Climate Change – OU Learning Design team blog

EAUC Conference 2024: Reflecting and connecting with sustainability.

Catriona Matthews and Paul Astles ~ Learning Designers

From the 25^th to 27^th June 2024 we travelled to the University of Winchester for The Alliance for Sustainability Leadership in Education (EAUC) conference and its 20^th birthday celebrations. As well as the usual conference fare, we faced moral quandaries in an SDG focused game where we had to take on the role of global powers and negotiate to narrow down the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to just 6, we bopped to a silent disco, sipped on coffee from cups made of recycled chewing gum, and enjoyed some fantastic vegan cookies courtesy of the conference’s plant based catering approach. Continue reading “EAUC Conference 2024: Reflecting and connecting with sustainability.”

Going for Green: Learning Design sustainability champions

Kathleen Calder, James Openshaw, Catriona Mattews, Hayley Johns, and Paul Astles ~ Learning Designers

The Learning Design Sustainability Group at The Open University has been championing sustainability at the Open University in one way or another for some time now. The end of 2023 saw a wonderful celebration of that work at the Green Gown Awards 2023. We were highly commended for our work at the Green Gown Awards. To see what the judges thought about our work you can follow the link to the Green Gown Awards page.

We’ve created a series of top tips about applying for the Green Gown Awards, based on our experience: Planning, Teamwork, Stage 1 and Stage 2.

We’re pleased to share this reflection on our experience of the Green Gown Awards (GGA) process – from thinking about putting our work forward through to the awards dinner and celebrating our achievements in December 2023. Alongside our thoughts we’re also officially unveiling the sustainability resources page on our blog site.

Continue reading “Going for Green: Learning Design sustainability champions”

Reflections on ALT conference 2023: Supporting colleagues to take practical actions to embed sustainability

Hayley Johns and Paul Astles ~ Learning Designers

This blog post builds on our previous sustainability related post. You can read that here. If you have not had a chance to read it yet, do go back and check it out.

The work presented by Hayley and Paul on behalf of the Learning Design Sustainability Group (LDSG) at #ALTC23 in Warwick is available by scanning the QR code (below) from one of the opening slides from our workshop presentation.

We delivered a 60-minute workshop designed in part to provide an update about the journey that the LDSG has taken so far and also to challenge delegates to consider how they could take meaningful practical steps to embed sustainability within their own specific design contexts. Continue reading “Reflections on ALT conference 2023: Supporting colleagues to take practical actions to embed sustainability”

Sustainability: Our journey to connect colleagues with non-tokenistic action in the design process

James Openshaw and Paul Astles ~ Learning Designers

This article is the first of a two-part reflection about our collective experience at the EDEN 2023 conference in Dublin, Ireland and the EAUC conference 2023 in Bath, England. Alongside our shared experience and takeaways from those events this blog post will also include an update about the work going on in the Open University Learning Design Team in relation to sustainability and where we are heading next.

Before we get to the exciting stuff about our own work let’s look back at our personal highlights and takeaways from the most recently attended conferences. Continue reading “Sustainability: Our journey to connect colleagues with non-tokenistic action in the design process”