Management: Prof. Dr. Thomas Potthast, research assistant: Leonie Bellina
In cooperation with the University of Bremen: Prof. Dr. Georg Müller-Christ and Merle Tegeler.
Since the end of 2016, a new project at the IZEW has complemented the existing strengths of the University in the field of Education for Sustainable Development, such as the Competence Centre NE and the Studium Oecologicum, and strengthened nationwide networking in the field of HOCH-N teaching.
HOCH-N is a BMBF project which is carried out jointly by a network of 11 universities. It takes place in the context of the World Action Programme Education for Sustainable Development and in relation to the national action plan of the Federal Government. The project is dedicated to anchoring sustainability development processes and professionalizing sustainability reporting (SA) at German universities. The overarching objective is to promote sustainable university development by deriving key topics and areas of action within the fields of research, teaching, operation, governance, transfer and sustainability assessment.
The HOCH-N Lehre subproject conducts research into (university) education for sustainable development. ESD is not primarily an additional learning content, but shows itself above all in changed methods of knowledge and competence transfer. Within the field of action of teaching, a guideline is to be developed on how existing knowledge about and experience with ESD can be better diffused and used in higher education institutions. The guideline will link the developments for modernising academic teaching with the requirements of ESD and, closely linked to the field of governance, describe how curricula can be changed.
Two practical research sessions with experts were held in 2017. "Successful conditions for good ESD": using the Lego Serious Play method, participants developed models for subject teaching, interdisciplinary teaching formats, and NE study programmes. In addition, the contributions of the other university fields of action to successful ESD, and vice versa the advantages for these through ESD, were worked out. "ESD in the Virtual Higher Education Area": using creative methods, the participants created concepts for ESD in the context of increasing digitisation. Ethical aspects such as the use (rights) of collaborative (grade student) works, data management and security, as well as new openings for learners and new exclusions were also discussed.
In addition, an analysis of the current "lighthouses" of university ESD led to the development of an innovation matrix for teaching and learning models, which should be useful for programme managers and teachers in reorienting curricula towards ESD.
In the context of HOCH-N, the University of Tübingen was 2017 beta tester of the Hochschul-DNK (Deutscher Nachhaltigkeits-Kodex - German Sustainability Code), which was initiated in 2016 by the German Council for Sustainable Development and has been developed since 2016 by the HOCH-N subproject Sustainability Reporting. Within this framework, intensive cooperation took place with those responsible for the existing forms of reporting, e.g. Hedwig Ogrzewalla, as well as with those responsible for research already carried out on sustainability-related indicators at universities, e.g. Simon Meisch. At the end of October 2017, the KNE in cooperation with HOCH-N offered an open workshop on the potential of stakeholder-related sustainability reporting, which was very well attended.
