This post is a collaboration between Christina Brauer, Sally Creagh (Learning Designers) and Juliette Kidston-Lattari (Learning Design Officer) from PGLD.
Roll up, roll up! Get your Canvas content here! An adaptable module on sustainability is now available for import from Canvas Commons. This module can be customised to a particular course, allowing students to learn about sustainability in a manner relevant to them and their careers.
PGLD Sustainability module available on Canvas Commons
During the recent Open Education Resources (OEW) week hosted by the LX.lab, the Postgraduate Learning Design (PGLD) team introduced the Sustainability Pilot Project.
As part of the Pilot Project, PGLD has produced an online module that can be downloaded by UTS staff. The module offers ready-to-go materials and activities on sustainability concepts, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), that can be used as-is or adapted for specific subjects.
Sustainability: personalised, relevant, and tangible
The Canvas module weaves together topical videos, current news articles, reflection prompts and polls to create an engaging learner experience. One of the highlights of the module is the H5P quiz ‘What sort of environmentalist are you?’, developed by Professor Sara Wilkinson from the School of the Built Environment. It is structured like a personality quiz and invites students to consider what their sustainability ‘profile’ is. These range from ‘cornucopian environmentalist’ to ‘transpersonal ecologist’. Many have been surprised by their results! The quiz is a great way to kick off a conversation about sustainability and makes it personal, relevant, and memorable to students.
Graduates need to be sustainability-literate to face the complex challenges of the climate crisis and the demands this will have on the world of work. Thus, we have a moral obligation to equip students with the knowledge and skills they will need to meet today’s global sustainability challenges.
OERs and SDGs: A perfect match
The talks by Cable Green, Maha Bali and others during Open Education Week reinforced the connection between OERs and sustainability. OERs are freely accessible educational materials under an open license that allow for reuse, adaptation, and distribution, giving learners who may be excluded from traditional educational pathways access to high-quality education. This practice promotes SDG 4 (Quality Education) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities). Reusing and sharing educational resources reduces the need to create new content from scratch, lowering wasteful production (SDG 12) and our carbon footprint (SDG 13). Finally, OERs rely on collaboration and partnerships between educators, students, institutions and organisations to develop and maintain them, helping to promote SDG 17, the development of sustainable partnerships to achieve the SDGs.
You can watch Cable Green’s presentation and Maha Bali’s presentation on the LX blog.
Check out the module!
You can access the module via Canvas. This module was designed to be easily shared and imported in to any UTS subject via Canvas Commons and has been shared with all of UTS. More adaptable resources on sustainability and the SDGs will be shared as OERs soon. Watch this space!