Investigating the perceptions of Science and Engineering University educators and students around sustainability integration and the role of digital tools

Last year we presented the first phase of our on-going research project - a collaboration between researchers at UCL and Academic Development team members at Ansys Ltd on sustainable digital transition in education. The results of the first phase were published in proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL2022). We developed a framework to explore how technology companies, with a focus on education, approach sustainability in education through their products and their practices and what makes them impactful, focusing on a specific case of Ansys Granta EduPack.

The framework was the amalgamation of two previous analyses that explored i) how learning outcomes associated with the UN Sustainable Development Goals could be used to foster ways in which learning for sustainability can be implemented in Higher Education, and ii) how the same learning outcomes translate to concepts of capital used by companies to assess sustainability impact.

In this part of the study, we present the second phase of our project, the development of two questionnaires for university students and educators based on the framework, described earlier. The questionnaires focus on assessing sustainability awareness and involvement of staff and students of Science and Engineering Departments in sustainability activities, using a Whole Institution Approach.

In this paper we present preliminary data from the piloting of the questionnaires during a materials education workshop for University Educators organised by Ansys Ltd in Cambridge UK. In the third phase of this research project the questionnaires will be shared more widely with staff and students in science and engineering focused faculties internationally.