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Student voices

What do students want to see?

This section provides detail about student insights taken from national and institutional surveys. It helps to provide context about how students want sustainability to be incorporated into their learning.

UK Higher Education:

There is increasing evidence 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).
At the Open University: 

In June 2024 the Open University (OU) achieved accreditation as part of the Responsible Futures scheme. As part of this process 230 students responded to a survey about their experiences and attitude to Sustainable Development. 

  • 80% agree their place of study should actively incorporate and promote sustainable development. 
  • 70.9% would like to see sustainable development actively incorporated and promoted through all courses. 
  • 47.4% say sustainable development is something they would like to learn more about. 

The OU's Curriculum Design Student Panel:

The Curriculum Design Student Panel (CDSP) is a institutional student engagement method. First established in 2016, it provides students with voluntary consulting opportunities to contribute to curriculum design through surveys, testing curriculum content, interactive media and tools, providing feedback on prototypes, and sharing past study experiences. 

The panel has not only provided insight into OU students' understanding and experiences of sustainability but also supported the development of resources which support academics to identify purposeful and active opportunities to embed sustainability into curricula. You can find out more about these resources via the Word of Wisdom 'Developing action focused resources that connect institutional frameworks with sustainability competencies' and about the student voice findings in the Astles and Matthews (2025) chapter 'Communicating sustainability competencies: a case study of sustainability and learning design'.

Words of Wisdom student volunteers:

As part of the Words of Wisdom project two student volunteers (Leila and Victoria) supported the project (see the 'How are student voices represented in Words of Wisdom' pages for more information). They helped to review the draft Words of Wisdom and shared their thoughts on anything they found interesting from the examples and anything they would like to see more in OU study. The quotes below came from this process: 

'The idea of tools for module creators/writers is encouraging as a student, to know it is a priority. It is also interesting to see how many modules are embedding SDGs in their content.' 

'Examples which take SDGs or similar concepts and show concrete ways students can make small but meaningful changes are helpful, as they make the concept of sustainability less abstract and more achievable on a personal and work/study level.' 

'I found the examples that emphasised self-reflection most interesting as I think this should form a part of every student’s education especially regarding sustainability. I also really liked the emphasis on student collaboration in SDT306 as I would like to see this integrated more into OU study. I think that to fully understand the climate crisis and how it can be solved students need to be able to draw connections between social and environmental injustice and the ways in which current economic and political systems are likely making the problems worse and harder to solve, which is missing from most of these examples.'

 

References

Astles, P and Matthews, C. (2025). Communicating Sustainability Competencies: A Case Study of Sustainability and Learning Design. In: Leal Filho, W., Trevisan, L.V., Pace, P.J., Mifsud, M. (eds) Education for Sustainable Development: The Contribution of Universities. World Sustainability Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-86985-3_6

Carr-Shand, S. (2022, April 29). Climate change crisis should be embedded in education, say students and staff. Climate Action. 

Kaplan, A. (2021, October 19). Prepare for student sustainability demands to go through the roof. THE Campus.

Students Organising for Sustainability. (2025). Sustainability skills survey 2024-25.

Unite Group. (2021, October 15). Survey: Students call for strong action on climate change.