The Sustainability Team at the University of Gloucestershire recently shared the outputs and resources from their recent QAA funded partnership project: Students Driving Curriculum Quality for Sustainability.
The project used student co-creation to develop and test a framework of simple quality principles for assessing the integration of sustainability learning, that can work for any course or subject area. It responds to the need for developing approaches that bring clarity and consistency in portfolio-wide integration, using insights from the student perspective about their learning experiences. At its heart is an approach that enables comparative measurement of progressive embedding of sustainability into course design – one that has been used across a diverse portfolio and now tested by over 130 students assessors, who appraised 87 courses, across the 3 partner institutions and through QAA’s national student advisory board.
The Key outputs were:
Project website – with details of the quality principles and course rating criteria – as well as how we tested these and what we found, including short film clips from the project partners.
Anti-greenwash Education Kit – a speed-learning tool with short films, explanations and examples. It aims to help students across the sector to better identify what matters most in this learning and talk with academic teams about developing courses to reflect an ambitious and authentic approach to sustainability, that gives transparency to students about what they are being offered.
These outputs offer support to:
Academics – inclusive, progressive and simple principles for assessing the integration of sustainability learning across courses, to develop new future-orientated learning
Students – easy-to-use digital tools that empower them to rate the sustainability learning offer on their courses and collaborate on approaches to strengthen this education
HE Professionals – e.g. sustainability staff, quality staff, academic developers, university leaders – to benchmark Education for Sustainability across all courses and set targets.
This project was funded under the QAA Collaborative Enhancement Projects cycle and led by University of Gloucestershire, in partnership with University of the Arts London and King’s College London, institutions all known for their sustainability innovation programmes and committed to student partnerships and quality education for sustainability.
You can find out more about the project by re-watching a recent webinar hosted by QAA and by reading the WonkHE blog