Session 1)
I’ve just enrolled on the open course CSF101 “The Inspiring Challenge of Sustainable Development” and typically my initial excitement and ambition was squashed with the advent of a ridiculously busy week. The course started on Monday and it is Thursday, and I’m very excited to say “I’m off”, obviously, starting with a blog post. What else.

Why?

I’ve often wondered why in this times where sustainability of resource, societies and the planet are so fundamentally important, I’ve never seen anyone talk about the sustainability of education. Do correct me with articles in the comments box below if I am so clearly wrong. I thought about sustainability in terms of my open education projects for a while, and presented such at the OpenEd15 conference in Vancouver, discussing the sustainability and vulnerability of my OER projects.

Sustainability is often considered  in terms of OER, in relation to small-scale individual projects to larger-scale initiatives and business models, as follows:

• Jisc output from the 2009 – 2012 UKOER Programme –> Jisc OER InfoKit Sustainability
• David Wiley – On the sustainability of OER –> OECD commissioned paper
• OER community – #OER16 conference panel session –> Web today, gone tomorrow

But there is education FOR sustainable development.

Work at the UK Higher Education Academy (HEA) is drawing together insight from a number of institutions to develop a schema for sustainable development. The aim is to embed sustainable development within education programmes, as important as it is equally to fully consider global perspectives. The HEA says students are demanding HE providers to do so, and evidence from annual surveys dating back to 2011 are presented. Of course, getting students on the case is always a recipe for creativity and innovation, but at the moment I’m not seeing the connection back to the sustainability OF education itself. However, embedding sustainability within the curriculum and developing skills relating to systems and critical thinking have been pretty well described, such as by Professor Stephen Sterling.

What am I hoping to learn on CSF101?

The objectives of the course are geared around sustainable development, and the theory and practice seems to point toward buildings and the environment of course. The course looks structured to help us think critically about our ecological and social systems, and to develop strategic approaches to manage these. I’m hoping to come away with a bit of a model in my mind that fits to open education, and education more broadly. I hope to understand more the connections between sustainability FOR education and sustainability OF education.

Notes to self.

Isn’t it amazing that I can study for free right now with Otago University in New Zealand. That is the power of open.

I must also try and remember that CSF does not stand for cerebro-spinal fluid.

Session 1 out of 4: Sustainability is entirely possible!

Steve Henry is talking about the ecological cost of development, and that sustainability is entirely possible. What about living buildings? What about the waste of one system being a resource in another? How do we minimise the impact on the natural environment yet increase the quality of life that we have?

So in the context of education, what are the social and environmental problems that I think are ill considered? My case for transformation is that: educational institutions create knowledge and resources that are largely unshared. Public money invests in education at all levels, and even the humble creation of lecture materials comes at a cost. I’ve noted previously how within institutions there is a huge amount of duplication of effort going on, and a cost can be calculated. There is a cost to not going open as David and myself presented at the OER15 conference, and excellently captured by Kevin Mears. I costed, that in a 7 year position at a university, the cost of my preparation and delivery of lectures alone – a mid-level teaching commitment I’d say – was around £35K. I left the institution, and this was metaphorically skipped.

I could think of a second case for transformation: knowledge generated is not built-upon and is therefore re-invented. If I think singularly here about undergraduate research projects alone, the outputs of which can often be useful pilot data or literature reviews, I know folk who set the same projects year on year, and students generate the same ideas. Why re-create the same knowledge over and over? This is not only a waste of resource, but ceases to be a wider benefit to society.

Solutions? The CSF101 course now proposes that a sustainable future is merely one of design. How can we maintain a social and ecological balance to thrive within nature’s limits. We are asked to consider how effective are we in communicating the idea of sustainable development?

We always fail to call things by proper names, or fully define them. (Thinking about the ‘e’ words of education – engagement, employability, experience). If it is forever – it is sustainable. If you can’t make something forever – it isn’t. The speaker in the video is prompting us to think about definitions. This reminds me of the debate around openness and how ill-defined it is. We can solve things technically but we need a fundamental mind shift – philosophical shift – to fully achieve sustainability – shifting from restoration (stopping the damage or negative process) to regeneration (starting to move in a positive direction). I’m trying to think about sustainability in relation to education but beyond the obvious consideration around buildings:

• Sustainability of education buildings
• Sustainability of educational resources
• Sustainability of processes
• Sustainability in the light of digital expansion
• Waste management and better use of materials (paperless?)
• Consideration of education as a system
• True relationship between social justice and educational policy and process

Systems thinking is about connecting the pieces…the bits are ELEMENTS, CONNECTIONS/RELATIONSHIPS and PURPOSE. I hope as I progress through the course, and in the midst of a less frantic week, I will clarify my thinking around some of this, and also, what on earth was my question in the first place.

Kalundborg project in Norway is a group of industrial partners who have come together to reuse each other’s waste materials. That seems like me a parallel model to knowledge – stuff generated through teaching, assessment and research at universities might be of use to somewhere else. Education symbiosis through open approaches.

Next time – Living Building Challenge.