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Member resources

This guidance, written with Advance HE, is intended to be of practical help to members working with students and staff to foster their knowledge, understanding and skills in the area of sustainable development. A separate resource supports students in actively engaging with their institution and students' union about ESD.


Education for Sustainable Development guidance

Publication date: 23 Sep 2021

Education for Sustainable Development guidance: Executive summary

Publication date: 23 Sep 2021

Education for Sustainable Development student resource - starting the conversation

Publication date: 23 Sep 2021


This video outlines what ESD looks like within the higher education sector. It also suggests how students can support this work within their own institutions, linking to other useful sources of information. 

 

The video was launched at QAA’s Evolving Student Engagement Conference and provides a taster of ESD and how students can encourage their institutions to progress the sustainability agenda.

Practice guides

These short, practice-based case studies are intended to inspire others through providing practical examples of ESD activities - from single workshops to long-term community engagement projects.


Practice guide: The SDG challenge - encouraging business school educators to embed sustainability into their teaching

Publication date: 23 Sep 2021

Practice guide: A digital escape room highlighting campus sustainability initiatives

Publication date: 23 Dec 2021

Practice guide: SEED funding for student projects

Publication date: 23 Sep 2021

Practice guide: Introducing sustainability to undergraduate module assessment in accounting

Publication date: 23 Sep 2021

Practice guide: Sustainability in Practice certificate (SiP) - a co-curricular, multi-disciplinary online short course

Publication date: 23 Sep 2021

Practice guide: BEST learning for next generation sustainability

Publication date: 23 Sep 2021

Practice guide: Re-imagining the 'field trip' - new and old forms of outdoor learning to support ESD

Publication date: 14 Mar 2022

Practice guide: Education for Sustainable Development within the core curriculum and beyond - a living lab approach

Publication date: 23 Sep 2021

Practice guide: Multi-disciplinary event for community-based learning and action for the UN SDGs

Publication date: 23 Sep 2021

Practice guide: Shaping tomorrow together - a multidisciplinary year long course for 1st year undergraduates

Publication date: 23 Sep 2021

Practice guide: Sustainability inter-disciplinary hackathon for staff and students

Publication date: 23 Sep 2021

Practice guide: Research in action - living labs approach

Publication date: 23 Sep 2021

Practice guide: Living lab - applied research to affect change for sustainable development

Publication date: 23 Sep 2021

Practice guide: Helping students to transform communities and society through real life social action and environmentally responsible enterprise

Publication date: 23 Sep 2021

Practice guide: A five-step framework for a whole-institution approach to embedding ESD

Publication date: 23 Sep 2021

Practice guide: Research-based education for sustainable development - VIP for sustainable development

Publication date: 23 Sep 2021

Practice guide: The stories we live by - a free online course about sustainability and the role of language in shaping society

Publication date: 23 Sep 2021

Collaborative Enhancement Projects

Our Collaborative Enhancement Projects offer funding opportunities for small groups of our member institutions to work together on projects of shared interest. Projects cover a range of topics and interest areas, including Education for Sustainable Development. Find out more on the QAA website.


Collaborative Enhancement Projects
Project titles
Developing phenomenal learning: A toolkit for implementing phenomenon-based learning as part of a future-proofed SDG HE curriculum
ESD and academic quality
Monitoring and evaluating education for sustainable development in higher education
Students driving curriculum quality for sustainability - developing criteria & tools

We are currently funding four Collaborative Enhancement Projects focused on different aspects of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD).


We invited each project team to share with us what meaningful ESD looks like from their perspective and how their work will better enable ESD.


Students driving curriculum quality for sustainability

In this video we have Students Driving Curriculum Quality for Sustainability, led by University of Gloucestershire in partnership with University of the Arts, London and Kings College London. The project team are working closely with students to test and develop shared standards in ESD, which do not yet exist - assessing the depth of sustainability in higher education course offers, and pushing to mainstream ESD for all courses; not leaving it to optional modules or specialist pathways.

Monitoring and evaluating education for sustainable development in Higher Education

In this video, Rehema White tells us more about Monitoring and Evaluating Education for Sustainable Development in Higher Education, led by the University of St Andrews. Following an analysis of existing approaches to monitoring and evaluating ESD, the project team is developing principles and tools using quantitative measures and reflective approaches that strengthen the learning experience. The online resources will be adaptable and deployable across the sector at department, faculty and institutional level.

ESD and Academic Quality

In this video, we find out more about De Montfort University's take on ESD and Academic Quality. The project team is co-developing a resource to make the alignment of ESD to staff and student academic quality processes more straightforward, providing templates and a range of institution-specific approaches to help inform future practices.

Developing phenomenal learning: part of a future-proofed SDG HE curriculum

In this video, we find out more about Developing Phenomenal Learning with Staffordshire University, in partnership with Harper Adams University. The project introduces Phenomenon Based Learning as an effective pedagogic vehicle to build on the Education for Sustainable Development Guidance published by QAA and Advance HE. The project team will generate an evidence-informed Project SDG 4.7 Toolkit and further Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs) to support higher education providers across the sector to work with students in the co-creation and implementation of Sustainable Development Goals and equitably within the curriculum, via Phenomenon Based Learning modelling.

Related work