What is Ecolect?

Ecolect is a Virtual Classroom based on Sustainability 2.0 development principles.  It has been designed to make it easy and fun to provide eLearning, eTraining, and eMarketing for sustainability-aligned products and services.

What are Ecolect's Goals?

The Goals for the Ecolect Virtual Classroom are:

1) To provide easy to access eLearning, eTraining, and eMarketing services;

2) To provide up to date courses and modules that give people the best access to authentic information;

3) To link education and training to products and services such that people can make informed choices in regards to the built environment, sustainability, energy, water, and resource efficiency; and,

4) To monitor and evaluate learning in an attempt to inform further refinements in the learning process and ways to make learning...lifelong.

What is Sustainability 2.0?

Sustainability 2.0 is the concept of applying Web/Enterprise 2.0, Information Management and Open Source concepts in an attempt to accelerate sustainable development. 

The goal of Sustainability 2.0 is to provide a model for collaboration, governance, innovation, and education for sustainable development.  Ecolect is designed as a vehicle for achieving this goal.

How did Ecolect eLearning get started?

Ecolect was the result of some late nights at the pub with the 'geeks' (i.e. research-loving, beer sipping, academics) that the Team at Four Walls and A Roof hang around with.  Don't get me wrong, we are 'geeks' ourselves...but sometimes you just need some critical 'geek' mass and a few beers to come up with pretty cool ideas.

To keep a long story short, we started to think about why people learn they way they do, what makes the human mind so inherently inquisitive, what people value, and where technology can contribute to lifelong learning.  We believed that sustainability was a 'learning process' and not just a goal to strive for  We combined this thinking with our passion for sustainable living and Ecolect eLearning was born.

Ecolect eLearning, eTraining, and eMarketing is underpinned by scientific research.  In fact one of the 'geeks' in our Team are actually doing their PhD on this stuff.  We laugh at him as well! 

But seriously, we thought that if we were going to teach people about sustainability, then we needed a way to measure whether or not it was actually working.  To find out more about the research happening behind the scenes, have a peak at the Ecolect FAQ's section.