Being curious is an important part of the journey towards embedding sustainability. It can be difficult trying to untangle what sustainability means in a learning design context and how to make that meaningful for students. The Open University’s (OU) Learning Design Team has created a set of resources to help prompt initial thoughts and discussions about embedding sustainability in course design. The aim is to encourage educators to reflect on whether sustainability can be included in the course design, and to flag that support is available.

The United Nations (UN) defines sustainability as development that:

•       Meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
•        Works towards building an inclusive, sustainable and resilient future for people and the planet.
•        Harmonises the three core elements of environmental protection, social inclusion and economic growth. These elements are interconnected and all are crucial for the well-being of individuals, societies and economies.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by the UN in 2015 as a call for action by all countries to mobilise to end all forms of poverty, fight inequalities and tackle climate change, ensuring no-one is left behind.

The 17 SDGs address all three core elements of sustainable development and demonstrate the breadth of sustainability topics.

First steps towards embedding sustainability

It is likely that your first step will be to reflect on what sustainability might mean to you in your context. The ‘Sustainability principles in module design’ resource contains a short series of prompts that can help you to identify where you are at in your sustainability journey.

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Our resource ’Routes to explore’ helps you consider how you may embed sustainability through learning outcomes, student voice, reuse of existing resources, and investigating what else is happening in the HE community. This might spark the following questions:

•        Do you want to ensure that sustainability competencies are woven into the student journey? 
•       Are you looking for practical ways to connect learning outcomes to sustainable skills development?
•        Do you want to use student voice to help drive and inform sustainability-focused content design? 
•        Are you looking for existing sustainability resources and examples to reuse (such as those available on OpenLearn)?
•        Are you looking for information about what the Higher Education (HE) community is doing more broadly? 

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We briefly address these questions below and share relevant resources and links. 

Sustainability competencies in learning design

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) states that, for people to understand the complex world in which we live, we need to be able to collaborate, speak up, and act for positive change as 'sustainability citizens'. UNESCO has identified eight key sustainability competencies that allow us to engage constructively and responsibly.

The sustainability competencies are interrelated and key to achieving the SDGs. These are:

•        Systems thinking
•        Anticipatory
•        Normative
•        Strategic
•        Collaboration
•        Critical thinking
•        Self-awareness
•        Integrated problem-solving

You can find descriptions of each competency on the UNESCO cross-cutting and specialised SDG competency webpages. We have also created a set of graphics to help visualise each of the eight sustainability competencies and show the relationship between the competencies and the cognitive, socio-emotional and behavioural learning domains that can be used in the development of learning objectives.

[Insert thumbnails of skills graphics (Ways of thinking, ways of being, ways of practicing]

You can access the Ways of Thinking, Ways of Practicing and Ways of Being graphics via the OU Learning Design Blog.

The ‘Supporting climate action through digital education’ Open learn course suggests how you might use these graphics and provides more information about sustainability competencies in education contexts.

Sustainability learning outcomes, skills and activities

Learning outcomes describe the skills and knowledge students are expected to have developed upon successfully completing their studies. Integrating sustainability into learning outcomes helps make education for sustainable development more visible, supports alignment between learning outcomes, activities and assessments, and provides a way to measure the development of sustainability skills and competencies.  

To help consider how to turn sustainability skills and competencies into learning outcomes and activities we have created a series of sustainability skills design cards. These cards were created with the input of the OU’s voluntary Curriculum Design Student Panel. The cards help to visualise how to take the eight UNESCO sustainability competencies and turn them into actionable ways to connect with sustainability when designing a course. They also connect the UNESCO competencies with existing OU frameworks (employability, digital information literacy (DIL), and activity type taxonomy) to support the development of learning outcomes and/or activity design.

You can access the skills cards by following the links below:

·       Skills cards - ways of thinking

·       Skills cards - ways of practising

·       Skills cards - ways of being

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How you can use the skills cards

You could use these skills cards to:

•        Identify practical ways to make learning outcomes connect to sustainable skills development.
•       Help you consider how you may want certain sustainability skills and competencies to be woven into the student journey.
•        Consider how to embed sustainability skills within your own subject context.

Members of the Learning Design team have detailed the process of developing and creating these skills cards in a book chapter titled ‘Communicating Sustainability Competencies: A Case Study of Sustainability and Learning Design’ (Astles, Matthews, 2025). If you are interested in finding out more about the debates surrounding sustainability competencies the chapter also synthesises some of the literature in this area. 

Using student voice to inform sustainability

Student voices provide valuable insights and perspectives that can direct Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) towards sustainable futures in ways that are inclusive, accessible and engaging.

For example, national and institutional surveys tell us that students want HEIs to demonstrate stronger connections to sustainability in their courses (Carr-Shand, 2022; Kaplan, 2021; Unite Group, 2021). Students Organising for Sustainability (SOS) UK have collected yearly surveys since 2010 exploring students’ experiences of Sustainable Development of teaching and learning. Here are some highlights from the most recent results. These were collected in 2024 from almost 10,000 respondents: 

• 86% felt their place of study should teach skills and understanding that positively impacts society and the environment.
• 77% indicated they would like to see sustainable development actively incorporated and promoted in all courses.
• 70% say that knowing their place of study limits its negative impact on the environment and society makes them proud to be a student there. 
• 55% say they want to learn more about sustainability. (SOS-UK, 2025).

Working in ways that are informed by student voices or collaborate with students as partners also empowers students and staff to understand (or at least reflect on) each other’s perspectives, supports the transformation of thinking about teaching practices, and provides staff with a deeper understanding of student needs. 

Reusing sustainability resources and examples

The re-use of material is a practical and actionable way to save time and energy, for your benefit as well as the environment’s!

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are one way to do this. They are ‘digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and re-use for teaching, learning and research’ (OECD). OpenLearn has guidance on how to find and evaluate OERs.

OpenLearn is also full of OERs. For example, the OpenLearn sustainability hub contains free, expert-led content that can help you to turn knowledge into action. It covers a wealth of resources from climate change to the UN’s SDGs. It is also possible to filter resources by SDG if you want to focus in on a specific area.

All the resources created by the OU Learning Design team are also available for re-use and adaptation under a creative commons licence. They can be found and downloaded from the Learning Design Blog. There are also crib sheets which provide guidance on possible ways to use several of the resources. 

Connecting with the HE community

Another way to gather and adapt existing sustainability practices is by connecting with the wider HE community. Learning from and collaborating with colleagues in the sector can provide opportunities to collectively move sustainability forward.

The following resources provide a good starting point for understanding progress within the HE community so far:

• Advance HE - Framework for Education for Sustainable Development
• QAA – UK Quality Code for Higher Education

The resources created by Advance HE and QAA are designed to be of value to a broad audience and can be particularly beneficial in supporting course teams to understand areas such as: integrating ESD across programmes, helping students identify the necessary competencies for sustainable citizenship, fostering agency for a sustainable future, developing comprehensive institutional approaches and aligning strategy to create a sustainable learning environment. The UK Quality Code for Higher Education articulates the principles of UK higher education for securing academic standards and assuring and enhancing quality.

EAUC - Education for Sustainable Development: Tools, resources and information

The EAUC is the leading body for sustainability in the post-16 education sector in the UK and Republic of Ireland. EAUC was launched in 1996, after sustainability professionals and enthusiasts from across the further and higher education sectors recognised the value in collaborative approaches to their work. They host, curate and share many resources that support the sector.