Sustainability in Learning & Teaching

The University actively promotes the teaching of sustainability at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, equipping students with environmental knowledge. Sustainability has been an important element in the provision of learning opportunities over many years at Cardiff Met. There have been curriculum audits, the provision of information and resources to staff to support the inclusion of aspects of sustainability into their courses and real-world opportunities provided to students which have become the subject of a number of case studies.

EDGE at Cardiff Met

EDGE (Ethical, Digital, Global, Entrepreneurial) continues to drive forward Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) oriented academic development work across the institution. EDGE will continue to offer fresh impetus and associated context for the implementation of innovative and impactful authentic learning approaches within the new and existing curricula, pedagogies key to effective PSD.

Quality Enhancement Directorate

Cardiff Met's Quality Enhancement Directorate (QED) continue to evaluate, promote, and disseminate good pedagogical practice relevant to the curricular and co-curricular delivery of sustainability learning opportunities for Cardiff Met students. As such, monitoring of institution-wide sustainability provision is ongoing via quality assurance, quality enhancement, curriculum review and curriculum (re)design processes.

Sustainability specific staff development workshops have been designed and are currently being delivered and iterated in response to emerging and identified needs of academic staff. These workshops offer academic staff opportunity to consider discipline relevant sustainability issues and approaches from both global and local perspectives and in doing so, identify means and modes of generating innovative and personally challenging stimuli that provide the foundation for authentic learning and assessment activities for students. By ensuring that sustainability matters are engaged and understood in relevant and meaningful ways that are pertinent to a learner's wider education and personal understanding, real-world approaches and solutions are generated in response to discipline contextualised problems - a means of learning that is a central tenet of successful values based education approaches.

QED continue to achieve success in promoting flexible and socially inclusive learning opportunities through the deployment of a sustainability-oriented policy and a range of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) opportunities. Key examples include the successful promotion and training of academic staff in relation to a new e-assessment and feedback policy, the inclusion of a TEL learning module within our Postgraduate Certificate in Education for Teaching in Academic Practice (PgCTAP), the ongoing development of Moodle VLE learning as a platform for both sustainable learning practices and as a means of implementing other technologies - a prime example being the Panopto ReView lecture capture project.

Outdoor Learning

Cardiff Met's Outdoor Learning Centre (OLC) continues to be a locus of sustainability learning for both Cardiff Met students as well as for the wider local community. Situated within two hectares of mature woodland at the University's Cyncoed campus and coordinated by the Cardiff School of Education and Social Policy, the Outdoor Learning Centre hub is a seven metre-wide circular classroom, providing a comfortable learning environment all in the surrounding of other forest based learning spaces and log circles. The OLC offers a wide range of outdoor learning options, including day courses, workshops, holiday clubs, conferences, and is also an accredited Forest School. The facility remains a focus of academic research into the benefits of outdoor learning.