How can we create the future we want? How can we solve sustainability challenges we face today? In this SRHE network event we want to explore the different ways online teaching and learning could contribute to frame and solve sustainability challenges such as climate change or food security. Participants will gain an overview about sustainability as conceptualised for the digital university. We will also explore ‘crowdsourcing’ in its own right but also as a tool to gain various ideas from several minds in order to design sustainable solutions. We will have two keynote speakers addressing and reflecting these two topics in turn and some input from the organizers as well.

Programme

10.00 Arrival and coffee

10.30 Welcome from Professor Eunice Simmons PVC (Academic) at Nottingham Trent University: The ‘Sustainability in Practice Online Certificate’ – insights from a whole university approach to embedding sustainability across the curricula

10.45-11.30 Keynote: Making an Impact: MOOCS for ESD by Dr Steve Cayzer, University of Bath

MOOCs seem to promise a rich, diverse, global and educated conversation about sustainability. To what extent can they deliver on this promise? Drawing on his experiences of the University of Bath’s  Futurelearn offering, Steve will reflect on whether MOOCS are qualitatively different to traditional offerings, and what lessons we can learn for ESD.

Contributions:

11.30-11.45 Professor Sarah Speight, Academic Director of Online Learning, University of Nottingham: Shaping the Digital University: Intercultural learning for sustainability

11.45-12.00 Dr Petra Molthan-Hill, Team Leader NTU Green Academy, NTU: Practical projects and creative solutions to sustainable challenges within online education: Findings from research with student focus groups

12.15 – 13.00 Keynote:  Crowdsourcing by Dr Grant Miller, Zooniverse Communications and Project Manager, University of Oxford

13.00-14.00 Lunch and networking (Poster exhibition)

14.00-15.30 Presentations

For the afternoon we encourage participants to send in novel ideas on how the digital university in all its forms (not only but also crowdsourcing) can contribute to a sustainable future. We welcome poster submissions on theoretical and practical perspectives.

Please send your posters to petra.molthan-hill@ntu.ac.uk by 31.10.2015. ( A powerpoint slide will suffice.)They will be peer reviewed and the best ones selected. The presenters will be informed by 10.11.2015. They will have ten minutes each to present their poster. We will also give a special prize to the most innovative contribution! There will be 60 minutes at lunch and also 30 minutes during the coffee break in the afternoon to look at all posters submitted, so please be prepared to talk about your poster even if you have not been chosen as one of the main presenters with a dedicated ten minute slot.

15.30-16.00 Coffee and networking (poster exhibition)

Organizing committee:

Dr Kelly Coate, King’s College London

Dr Petra Molthan-Hill, Nottingham Trent University

Professor Sarah Speight, University of Nottingham