When the museum becomes a classroom: teaching students to tackle the challenges of the Anthropocene
Interview with Vivien Blanchet, lecturer and researcher at BSB
Vivien Blanchet, a lecturer and researcher at BSB and coordinator of the work-study Master’s specialisation in “CSR Management”, has developed an innovative teaching initiative by transforming a session of his sustainable development course into an immersive exploration at the heart of the “Secrets of the Earth” exhibition at the Musée des Confluences in Lyon.
This experience invites students to engage directly with the challenges of the Anthropocene — this new era marked by the impact of human activities on the planet.
An approach that fully embodies the ambition of BSB and its Learning Lab — a genuine space for reflection and resources dedicated to innovative teaching methods: to train managers capable of thinking and acting in the face of the challenges of socio-ecological transitions. Interview.
Vivien, you are a lecturer and researcher at BSB, on the Lyon campus. Can you tell us a little more about your teaching at the school?
I have been teaching at BSB for five years. My guiding principle is “training to transform”. I apply this in my CSR and Sustainable Development courses. The former is a core module for all third-year Bachelor’s and pre-Master’s students, the latter for first-year Master’s students from the start of the 2026 academic year.
I have also launched a work-study Master’s specialisation dedicated to CSR and Sustainable Development Management. My ambition is to support our students in becoming agents of social and ecological transition, both within and outside organisations.
This is a major challenge for future managers. Can you give us an example of how you support your students in achieving this ambition?
In 2024–25, I created the Master’s 1 elective module ‘Sustainable Development Management’ at BSB’s Lyon campus. It was an introductory course designed to enable students to acquire a foundation of fundamental knowledge on sustainable development.
In practical terms, the first session draws on environmental sciences to understand what makes the planet habitable — energy, climate, biodiversity, resources. The second takes a historical approach to shed light on how human activities have gradually jeopardised this balance. The remaining sessions focus on steering socio-ecological transitions.
The difficulty lies in the fact that issues of CSR and sustainable development require us to move beyond the traditional framework of management courses (Carton & Valiorgue, 2023).
I also observe that our students are often more receptive to analysing concrete solutions or business case studies than to the problem-identification phase. And I understand why: addressing the underlying issues can be more abstract (Carbone et al., 2025), and sometimes anxiety-inducing too (Skilling et al., 2023). Yet it is an essential step if we are to envisage a genuine transformation of practices.
How did you overcome these challenges?
I devised a ‘capsule’, that is, a session that students carry out independently (now referred to as an ‘independent session’, ed.). I took the concept of the capsule literally: it must be carried out outside the classroom; well, so be it! Let’s encourage our students to explore other places.
Research does indeed show that activities carried out outside the classroom reinforce learning when they are explicitly linked to the course. They consolidate knowledge and foster the connection between emotional engagement and cognitive understanding (Endrizzi, 2007).
Exactly. So I built this session around the temporary exhibition ‘Secrets of the Earth’, held at the Musée des Confluences in Lyon. The idea was to explore sustainable development through matter, in the literal sense: minerals. This exhibition was very well designed: visitors could move from a sample of cobalt to videos on its uses in batteries, then to a map of its extraction areas, before addressing social issues (such as child labour). This allowed us to tackle the challenges of sustainable management.
This exhibition is a very powerful educational tool because it shows how a physical object encapsulates physical, technical, economic, political and ethical issues all at once.
A visit to the museum: quite unusual for a business school!
Indeed. For students, but also for business school lecturers, the links between environmental sciences, the humanities and management are not self-evident (Leca & Naccache, 2025).
What is the educational framework for this museum visit?
The aim of the module was for students, by the end of the activity, to be able to explain concrete sustainability issues related to minerals by linking ecological, historical and managerial processes.
In addition to the exhibition, I developed original teaching content. Firstly, the module’s framework establishes an explicit link between the exhibition and the course: minerals are resources, and resources lie at the heart of discussions on sustainable development. Several PowerPoint slides address this theme, for example through the Meadows Report. This framework is a key point.
Indeed, independent study sessions are unique because, in the absence of a teacher, the teaching resources must take on the tasks usually carried out in the classroom, such as guidance or facilitation.
Yes, and I had overlooked these points during a previous teaching experience in which we took the students to an exhibition on the theme of water. Not all of them had grasped the link with the ecological transition course. Having learnt my lesson, I was more vigilant about this framing.
The central theme of the module links approaches to sustainable development drawn from Earth system science (Boutaud & Gondran, 2020), history (Bonneuil & Fressoz, 2013) and critical management studies (Banerjee, 2009). I have therefore structured the module around the concept of extractivism, understood as an economic model based on the intensive exploitation of natural resources, often for export, with few local benefits and limited attention to the environment.
This model generates negative social, economic and ecological impacts, such as ecosystem degradation, economic dependency and social injustice. To illustrate this, I designed several slides that define, problematise and embody the concept. Students are then invited to apply this concept during their visit.
To this end, a series of questions guide the students through the exhibition. For example: are minerals renewable? How are they distributed around the world? What are they used for? How are they mined? By whom? What are the impacts of this mining? What are the governance frameworks involved? etc. For each question, the students had to draw on resources from the exhibition. This is an important point: they did not need to look for information elsewhere. Everything was there. Above all, they had to sort, organise and link the information to the session’s central theme.
What was the result?
The experience was positive. The students all played along: the session was a success, with proof of their visit to back it up. In terms of learning, they grasped the concepts of resources and extractivism quite well. For example, several of them spontaneously applied these concepts during the course’s synthesis exercise, in which they had to create posters addressing various sustainability issues. Another positive aspect: limited use of generative AI, as students had to justify their answers using photos or data from the exhibition. In other words, they had to draw on specific, tangible evidence.
What did the students think?
They enjoyed it. But one thing struck me. A student told me: “I never go to museums, but honestly, this was really interesting.” Several others also told me they’d made the most of their visit to explore the museum’s permanent collections and other temporary exhibitions. Another pleasant surprise: even though the video was an individual assignment, the students visited the exhibition in small groups. This strengthened the class’s cohesion, something I hadn’t particularly anticipated at the start.
Do you plan to replicate or expand this educational experiment?
Definitely, yes. I find that a museum visit offers many benefits. Getting out of the classroom. Bringing complex issues to life. Engaging the students. Countering the use of generative AI. Drawing on a variety of expertise that goes beyond BSB’s areas of specialism.
Moreover, research shows that museum visits aligned with course content extend learning experiences (Meunier, n.d.) and reinforce behavioural engagement (proactivity, participation, etc.), cognitive engagement (effort and deepening of knowledge) and emotional engagement (enthusiasm, curiosity, etc.) among students (Bourgeois, 2013). This three-dimensional engagement is strongly associated with success and perseverance in learning (Brossard et al., 2014), which reinforces the value of expanding this type of project.
Absolutely. However, I would highlight several constraints to replicating this initiative. My course is now part of the core curriculum for the Bachelor’s and Pre-Master’s programmes, taught on the Lyon and Dijon campuses: it is therefore necessary to create a museum-linked capsule in each city, which complicates pedagogical consistency. Furthermore, ‘Secrets of the Earth’ was a temporary exhibition that has now ended, which means I have to start from scratch. In future, it would be preferable to build on permanent exhibitions to ensure the module’s long-term viability.
In any case, this initiative is innovative within the context of a business school and offers significant educational value. Finally, do you have any advice for a colleague who might wish to replicate this experience?
Yes, it is essential to start by clarifying what the students need to understand or question — a concept, a practice, a tension — before turning the visit into a genuine opportunity for inquiry rather than mere contemplation. The coherence of the programme then relies on an observation grid that links the museum visit with the classroom sessions: it guides students on what to look out for, helps them interpret their observations and connect them to the concepts covered in class. Crafting this grid carefully is crucial, as it is what gives the visit its educational structure and makes it a fully-fledged learning tool.
