus than Odense will be reimbursed for their travel and accommodation (at reasonable expenses) for mandatory activities.
Aim and purpose
Content
Learning goals
- Knowledge about: causes and consequence of population aging, its associated societal and individual challenges and opportunities, and need for future adjustment
- Skills to: identify relevant problems arising in aging societies and suggest valuable solutions enabled by trans-disciplinary teams with a focus to radically rethinking status quo
- Competences to: combine knowledge and ideas from own disciplinary background with other students’ disciplinary knowledge to productively form an interdisciplinary synergistic solution of real life problems within the program’s theme
Description of outcome - Knowledge
- Causes and consequences of population aging
- Mechanisms of population aging and their development over space and time
- Associated societal and individual challenges and opportunities
- Current actions taken to tackle/take advantage of challenges and opportunities
- Different disciplines’ perspectives on population aging
- Major interdisciplinary themes of aging societies (see “focus and topics”)
- High scientific research standards
- Interdisciplinary team work
Description of outcome - Skills
- Venture into unknown territory
- Critically evaluate and radically rethink status quo on current actions taken to tackle/take advantage of challenges and opportunities of population aging
- Communicate across disciplinary boundaries
- Function constructively/enact own profession within an interdisciplinary team
- Listen to and openly consider alternative/divergent approaches and perspectives
- Reflect on processes of team work, self-contribution and self-development
- Self-organize within student project teams
- Develop solution-oriented “action plan”
- Independently set goals, maintain progress and hold deadlines
- Communicate on high academic level individually, within teams, in plenum and publicly, orally and in writing
Description of outcome - Competences
- Understand, digest and apply knowledge outside the comfort zone of own educational background and discipline
- View challenges and opportunities arising due to population aging from an interdisciplinary angle
- Connect own skills and talent with other skills and talents within cross-disciplinary teams towards achieving a common goal.
- Identify relevant societal problems from an interdisciplinary team perspective
- Suggest valuable real life solutions that synergistically integrate methods, approaches, perspectives from diverse disciplines
- Formulate, develop and finish an independent team project on population aging
- Develop own research questions and methods with firm grounding in relevant literature and competences developed in the students’ main discipline
Literature
- Colchero et al. (2016) The Emergence of Longevous Populations. PNAS, E7681-E7690.
- Baudisch (2015) Perspectives on the Biodemography of longevity and aging. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 67, 425-439.
- Jones et al. (2014) Diversity of aging across the tree of life. Nature 505:169–173.
- Baudisch, & Vaupel ( 2012) Getting to the root of aging. Science 338:618–619.
- Burger, Baudisch & Vaupel (2012) Human mortality improvement in evolutionary context. PNAS 109:18210–18214.
- Baudisch (2011) The pace and shape of ageing. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 2, 375-382.
- Mair et al. (2003) Demography of Dietary Restriction and Death in Drosophila. Science 301, 1731-1733.
- Oeppen & Vaupel. (2002) Demography. Broken limits to life expectancy. Science 296:1029–1031.
- Brynjolfsson, E. & McAfee, A. (2014), The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. New York, NY: W. W. Norton
- Frey, C.B. & Osborne, M.A. (2013). The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation? Oxford: Oxford Martin School.
- Brynjolfsson, E., & McAfee, A. (2015), ‘Will Humans Go the Way of Horses?’ Foreign Affairs, 94(4), 8-14.
- Keynes, J.M. (1930), ‘Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,’ in Keynes, J.M. Essays in Persuasion, New York: W.W.Norton & Co.,, pp. 358-373.
- Gál, R. I., Vanhuysse, P., Vargha, L. (2018), Pro-Elderly Welfare States within Child-Oriented Societies,’ forthcoming, Journal of European Public Policy.
- Vanhuysse, P. (2013), Intergenerational Justice in Aging Societies: A Cross-National Comparison of 29 OECD Countries. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Foundation.
- Christensen et al. (2009). Ageing populations: the challenges ahead. Lancet
- Vaupel (2010). Biodemography of human ageing. Nature 374:1196-1208.
- Christensen et al. (2013). Physical and cognitive functioning of people older than 90 years. Lancet 382:1507-1513.
- Jeune et al. (2015). Improvement in health expectancy at age 50 and 65 in Denmark during the period 2004-2011. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health 43:254-259.
- Rasmussen et al. (2017). Cohort Profile: the 1895, 1905, 1910, and 1915 Danish Birth Cohorts Studies – Secular trends in health and functioning of the very old. International Journal Epidemiology 46:1746-1746j.
- Cole, Thomas et al (eds). (2000). Handbook of the Humanities and Ageing. Second Edition
- Woodward, Kathleen. (1991). Aging and Its Discontents: Freud and Other Fictions
- Chivers, Sally. (2011). The Silvering Screen: Old Age and Disability in Film
- Twigg, Julia (ed.). (2015). The Routledge Handbook of Cultural Gerontology
- Simonsen, Peter (2014). Livslange liv: Plejehjemsromaner og pensionsfortællinger fra velfærdsstaten
- G. Demiris, B. K. Hensel: Technologies for an Aging Society: A Systematic Review of "Smart Home" Applications. IMIA Yearbook of Medical Informatics 2008. Methods Inf Med 2008; 47 Suppl 1: 33-40
- Inmaculada Plaza Lourdes Martín, SergioMartin, Carlos Medrano: Mobile applications in an aging society: Status and trends. Journal of Systems and Software Volume 84, Issue 11, November 2011, Pages 1977-1988
- Kimitoshi Yamazaki, Ryohei Ueda, Shunichi Nozawa, Mitsuharu Kojima, Kei Okada, Kiyoshi Matsumoto, Masaru Ishikaw: Home-Assistant Robot for an Aging Society, Proceedings of the IEEE Volume: 100 Issue: 8.
- Mansourvar, M., Andersen-Ranberg K., Nøhr, C & Wiil, U. K. A Predictive Model for Acute Admission in Aged Population 2018 (In press) Studies in Health Technology and Informatics. IOS Press
- Citizen Kane (1941) by Orson Wells – playing himself the great man Kane. The movie starts with the dying Kane’s last word: “Rosebud”.
- King Lear (1953) directed by Peter Brook with Orson Wells as King Lear, (1971) directed by Peter Brook with Paul Scofield, (1994) by the Renaissance Theater Company with Sir John Gielgud, (2008) by Stephen Armourar, (2018) by Trevor Nunn.
- The Old Man and the Sea (1958) based on the novel by Hemmingway, directed by John Sturges and Fred Zinnemann and with Spencer Tracey as the old man, (1990) directed by John Taylor and with Anthony Quinn as the old man.
- The Leopard (1963) based on Lampedusa’s novel, directed by Visconti, with Burt Lancaster as the old count “The Leopard”, and with Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, “change to maintain”.
- Death in Venice (1971) based on Thomas Mann’s novel, directed by Visconti, with Dirk Bogarde as the old componist Gustav van Aschenbach and Bjørn Andresen as the young Tadzio
- Ginger & Fred (1985) by Fellini with Marcello Mastroiani and Giuletta Masima
- The remains of the day (1993) based on Kazyo Ishiguro’s novel, by James Ivory, with Emma Thomson and Antony Hopkins: A butler who sacrificed body and soul to service in the years leading up to World War II realizes too late how misguided his loyalty was to his lordly employer.
- Grumpy old men (1993) manuscript by Mark Steven Johnson and directed by Donald Petrie, with Jack Lemmon and Walther Matthau “like a couple of old shoes”.
- The Straight Story (1999) based on the true story of the old man Alwin Straight’s 1994 long journey across Iowa and Wisconsin by lawnmower to mend his relationship with an ill brother, by David Lynch, and with Richard Farnsworth as Alwin Straight.
- The world’s fastest Indian (2005) written and directed by Roger Donaldson, with Antony Hopkins as Munro: The story of New Zealander speed bike racer Burt Munro, who spent years rebuilding a 1920 Indian motorcycle, which helped him set the land speed world record at Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats in 1967.
- Children of men (2006) based on P.D. James’ novel, by Alfonso Cuarón with Clive Owen, Julianne Moore and Michal Cain: In 2027, in a chaotic world in which women have become somehow infertile, a former activist agrees to help transport a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary at sea.
- The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) based on Deborah Maggosh’s novel “These foolish things” (2004), by John Madden, with Judy Dench: British retirees travel to India to take up residence in what they believe is a newly restored hotel. Less luxurious than advertised, the Marigold Hotel nevertheless slowly begins to charm in unexpected ways.
- Elysium (2013) written and directed by Neill Blomkamp, with Matt Damon and Jody Foster: In the year 2154, the very wealthy live on a man-made space station while the rest of the population resides on a ruined Earth. A man takes on a mission that could bring equality to the polarized worlds.
- Amour (2012) by Michael Haneke with Emanuelle Riva as the demented old wife and Jean Louis Trintignant as her husband
- En sang for Martin (2011) by Billy August – a love story about two older musicians, Martin and Barbara. Martin get Alzheimer’s disease.
- Our Souls at Night (2017) based on the novel by Kent Haruf, directed by Ritesh Batra, and with Jane Fonda and Robert Redford.
- Lucky (2017) by John Caroll Lynch with Harry Dean Stanton and David Lynch as a 90 year old atheist.
- Vores livs ferie (2018) by Paolo Virzi with Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland. An 80-year old couple, him with Alzheimer, she terminally ill … a trip for life. (original title The leisure seeker)
Teaching Method
Bridging languages
For educating students with diverse backgrounds from the humanities, the social, the natural sciences and technology, it is a major challenge to find a common language. To ensure that students from each discipline can benefit from the course together, we will tackle this challenge along three lines. First, understanding and communication will rely on multi-disciplinary student teams that will function as “talent supports talent”. Second, instructors will offer teaching material according to the diverse audience, and third, the program will use movies as facilitator to bridge disparate disciplinary “languages” and communicate complex and multifaceted societal and individual issues of aging.
Learning activities will fall into four categories: 1) lecture series, 2) team-based learning, 3) expert round tables, and 4) movie series.
Each student will receive an individual mentoring session in the beginning of the program to discuss personal goals, talent field, expectations and challenges. Mentoring will continue to supervise student learning teams (see point 2 above). Towards the end of the program, individual mentoring sessions will evaluate progress on initially set goals, expectations and challenges. It will reflect upon personal talent development and look into future opportunities.
SDU Stakeholders will participate in the symposium, who expressed high interest in identifying and rewarding talent and great ideas.
Workload
Examination regulations
Exam
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Oral presentation: June, during a symposium
Tests
Oral presentation
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ECTS value
Additional information
Oral student project presentations function as group exams. Contributions of each student have to be made explicit.
Assessment of 20ECTS: Oral student project presentations at final symposium judged by the scientific board (at least two members have to be present).
Examiners of projects and essays will evaluate the relevance of the problem, the added-value of the solution, its novelty, its creativity, the integration of different disciplines, the amount of team-synergy created compared to individual, monodisciplinary approaches, scientific and methodological correctness, and writing and presentation skills.
Different to other courses, taking the final exam is not enough to pass this course; active attendance at all boot camps is compulsory; substantial contribution to and active participation in the independent team project between the boot camps over the full year is the most important necessity for passing and receiving the honours degree.