Internal Keynote Lecture – Sustainability Team
12th May 2023
Tuesday 13 June, 14.00-15.00, TC014, Park Campus
Students driving anti-greenwash education
Alex Ryan (Director of Sustainability), Miriam Webb (Sustainability Engagement Manager) and Bea Hughes (Sustainability Co-ordinator)
This session shares the story and outcomes of a QAA funded Collaborative Enhancement Project in Education for Sustainability (EfS) that partnered with students as quality assessors for sustainability learning. The project aims to drive up quality on EfS for the sector and push universities to provide courses that offer graduates the sustainability change skills they really need across all professions and settings.
It started from recognition that while UoG has pioneered the mainstreaming of sustainability into the curriculum, the wider sector is often still struggling to get traction on this agenda. Our academic community has collaborated, reinvented and worked with students to get this right and assess our progress authentically. Subject benchmarks are asking for EfS to be considered in all subjects now but elsewhere the sector is at risk of measuring the mundane rather than what matters – potentially selling students short in the process.
Our QAA funded project took the principles from UoG’s EfS curriculum stocktake in 2021 and invited students to say if the principles sound right and how they would rate their courses. We collaborated with King’s College London and University of the Arts London to test the approach in different settings and get wider student input. In each of the three university partners, a paid student role within our project team has given us a co-creation process that involved diverse student voices, including the QAA student advisory board.
Come and hear our story about the learning perspectives of students in sustainability and how we are trying to form a blueprint to drive quality authentic sustainability learning into the heart of higher education.
Recording of the lecture
Links to videos in the presentation: