Sustainability: Pedagogy & practice

This section contains prompts that should help you consider sustainability in our approaches to teaching and learning.

General Practice

• Do students have the opportunity to work across multiple domains e.g. tasks or activities that develop cognitive, affective and practical skills or knowledge?

• Do your activities and tasks encourage and support students to approach problems or discussions from multiple disciplinary perspectives?

• Are students signposted to existing resources and opportunities such as volunteering, UCIL courses, Living Labs,  Ethical Grand Challenges, 50,000 Actions?

• How are students supported to engage with these existing opportunities? Could they be integrated more formally into your unit or programme (e.g. through assessment or academic advising)?

• Does your unit or programme induction include information about environmental sustainability on campus?

• Are your teaching and learning materials available online in an accessible format?

Field Trips

• Are physical field trips necessary for students to meet the unit/programme ILOs?
• If so have you undertaken a carbon audit? See also Principle 2. Sustainable Fieldwork of the Royal Geographical Society’s  Principles for Undergraduate Field Courses.
• Have you included carbon emissions data as part of your field trip information for students? (You can calculate the emissions associated with different modes of travel here)
• Is transport for field trips or visits as sustainable as possible? (e.g., avoiding flights where possible; flying as directly as possible where flying can’t be avoided; using rail travel for national destinations and destinations in Europe with Eurostar and high-speed rail connections). See also UoM’s travel policy
• Could learning outcomes addressed by overseas field trips be met with alternatives in the UK?