The current economic system is socially and environmentally unsustainable. In the past decades, more and more voices have been raised to express the necessity of rethinking the way we, as citizens, organisations and policymakers, interact, consume, create and live. To do so, we have to develop alternatives for the current system that are less resource- intensive, generate less inequalities, and, to put it simply, are sustainable for both people and the planet. Circular economic models offer this opportunity. One issue is that these models are not sufficiently taught to students, both in higher education and secondary schools.

The “Rethinking pedagogical approaches and digital tools to teach circular economy” (Di-To) project aims at creating open source tools that help to teach and learn about circular economic models. The project gathers three partners: Université Libre de Bruxelles, the second largest French-speaking university in Belgium and the leading institution on this project, Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin, Berlin's largest university of applied sciences, and the Stars Are Circular foundation, whose mission is to facilitate the learning of circular economic models by children.

This project resulted in the development of four complementary digital tools that together constitute a ready-to-be-implemented module that could fit in higher education courses related to circular economy, social entrepreneurship or sustainable development. However, the tools can also be used separately, in the frame of a course or not.

The first tool consists of a video that retrace the path of several social entrepreneurs. These video confronts the students with real-life situations of social entrepreneurs, and explains their motivations as well as the obstacles faced. The videos can be used as a case study, either as an exercise or as the basis for a class discussion.

The second tool is more theoretical. These content video presents in a playful way the different alternative economic models that are sometimes regrouped under the term “circular economy”. This video is accompanied by pedagogical content to facilitate its implementation in courses.

The third tool consists of an online game allowing the students to take part in a serious game which includes elements of role play, simulations and framed economic experiments, focusing on circular economy. The participants will have the opportunity of representing an economic agent (government, entrepreneur, citizen, NGO, etc.) and will be able to experience the causal links of their acts.

The fourth tool is a circular toolkit platform where higher education students have the responsibility of teaching a part of the acquired knowledge to secondary school students. The higher education is put into relation with one or a group of students from secondary school and have to transmit the knowledge they have acquired from the previous tools.

The Di-To project was developed and implemented through an education consortium led by the Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium). The partner organizations were Stars Are Circular Foundation (Netherlands) and Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin (Germany).

This project was made possible thanks to the financial support of Erasmus+ (Call 2020 Round 1 KA2 - Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices - KA226 - Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness).