Abstract:

Scholars suggest that there is a clear need for higher education institutions to integrate more sustainability education into their programs. This recent study extends students’ knowledge on sustainability by integrating the topic in curricula and lectures within an existing structure. For advancing sustainability in education and research the topic needs to be embedded into subjects, such as marketing. Sustainable issues can be taught best by using agile learning methodologies in order to foster a creative and flexible approach.

Hence. considering previous agile-based learning experiences, the research team analysed the potential of the agile method for improving collaborative learning about the topic of service environment and sustainable communication, applied within the context of an international MBA by focusing on the subjects “Service Marketing and Management” and “International Marketing Research”. The learning objective was to understand how service companies can implement selected Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in their marketing strategy and how they can communicate these actions to their stakeholders (i.e., customers). By applying agile methods, students had to design an Instagram campaign for a service company with focus on sustainability.

Combining agile methods with sustainable topics, students carried out the following activities:
(i) warm-up session about the perceived relevance and criteria for being a sustainable service company, and also to identify whether higher education students know about the SDGs;
(ii) listening to a session presenting “sustainable tourism marketing”, linking SDGs and tourism marketing;
(iii) building of teams of 3-4 students;
(iv) within each team, developing a business proposal on a service company (hotel) regarding its main unique selling proposition, description of the service provided and logo, with the condition that the service company has to be sustainable;
(v) researching what customers associate with a sustainable company - for this, each group of students prepared a questionnaire and, based on the supervision of the teachers, a final questionnaire was distributed for data collection;
(vi) content creation on Instagram for the sustainable service company based on the research findings and
(vii) feedback.

By implementing this agile methodology, students were given a broad range of flexibility instead of many steps to follow. Guidelines and the required result were communicated to them, so they could decide by themselves how the result would look like. Moreover, a realistic schedule fostered this “learning journey”, telling students from the beginning what to be expected from them in each time frame. This was to make sure that they took on wise decisions in terms of time management and team organization, trying to avoid final sprints or lastminute gamechanger decisions that would lead the team to stress and chaos.

For evaluating this learning activity, students were asked what they liked best about the Instagram sessions and what they have learnt about sustainability. Findings show that by using agile methodologies, the students’ engagement with the proposed activities was much higher related to self-determination of solutions and self-responsibility towards sustainable environmental concerns.

Keywords:

Sustainable communication, agile methodologies, Instagram, collaborative learning.