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Frederick S. Pardee
Institute for International Futures
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Learn IFs

Bring structure to uncertainty with strategic forecasting

The future is unpredictable but also discernible. 
Strategic Forecasting with IFs is a self-paced, fully online course that equips learners with the quantitative tools and skills to understand where the future is headed and to account for future uncertainty.

This course will teach learners how to use the only open-source, University-backed, macro-level integrated assessment model that provides an empirical foundation for exploring future-focused questions spanning different time horizons and crossing borders and systems.

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Learn to reason across uncertainty, systems, and time

Learn systems thinking for strategy. Bring the long view into focus. Build a more knowable future.
Learn to use IFs, Pardee's forecasting platform, to study long-term durable trends across economics, security, geopolitics, environmental systems, and human development, at the country level and across decades-long time horizons. This teaches a frame of thinking that complements near-term considerations with durable, evidence-based strategy, a skill set that sets professionals apart in any field.

By the end of the first course, learners will be able to:

  • Install and navigate IFs.
  • Analyze historical trends.
  • Display and interpret a Current Path forecast (the baseline for future comparisons).
  • Build a basic alternative scenario.
  • Compare results and communicate their implications for long-term planning and strategy.

Upon program completion, learners will build practical skills to:

  • Analyze long-term trends.
  • Compare scenarios under different assumptions.
  • Assess tradeoffs across connected systems.
  • Communicate and substantiate uncertainty and strategic implications.
  • Use IFs outputs responsibly, with attention to assumptions, limits, and context.

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Program snapshot

Offerings
5 individual courses | 3 professional badges 
Pricing
Starting at USD 950/course | 50% discount for beta testers*
Digital credentials
Digital credentials are issued through Credly, the University of Denver’s digital credential partner, and can be added to LinkedIn and other professional profiles.
Who should enroll
Roles | This program is designed for people whose work requires disciplined thinking about long-term change, including professionals in policy, planning, development, research, strategy, risk, philanthropy, finance, and related fields.

Organizations | Use the program to build shared analytic capacity across teams, giving staff a common language for scenarios, assumptions, uncertainty, and long-term strategy.
* We are offering a limited-time 50% discount for Course 1 learners enrolling as beta testers. Enter promo code BETA50-IFS-C1 at checkout to apply your discount. Additional discounts for subsequent program offerings may be available to early Course 1 graduates.

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Follow the recommended course sequence

The IFs microcredential program takes users on a guided pathway to independent use of IFs for sophisticated scenario analysis. It begins with an introduction to the tool, building familiarity with the platform and its core features for scenario analysis.

Next, it lays the conceptual foundation for the tool, enabling users to navigate the assumptions, structures, and concepts that underpin scenario analysis. This foundational understanding bookends the reaches and limitations of the tool as well as providing an analytic framework for validating scenario-building.

Building on these foundational underpinnings, users learn how to build scenarios in each of the three core systems that connect variable relationships in IFs: human, social, and natural systems.

The microcredential is organized around five courses:
Credentials will be issued through Credly, the University of Denver’s digital credential partner, and can be added to LinkedIn and other professional profiles.

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Earn credentials as you learn IFs

Learners will be able to earn non-credit digital badges as they move through the program:
Learn the IFs toolkit
Course 1 only
Learn the IFs toolkit and conceptual underpinnings; build scenarios in one system
Courses 1 and 2 plus
Choose one more from Courses 3-5
Learn how to build and validate scenarios in all three interconnected global systems
Courses 1 - 5
Credentials will be issued through Credly, the University of Denver’s digital credential partner, and can be added to LinkedIn and other professional profiles.

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Develop a custom learning pathway

We also offer in-person instruction tailored to individual and organization IFs learning needs.
Pardee can work with organizations, partners, and teams to design customized IFs training.

Workshops can support policy analysis, research design, strategic planning, capacity building, or applied scenario development.

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Workshop participants can learn:
  • Understand the IFs Current Path
  • Explore the historical database
  • Identify relevant model areas
  • Build and compare alternative scenarios
  • Interpret results with attention to assumptions and limits
  • Apply IFs to a specific organizational question

Help support a global community working toward a more knowable future

Pardee’s open tools, research, and training resources support students, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners around the world. Your gift helps keep that work accessible and strengthens the public research infrastructure behind it.

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