scholarly journals Education for Sustainable Development 4.0: Lessons Learned from the University of Graz, Austria

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 2347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Brudermann ◽  
Ralf Aschemann ◽  
Manfred Füllsack ◽  
Alfred Posch
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Education For Sustainable Development ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Added Value ◽  
Online Course ◽  
International Teachers ◽  
Digital Environments ◽  
Interactive Classroom ◽  
The University

Higher education for sustainable development plays a crucial role in the transformation of society towards a more sustainable pathway of development. The new trends in society and technology experienced in the course of the fourth industrial revolution come with challenges, but also provide opportunities. In this paper, we reflect on the conceptual basis of education for sustainable development as approached at the University of Graz, Austria, and contrast this basis with the expectations stated by students. The results showed that students acknowledged the high importance of digital competencies and found it highly important to be confronted with future-oriented topics and contents. Interestingly, students seemed skeptical about online course formats and digitalization of teaching and clearly preferred the interactive classroom experience. Students also rated international topics and transdisciplinary thinking as fairly important. Interestingly, a relatively high share of students only saw mediocre added value in experiencing international classrooms, and in having international teachers, when it comes to meeting their top priority, which is being competitive in the job market. Education for sustainable development in the future will not only need to prepare students for international, interdisciplinary, and digital environments, but also will need to meet the expectations of demanding and ambitious students and provide them with bright career prospects.

scholarly journals Knowledge, Perceptions and Attitudes on Education for Sustainable Development of Pre-Service Early Childhood Teachers in Greece

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Anthoula Maidou ◽  
Katerina Plakitsi ◽  
Hariton M. Polatoglou
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Early Childhood ◽  
Informal Education ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Early Childhood Teachers ◽  
Education For Sustainable Development ◽  
Agenda 2030 ◽  
Perceptions And Attitudes ◽  
Education Of Students ◽  
The University

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is an important issue for the education of students worldwide becauseit offers knowledge, skills, attitudes and values necessary to ensure a sustainable future for humanity at local andglobal levels, which is nowadays becoming critical. The decade 2005-2014 called ‘Decade of ESD’ was an initiativeby the United Nations to promote ESD worldwide, followed currently by the Agenda 2030. ESD should be anongoing subject for students in formal and informal education, at all educational levels, and in life-long learningprograms, starting with early childhood education. This paper reports on the knowledge, perceptions and attitudes ofpre-service early childhood teachers of the University of Ioannina, Greece, on ESD using a quantitative approachutilizing a questionnaire. Our findings showed that most pre-service teachers had knowledge on environmentalaspects but did not consider societal and financial matters to be aspects of ESD. Furthermore, most students hadnever ESD lessons during their formal education. Our findings depict that pre-service students believe that ESD is animportant issue, that it should be included in the curricula and that lessons on EDS during their studies woulddevelop their ability to teach ESD to their students.

scholarly journals Education for Sustainable Development: a Strategic Tool for Quality Improvement of Higher Education

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kageeporn Wongpreedee ◽  
Karnitta Sinsahuang ◽  
Janjira Intanakom ◽  
Wanlaya Tanechpongtamb ◽  
Pansiri Phansuwan-Pujito
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Quality Assurance ◽  
Social Enterprise ◽  
Mission Statement ◽  
Quality Standards ◽  
Education For Sustainable Development ◽  
Management Team ◽  
Faculty Members ◽  
The University

It has been long known that quality assurance (QA) is a system to develop quality standards in Thailand.  However, it is not easy to implement the concept throughout a whole organization, for example, to include in a university, faculty members, program specifications, management team, and so on.   This paper is to explain a case of strategic management of quality assurance using education for sustainable development (ESD) in the university with social enterprise concept.  An example of the university with the mission statement of “to serve society” can drawn more attention using ESD concept to faculty in stead of QA regulation concept.  The conceptual framework of the implementation was shown how QA can be developed in curriculum embedding with an ESD concept.  

Transforming University Curricula Towards Sustainability

2017 ◽  
pp. 805-827
Author(s):  
Vassilios Makrakis
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Middle East ◽  
European Commission ◽  
Online Community ◽  
Higher Education Institutions ◽  
Education For Sustainable Development ◽  
Sustainability In Higher Education ◽  
University Curricula ◽  
The University

The UNESCO Chair ICT in Education for Sustainable Development in cooperation with the RCE Crete (Regional Centre of Expertise) on Education for Sustainable Development responding to the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD 2005-2014) took the initiative to establish a North-South Network for embedding sustainability in higher education institutions. A Consortium with 12 universities (six from Europe and six from Middle East) led by the UNESCO Chair and the RCE Crete at the University of Crete prepared a proposal submitted to the Tempus- European Commission programme for funding. The RUCAS (Reorient University Curricula to address Sustainability) project, studied in this chapter, has initiated various activities in the partner countries' institutions, which seem to exert significant curricular changes. The changes include the revision of courses, building the appropriate infrastructure, the development of an online community of practice and the RUCAS Toolkit that are being used as drivers for reorienting university curricula to address sustainability. As a result, a growing number of academics in the partner institutions are concerned with the current sustainability crisis and claim for a transformative shift in what they teach and how teaching is practiced.

scholarly journals Enrollment, Engagement and Satisfaction in the BlendKit Faculty Development Open, Online Course

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patsy Moskal ◽  
Kelvin Thompson ◽  
Linda Futch
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Professional Development ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Online Course ◽  
Open Approach ◽  
University Of Central Florida ◽  
Central Florida ◽  
The Third ◽  
Online Format ◽  
The University

BlendKit is a 5-week course designed by the University of Central Florida in an open, online format specifically for the professional development of higher education faculty and designers preparing to design and teach blended learning courses. The evaluation of this course provides us with interesting and valuable information on the success of using an open approach of a MOOC compared to more traditional, highly structured professional development offerings typically seen in higher education. This article will focus on the lessons learned from the third iteration of this open, online course.

scholarly journals Education for Sustainable Development: A Qualitative Analytical Study on the Impact of the Jordanian Universities’ Role in Supporting Innovation among University Students

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 268
Author(s):  
Amani Jarrar
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Grounded Theory ◽  
University Students ◽  
Education For Sustainable Development ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Educational Systems ◽  
Innovation Ecosystems ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact

This study aimed at exploring and theorizing the role of Jordanian Universities in supporting innovation among university students within the context of education for sustainable development from the point of view of Jordanian University students. For that, the researcher adopted the grounded theory methodology by Strauss and Corbin. The study was conducted at two Jordanian Universities: the University of Jordan and Philadelphia University in the academic year (2019-2020), and the study population consisted of students from the two universities. The researcher chose (300) students from both genders from different faculties and academic years. By applying the grounded theory, the study concluded that the key category that emerged after analyzing the student’s responses describing the impact of the Jordanian Universities’ role in supporting innovation among university students for educational sustainable development is the emphasis on the need for developing proper University innovation ecosystems in their educational systems. Also, the respondents- through online interviews - have emphasized this concept of proper University innovation ecosystems. The key category of this study found that positive and negative impacts could result from applying or neglecting to apply this concept, which generated behaviors toward the concept, which could be considered as the phenomena in the current research.

scholarly journals Corporate Libraries: Bellwether of Change for the Library World at Large

2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
James M. Matarazzo ◽  
Toby Pearlstein
Keyword(s):  
Academic Library ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Added Value ◽  
Academic Librarians ◽  
Digital Information ◽  
Library Community ◽  
Cost Cutting ◽  
Physical Assets ◽  
The University

In this article, the authors argue that the lessons learned from the increasing closures of corporate li- braries that began in the 1980s can be applied to the wider library community. These closures have accelerated since the 1990s due to corporate cost cutting measures and the ever increasing availability of internet services that bypass the information professional. Above all, the authors argue that corporate librarians have often failed to align their services to the priorities of the companies they serve. This has resulted in their institutional marginalization and the eventual closure of the library. The authors make the case that, among other types of libraries, the sacrosanct place of the academic library at the center of the university is not guaranteed. The information era with its vast digital resources has and will under- mine the physical assets of traditional libraries as well as the customary role of librarians who staff them. Academic librarians will increasingly be expected to show administrators that their services are aligned to their institution’s strategic priorities and that their libraries are providing added value to its customers, namely, the students, faculty and staff of their college or university. If they do not do so, they very well may face, in the not so distant future, what may now seem unimaginable –the reduction or closure of the academic library in favor of customer-accessed digital information services. 

scholarly journals TOWARDS TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING METHODS FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY POSTGRADUATE EDUCATION FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT (ESD): A CASE STUDY

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 209 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Grierson ◽  
Karen Elizabeth Munro
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Transformative Learning ◽  
Postgraduate Education ◽  
Education For Sustainable Development ◽  
Learning Methods ◽  
Sustainable Engineering ◽  
Discursive Analysis ◽  
The University ◽  
The Relationship

This paper explores the relationship between education for sustainable development (ESD) and interdisciplinarity in the context of architecture and engineering higher education, presenting a case study of the University of Strathclyde Glasgow’s Sustainable Engineering (SE) postgraduate programme, within the wider context of common principles and practices present across HEIs.  The paper - one of a series - offers an overview of the SE programme between 2004 and 2015 (coinciding with UNDESD) and discusses its growing focus on interdisciplinarity and the introduction of transformative learning methods over the study period.  The study uses a methodology of statistical analysis of enrolment and graduation trends on the SE programme alongside a discursive analysis of course and module provision specific to learning methods for ESD and interdisciplinarity. The study finds that, within the SE programme, both the courses and modules that have an SD focus exhibit the greatest longevity over the study period and are selected by students significantly more often than other courses and modules. The finding supports previous studies that report an increased appetite for such courses and classes.  The learning methods employed on the modules align with those considered exemplary in the literature surrounding ESD, and demonstrate the programme’s aspirations towards increased interdisciplinarity in postgraduate ESD.  The paper provides insight into the practices and outcomes of a specific long-standing programme, offering opportunity for reflection, discussion and comparison with similar programmes.

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