Developing quality principles
The project built on a framework of quality principles and rating criteria to assess EfS in any subject area, developed and tested at the University of Gloucestershire in 2021 with input from students and academic staff.
Using the principles, all undergraduate and postgraduate taught courses were reviewed to identify where authentic EfS is designed into courses, and set targets for further development with ownership from curriculum leads in all subject areas of the university.
Aspects explored
This project tested the framework further and worked with students as co-creators to:
- Apply, troubleshoot and refine the quality principles and rating criteria, in 2 different university settings with our project partners, to gauge its usability in other institutions.
- Involve students in all 3 universities, and students who strategically advise the QAA on curriculum improvement, in understanding and using the framework to identify strong sustainability learning.
- Provide the student experience viewpoint for the University of Gloucestershire, on courses already rated by staff, to see if learners agreed with ratings given by educators.
Graduate skills needed
As higher education engages with EfS and seeks to meet the needs of future graduates in developing EfS as a core professional capability, the need to mainstream this learning and its quality is set to increase.
Universities will need implementable and practice-based approaches to help set direction for their course portfolio and to support academic teams in developing high quality authentic sustainability learning.
What skills do graduates need?
Partner settings
Testing the framework of quality principles in different university environments was critical to the process and our partner settings offered 3 distinct differences:
- A broad-based portfolio in a smaller post 1992 institution, where EfS has already been developed and practiced in a range of courses at different stages of maturity (University of Gloucestershire).
- A collegiate university with a more specialist portfolio group, where EfS is advanced in some areas and a strategic framework exists to embed more widely (University of the Arts London).
- A longer established university with a broad portfolio, where EfS has not yet been positioned as a strategic priority for courses but a strong co-curriculum offer exists (King’s College London).
Sector review
EfS in higher education – needs and trends behind the project.
Quality framework
Explore the principles and criteria tested in this project.
Project resources
Access the outputs and reports from the project.