Hybrid PBL for Sustainability Education
'Hybrid-PBL for Sustainability Education' is a project funded by the Higher Education Academy's National Teaching Fellowship Scheme (NTFS). This project aims to explore, develop and disseminate pedagogies and educational resources for sustainability education based on a 'Hybrid' problem-based learning (PBL) approach.
This project takes the premise that problem-based learning is an effective way of delivering sustainability education. However, traditional PBL approaches can be very resource intensive. With the desire to increase the numbers of students engaged in sustainability education, traditional PBL models have been adapted to be delivered in a less resource intensive way to larger numbers of students.
This project is a collaboration between Keele University, The University of Manchester and Staffordshire University.
Greening Business: Employability and Sustainability
The Hybrid PBL project at Keele is run through a first year module, 'Greening Business: Employability and Sustainability'. Keele puts itself at the forefront of the ESD agenda in HE by offering this sustainability module to any first year student from any discipline.
As we all know, businesses in all sectors are being increasingly required to address their sustainability responsibilities. 'Greening Business' introduces students to all aspects of businesses environmental responsibilities and provides students with a practical intellectual framework within which to evaluate these responsibilities and direct enhanced environmental performance in the workplace.
Project Managing Humanitarian Aid
The programme unit at Manchester aims to develop professional skills in students and introduce them to the main concepts of, and barriers to, humanitarian aid projects in a complex world.
Through tackling a series of small-group projects, students study the concepts of stakeholder engagement and the interaction of economic, environmental, legal, political, social and technical aspects of setting up humanitarian aid projects. Students act as an inter-professional humanitarian aid team dealing with the challenges of enabling change in the context of natural and man-made disasters.
Greening The Campus
'Greening the Campus' is a first year module designed to provide students from any subject background with an interest in environmental sustainability, the opportunity to improve the University's sustainability through creative thinking, researching ideas, presenting findings and recommending actions; using a number of real sustainability challenges on campus.
Example problems include: conducting environmental audits of services or faculties, interviewing and collating views of students and staff on sustainable practices on campus or creating information guides on sustainability for freshers.
For more information about the Hybrid PBL project please contact Sophie Bessant, Sustainability Project Officer: s.e.f.bessant@keele.ac.uk, tel: 01782 - 7 - 34115.