Sustainable Competences in Higher Education

Major problems in the EU and in the world regarding health, environment, and climate-change constitute an enormous challenge for the continued prosperity of citizens and countries, as it appears from the European Green Deal Communication and the Erasmus+ program 2021. The solutions to the problems are complex and increase the demand for cross-border, North-South EU, educational and intercultural collaboration in the educational sector at HEIs. The project sought to place the partnership between four experienced European Higher Educational Institutions (HEI) at the center of a much-needed development of a future-oriented curriculum. The need for this stemmed from the lack of a curriculum within sustainable development at the participating HEIs in the early 2020’s. Instead of each HEI developing its own curriculum, the partners engaged in developing a common curriculum for HEIs, across general subject taught in Europe. It bridges the gap between former educational, sector-divided curricula and the increasing need for a versatile, integrated and transformative Higher Education curriculum that is in accordance with the European Council Erasmus+ program, the 21st Century Skills and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

The project had several objectives and successful met the stated objectives, which were: 1) To bridge the gap between sector-divided, discipline-embedded national curricula in higher education (HE). 2) To address the current need for competence-based, integrated, interdisciplinary, and transformative HE that is in line with the 17 UN SDGs, the EC Erasmus+ program and the 21st Century learning goals. This will positively impact future HE curricula, learning objectives, digitalisation readiness, transversal skills and effective intercultural communication for students from diverse educations. 3) To facilitate that students can participate in the developed courses as an attractive supplement and added value to their respective educations. 4) To facilitate that HEI teachers can participate in the developed SustainComp 'learning, teaching, training' activity, as a supplement and added value to their respective academic educational backgrounds. 5) To ensure that the developed materials, courses, reports become available to all interested via open access on the developed 'teacher support system website'. 6) To facilitate the development of online and onsite collaboration among students and teachers via support systems website.

In all, the project carried out 7 project results (PR), in line with the original plroposal. These are as follows: - PR1: State of the Art Report (SOA). This needs assessment report served as a baseline from which curriculum development could start. In order to compile the report, data was collected via a mixed methods approach that included qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches. This data was analysed by the working group of teacher-researchers involved in the creation of the report. The report was published in 2022 (Link https://kortlink.dk/2hfcu ISBN 978-87-93067-63-9). - PR2: Curriculum Development - Develop a basic module for sustainable teaching in health, climate and environmental topics. The development of the 10 ECTS curriculum was based on guidelines and standards used by European HEIs as acknowledged through the Bologna Agreements to ensure comparability in the standards and quality (i.e. ECTS). The learning goals focused on development of students' knowledge about sustainability and SDGs. The learning outcomes were for students to obtain competencies that will enable behavioural changes for individual preferences, cultural values and awareness for sustainable development, consumption habits, and lifestyles. Additionally, students would build their digital readiness and groupwork skills for participation in Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) and onsite project-oriented learning. Further, students would obtain intercultural competences for appropriate and effective intercultural communication. - PR3: Develop a teacher-training module that would educate and facilitate teachers who will teach the new SustainComp curriculum at their own HEI or as guest lecturers at the partner country HEIs and other HEIs. The teacher-training module includes the cross-national aspects of the SustainComp curriculum, effective intercultural communication and intercultural pedagogy for engaging participants’ cultural diversity, and development of digital competences for international teaching in COILs. The training module was developed in a more flexible format than originally conceived, in 6 sections, as is available via the online teacher support system (PR7 - Link https://sustaincomp.splet.arnes.si/). - PR4: Plan and conduct a pre-pilot of a student course based on Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL). This pre-pilot in Spring 2023 built on the SustainComp curriculum content and innovative pedagogy for engaging international and cultural diversity of student participants in the online environments of COIL. The expertise and experiences gained during the pre-pilot was assessed and utilised to fine-tune the SustainComp curriculum and for the implementation of the full-scale pilot (PR6). - PR5: Plan and conduct a pre-pilot of an onsite student course based on project-oriented learning methods. This pre-pilot in Spring 2023 included lectures and project work within the SustainComp curriculum. The experiences and knowledge gathered by the participants was assessed and utilised for further finetuning of the SustainComp curriculum and in the implementation of the full-scale pilot (R6). - PR6: Full-scale Pilot of SustainComp Student Course in Bachelor programmes. The full-scale pilot was carried out in Autumn 2023. It integrated and implemented the experiences and competences developed in the 2 pre-pilots and the adjusted SustainComp curriculum with bachelor students (own and exchange students) in Denmark. - PR7: Construct a website with an Open access to the 10 ECTS curriculum, teacher-training course and online teacher support system (e-learning platform). The website (Link https://sustaincomp.splet.arnes.si/) and the online materials support the educational needs of students and teachers. Additionally, it facilitates learning activities for stakeholders from local, regional and national communities. SC held 6 Transnational Project Meetings SC held 1 Learning, Teaching and Training (L/T/T) activity, which occured at MUNI in autumn 2022. The primary target group of participants for the L/T/T activity included teachers from the project partners’ institutions. A total of 16 teachers were selected by the partners’ institutions and participated in the following teacher training activities: - Project partner training based on the SC PR2 initial outcomes with the focus on examples of interdisciplinary activities from the SC curriculum submodules - Training in internationalisation of curriculum, development of intercultural competences and using of the competences in teaching in culturally and linguistic diverse classrooms - Training in designing and implementing COIL and how to utilise COIL method for delivering the SC submodules content - Training in development of project-oriented and inquire-based competences - Simulation of teaching sessions with the target group of 8 MUNI students SC held 3 Multiplier Events (ME1, ME2 in 2023 and ME3 in 2024) and 1 Webinar (2024). SC contributed to several local, national and international network meetings, conferences and seminars with presentations, conference papers, workshops and panel discussion input. SC published a peer reviewed thematic issue of The Journal Futures of Education, Culture and Nature - Learning to Become (FECUN)(ISSN 2794-2899), Vol. 2 No. 3 (2024): Thematic issue: Interdisciplinarity. (https://tidsskrift.dk/FECUN/issue/view/11780) .