On Thursday 27th June, DMU’s Education for Sustainable Development Forum hosted the Learn & Teach SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) event for DMU students and staff. We had a brilliant turn out and a great response from many of the attendees.
The event started with an introduction from Dr Andrew Reeves about Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) at DMU, which was followed by a talk from the NUS’ Quinn Runkle about ESD within the Higher Education sector, from the students’ points of view. This point of view is incredible beneficial because it helps educators to understand what students want from their courses – Quinn highlighted that 85% of students want universities to actively incorporate and promote sustainable development.
Quinn Runkle, NUS, presenting on ESD in the Higher Education Sector.
Following on from Quinn, there were lightning talks from several DMU staff about the practice that they have undertaken to embed the SDGs into their taught courses.
We had talks from Mr Mik Pieniazek (Faculty ADH), Dr Neil Mcbride (Faculty CEM), Mr Phil Rule (Centre for English Language Learning (CELL), Faculty ADH), Dr Irene Antonopolous (Faculty BAL) and Dr Kutoma Wakunuma (Faculty CEM). The lightning talks were eye opening, giving an in depth insight into case studies and examples of practice from a huge variety of courses at DMU.
Dr Kutoma Wakunuma giving her presentation on embedding the SDGs into ICT courses. You can read more about this case study here.
We then broke for lunch and networking, where there were also displays of DMU students’ work which used or targeted the SDGs. These ranged from research into sustainable fabric to creating a pedal power machine that breaks down plastic for a country in the global south.
The event was a testament to DMU staff and students, demonstrating the success that can be had when embedding ESD into the curriculum, and empowering others to do similar.
This event is part of a series. The second event: Teach SDGs took place on the 11th July.
View our growing collection of case studies of embedding ESDG into the DMU curriculum, here.
Resources
Slides and videos of talks from the session are available below:
- Quinn Runkle (NUS) Creating a more just and sustainable society through education
- Mik Pieniazek – Integrating SDGs into Undergraduate Design Practice
- Kutoma Wakunuma – Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for Development
- Neil McBride – Systems Thinking and the SDGs
- Phil Rule – Critical Pedagogy in the EAP Classroom: embedding the SDGs in DMU’s Pre-sessional English Programme
The talks and Q&A are also available through DMU Replay (Audio and Slides):
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