We have been busy designing several workshops for upcoming events that will apply our Sustainability Competence Assessment (SCA). There are nine different universities in the Baltic region that have signed up to the workshops. At the universities involved with the Baltic University Group network, teachers are given a Sustainability Change Challenge assignment where the teachers can apply the SCA to their challenge as a formative assessment. Then the teachers use what they have learnt to address their challenge with activities that can help develop the sustainability competence that needs support the most.

By the end of the six-month period, teachers can reflect on what worked and what needs to be changed for the next time they apply the same activity. We will also discuss the type of support that the teachers felt they needed and what worked well with the SCA platform. The teachers will take part in reflecting on their experiences via our website, so you can follow their stories as they develop.

At Umeå University, we will apply a similar workshop but also co-create some ideas about what sort of support and what functions teachers would like to find on the platform we have begun to design. This week we have also been discussing our project with several organisations in the north of Sweden that have shown a keen interest in the platform. Together with the organisations and teachers, we will create a virtual learning platform where teachers can provide pedagogical activities for their courses and organisations and students can meet to work on real-time sustainability challenges.

The aim of the virtual learning platform is to provide a space to develop sustainability competencies. We are working on the design of this virtual learning platform in order to challenge and stimulate the student by a providing a space to explore and learn more about sustainability competencies.  For the moment, we are in the idea generation phase where we are building up a stack of interesting ways about how to make use of the digital environment.  Please feel free to share your ideas with us. We would like to incorporate interdisciplinary ideas and opportunities.