Designing for blended learning approaches for sustainable attitudes and actions
Keywords:
Learning design, Education for sustainable development, Blended learning, Online learningAbstract
As part of the call for action to protect the planet, an increase of interest in applying topics on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into education has been evident in recent years. The agenda calls for transformative Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) which allows learners to achieve knowledge and skills to influence values and attitudes as well as enable individual and collective sustainable actions towards society and the planet. In this work in progress paper the Learning design workshop, developed for supporting educators in designing blended learning for ESD, is presented and discussed. The Blend for ESD framework (B-ESD) is developed based on a literature study and observations from a blended learning course on developing ESD competencies for educators in higher education. Findings showed challenges in how to design for ESD in a blend between online and on-site settings. The Learning design workshop is conducted with inspiration from card-based facilitation methods to support educators in designing for learners to achieve knowledge and inspire for sustainable attitudes and actions. The workshop consists of four stages addressing: Why, who, what and how, where educators are inspired and supported in the process of identifying subjects to address within sustainability and making pedagogical informed decisions on the usage of online resources to support and supplement on-site learning activities. Findings from the initial iteration showed that the learning design process supports the educators in navigating and acting in the complexity of designing ESD.