The “acting/thinking in complexity” competency is complex in the sense of E. Morin and as such, it needs a complex frame of evaluation that we have elaborated as a reflexive portfolio. Indeed, in the academic year 2016-2017, two years after the MSEI diploma cursus started, the building of a reflexive portfolio became rapidly a very suitable media to evaluate the proficiency of the students in the “acting/thinking in complexity” competency described above. Furthermore, the practice of reflexivity in academic studies as a key factor to shift the way of thinking in relation to sustainability has been put forward in many domains (Kearins and Springett, 2003, Michaud, 2010, Miller et al., 2011, Allen et al., 2017)[1].

Before describing the actual course, we give the feedback of the first year implementation of the course (2016-2017). Overall, the portfolio production was great (see dedicated section) The picture is not all bright however: 50% of the students felt uneased with the format freedom and spent more time on it than on the important reflexive challenge. The whole course was also time demanding for the students and for the teacher’s group. Support proved too light and many questions arose along the months to be solved without much anticipation. In conclusion, 20% out of scope, 50% uncertain with format and time allocation was not enough… We had to improve and devise a suitable help program! We now come to the actual course.

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[1] Kearins, K., Springett, D. (2003). Educating for sustainability: Developing critical skills. J. of Management Education, 27(2), 188–204. Michaud, C. (2010). Le Portfolio: un en(je)-u de formation et de développement professionnel.  PhD thesis, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1. Miller, T. R., Munoz-Erickson, T., Redman, C. L. (2011). Transforming knowledge for sustainability: Towards adaptive academic institutions. Int. J. of Sustainability in Higher Education, 12(2), 177–192.