E-LEARNING FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY: DRIVING FOR CHANGE WITH AN OPEN ONLINE COURSE

Our University has a global community of over 50,000 students and staff studying on its campuses in the UK, China and Malaysia. It is a big operation, requiring constant staff mobility and offering opportunities for students to complete their degrees across two continents. At the same time, we realise that “The global imperative to reduce carbon emissions and to improve the sustainability of our activities is compelling” (Vice Chancellor, Environment Strategy 2010).

Since 2011, a strategic push to move the University’s sustainability agenda beyond the domain of our estates and operations and into our teaching and learning, has resulted in the development of ‘E-learning for Sustainability’ as a core teaching enhancement driver. We have used ‘disruptive’ pseudo-MOOC pedagogy to create an online course within which our students and staff can make contact with each other via a shared interest in sustainability. The different perspectives that these stakeholders bring from their campus and home contexts has been a major strength, allowing us to develop an intercultural and interdisciplinary course that has enabled new partnerships and perspectives on, for and through sustainability. We have broadened our understanding of sustainability to encompass pedagogy and the incorporation and production of genuinely ‘open’ content.

This presentation will explore the ways in which we have connected our e-learning and sustainability agendas. It will discuss the activities and interactions designed into the course, and highlight the ‘positive disruption’ that the initiative is now having in support of e-learning for environmental sustainability.