Motivating Sustainability Literacy

Abstract

An understanding of sustainability, ‘sustainability literacy’, is an increasingly important competency for all professionals, no matter what their area of specialism. This paper explores the motivation for teaching computing students about sustainability and raising student awareness of the issues involved. There are a number of related drivers for its inclusion in the curriculum and some of these motivators are discussed. The paper raises the issue of computing students’ interest in sustainability, or lack thereof. An account is provided of an ‘active learning’ approach which has been used at Coventry. In this students were given a problem, contextualised in the IT industry, and were required to find sustainability material, for themselves, to support their proposed solution. This approach was successful overall with students deriving relevant proposals, finding appropriate sustainability material and therefore developing an understanding of sustainability issues, as related to the IT industry.

Keywords:

• sustainable development
• sustainability literacy
• motivation
• engagement
• activity-led learning (ALL)

1. Introduction

Sustainability literacy is an important competency for all professional workers, including those employed in the IT industry. However the development of that awareness in computing students is not easy. Additionally students, and indeed teaching staff, do not necessarily have much understanding of the term. This paper will explain the meaning of ‘sustainability literacy’, having first discussed the term ‘sustainability’. The rationale and motivation for teaching this material as part of a university computing course is also explored.

Then the un-sustainability of technology, and most particularly ICT, is explored and the ways in which ICT can be used to assist sustainability. Students’ motivation to learning about sustainability is discussed. The paper finishes with an account of the approach successfully used at Coventry University, along with students’ reaction. This approach could be adopted in other, similar contexts.

2. What is Sustainability?

The classic definition of sustainable development is:

“development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.

This definition was in the United Nations Brundtland Commission report (1987) and promoted at the 1992 United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development, in Rio, the so-called Earth Summit (SDC, undated). A UK Government White Paper (1990), ‘This Common Inheritance’, described sustainable development as:

“… living on the Earth’s income, rather than eroding its capital.”

(SDC, undated)

More recently, the UK Strategy for Sustainable Development described sustainable development as the meeting of four aims:

• social progress which recognises the needs of everyone;

• effective protection of the environment;

• prudent use of natural resources;

• maintenance of high and stable levels of economic growth and employment (SDU, 2005).

Thus, sustainability is clearly seen as encompassing economic, environment and social issues. However it is also often seen as having a spatial element too: it may not be a question of whether a development should happen but rather where it should be located. Sustainability is about balancing the needs of these concerns: it is about taking a holistic view of any situation or decision and looking at it in a balanced way, in its context, considering its consequences and implications in the broadest sense. It is concerned with energy sources and efficiency and carbon emissions but it involves very much more too.

Sustainability and sustainable development are closely related concepts. The former term may be preferred since it recognises that there are issues to be considered which may not be perceived as being ‘development’: it is a broader term (Change Works, 2000). In this paper sustainability and sustainable development are used interchangeably. Sustainability literacy refers to a general awareness of sustainability issues. This is sometimes referred to as ‘ecoliteracy’ (Haigh, 2009).

3. Why Sustainability Literacy?

Sustainability literacy is a level of understanding which would permit a professional to identify issues and decisions which have sustainability implications, leading them to making appropriate investigations and enquiries and commission specialist studies. Every professional working, outside the specialist area of sustainability itself, needs at least this level of understanding and awareness.

Sustainability is about fairness and equity: about fairness to future generations and to communities throughout the world, no matter what their current stage of development. For example, it requires an acknowledgement that developing economies currently use very much less energy per person than developed economies and that their development to match the standards enjoyed in the Western world might lead to a huge increase in their energy requirements. Sustainability does not preclude the further development of such countries. A sustainability intervention might lead to providing such countries with the knowledge and support necessary to help them develop in a more sustainable, ‘carbon-neutral’ manner (Craig-Wood, 2008). Such an example is very simplistic but it does highlight the sorts of dilemmas and tensions involved. Sustainability considerations often do not lead to easy answers: indeed they often highlight the complexity and inter-connectedness of issues. When necessary a professional will need to hand over an issue for fuller investigation by a specialist in, say, energy, economics, environmental or social sciences.

It is important that all professionals can see the wide, global, interconnectedness of the consequences of their decisions: it is part of their ethical responsibility. The British Computer Society Code of Conduct says that “in your professional role you shall have regard for … the environment” (BCS, 2006). The IEEE Code of Ethics says that members should “accept responsibility in making decisions consistent with the safety, health and welfare of the public, and to disclose promptly factors that might endanger the public or the environment” (IEEE, 2006). Of course, no professional Code would require a professional to act in a way which would directly jeopardise commercial considerations. Every professional, and every employer, needs to take a view on such matters, based on their ethical and moral stance. Sustainability is about attitudes and values (SDC, undated): it is about the ethical integration of mind, values, behaviour and environment (Haigh, 2009). However professionals need the knowledge to be able to address such situations: they need a developed literacy in sustainability issues. Haigh (2009) refers to this ESD (Education for Sustainable Development) as reflecting a ‘sea-change’ in attitudes, which impacts on both society and education.

Besides this moral and ethical need for professionals to receive an education in sustainability, it has been specified as a requirement by various bodies. In recent years the UK Government has been promoting the importance of sustainability:

“Each of us needs to make the right choices to secure a future that is fairer, where we can all live within our environmental limits.”

Tony Blair (SDU, 2005)

The Government’s ‘Securing the Future’ report identifies sustainability literacy as being a core competency required by all professional graduates (SDU, 2005). The Sustainability Development Commission agrees that sustainability literacy is a generic skill (SDC, undated). The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has committed to, and provided funding for, the development of students’ sustainability capabilities (Dawson, 2008; HEFCE, 2010). Continuing government pressure to deliver the sustainability agenda is exemplified by Lord Mandelson’s (the then Secretary of State for Business, Innovation & Skills) letter to HEFCE concerning university funding 2010–11 (Mandelson, 2009) “universities… will … [seek] to include sustainability in their teaching and research”. The Department for Children, Schools and Families, in its 2008 sustainability development action plan, ‘Brighter Futures, Greener Lives’, aims to “educate and empower young people for a life in a sustainable world” (SDC, 2009). The BCS requires the consideration of external factors, such as economic, ethical, social, environmental and sustainability concerns, in all accredited courses (BCS, 2010).

In 2005, the United Nations, recognising that education is part of what is needed in order to change attitudes in a way which will secure the world’s future, launched its Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. This mandates that all courses should include sustainability development (Haigh, 2009). The intention of the UN is that learning about the impact of their behaviour will reflect, not just in students’ personal life decisions, but also in their subsequent professional attitudes.

There are a number of initiatives and projects supporting ESD, including:

• The Higher Education Academy (HEA) supports and promotes generic teaching and learning developments, including sustainability. Many of its Subject Centres, including ICS (Information and Computer Sciences), also support ESD development work (ICS HEA, 2008).

• The Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges (EAUC) is promoting sustainability in FE/HE institutions’ operation and their courses, disseminating resources and annually making the Green Gown awards.

• The Centre for Sustainable Futures (CSF) at University of Plymouth aims to promote sustainability.

• The Centre for Active Learning (CeAL) at University of Gloucestershire has a sustainability thread.

• Professional Practice for Sustainable Development (PP4SD) is working with a number of professional bodies to promote sustainable practice amongst professionals.

• The British Computer Society has a Green IT Special Interest Group looking at CPD and dissemination issues (BCS, 2009).

• Some universities have a sustainability policy, which may encompass ESD, in addition to infrastructure improvements.

Not everyone in universities accepts the sustainability agenda, with even some vice-chancellors seeing ESD as being political propaganda rather than an essential core competency (Chalkley, 2006 and 2007). More recently though, the need for ESD has been accepted by all major political parties: it has become largely apolitical.

Sterling (2009) noted that the education can occur at several levels. Students may just learn what sustainability is about; they may have a deeper engagement in which students’ values are challenged; or learning which leads to students’ practical engagement in action.

Clearly ESD will have different meanings in different disciplines. A review conducted by the HEA identified the current level of ESD across disciplines (HEA, 2006). It comes naturally to a geographer. Engineers, architects and philosophers can be readily shown aspects of their disciplines which are central to sustainability. To teach computing students about ESD, the connections with their discipline need to be made evident.

4. Sustainability in Computing

4.1 Technology is part of the problem

Since at least the 17^th century, well before the Industrial Revolution, technology has been seen as providing ways of controlling nature, of harnessing the power of nature for the benefit of humankind. In 1913 the environmental pioneer John Muir tried, unsuccessfully, to prevent the building of the Hetch Hetchy dam in Yosemite National Park (Dresner, 2008). Since that time there has been a growing understanding that some technologies can be environmentally damaging and lead to the destruction of ecosystems, particularly ‘special’ or sensitive ones. This has led to an environmental perspective which risks viewing all technology as being problematic: “the villain of the piece”. Whilst it is self-evident that some technologies, in some situations, are environmentally damaging, technology is not always problematic.

IT technologies have developed in ways which have caused many environmental concerns. The most obvious issue is the power usage of the computing equipment itself. Computer users don’t help matters and some feel they must routinely update hardware and software, regardless of their needs. But there are many other concerns ranging from the mind-boggling power consumption of the huge data centres which store much of the world’s data, to children in China disassembling obsolete computers to extract the precious metals, images of which are not only heart-rending but exhibit physical danger and highlights the West’s waste polluting distant environments in ways which seem to be exploitative.

4.2 Recent Improvements

There is a growing awareness in the computing industry that it must reduce its environmental impact. For instance the British Computer Society has launched a ‘Foundation Certificate in Green IT’, is developing another concerning Energy Efficient Data Centres and it has set up a Green IT Special Interest Group. IBM has launched its Project Big Green. There have been some improvements in recent years. Computers are now more energy-efficient and employ sophisticated power-management systems. Suppliers are aiming to reduce the energy requirements of PCs further: some were aiming for a 50% power reduction by 2010 (from 2007) (Climate Savers Computing Initiative, 2010). Ultra-low power notebook computers are now available (Mclellan, 2008). Server ‘virtualisation’ and consolidation technologies allow data to be held much more efficiently. Servers now produce less heat and can also run at higher temperatures, thus requiring less power for cooling. These techniques can reduce the energy usage of data centres by as much as 70% (Ross and Crooks, 2008). Paper usage can be reduced with duplex printing; the European WEEE directive requires electrical devices to be disposed of in an appropriate manner; and Apple has committed to remove polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants from all its products (Jobs, 2008). Whilst these developments are still patchy, the IT industry is starting to address its deleterious impact.

However it has been estimated by Gartner Research that IT and communication technologies currently generate about 2% of global CO2 emissions, about the same as the airline industry, and that it is growing at a faster rate (Intellect, 2008). They observe that as people replace equipment they tend to buy something bigger or with more functions, which therefore tends to require more power. The Energy Saving Trust (2009) estimates that, if current growth is unchecked, by 2020 IT will form 45% of all UK domestic electricity consumption. This, coupled with the increased uptake of IT worldwide, means that the total power usage of IT globally may continue to grow rather than diminish. However the significance of IT to sustainability is very much broader than minimising power consumption and the ‘greening’ of computer hardware.

4.3 ICT as part of the solution

Computing technologies are central to the lives of modern youth. They spend much of their time communicating (MSN, Skype, twitter); using social networking sites (MySpace, Facebook, Bebo) or sharing material (YouTube, Flickr, iTunes). They use discussion boards and blogs to share information with others who have similar interests. They do much of their shopping online, maybe using auction sites (ebay). They may well have their own personalised web page from which they can access all their media sources and online facilities (netvibes, Protopage, Google). They use wikipedia as the source of all wisdom (to the despair of many academics), with Google providing a backup facility. Wireless networks, PDAs and state-of-the-art smart phones allow them to access such facilities for much of their waking day. These technologies are central to the way that ‘Generation Y’, those who grew up with the internet, live their lives.

When these young people enter the professional workplace they will probably encounter a much more restricted use of IT. They’ll see desktop applications and enterprise-wide systems; they’ll see email; they’ll see the organisation’s website and maybe an intranet. Depending on the nature of the business there may be online facilities provided for clients or customers. The organisation may use electronic data transfer to deal with its business partners. However organisations are most unlikely to have facilities to allow these young employees to communicate in the way they do in their personal lives. Social networking sites such as LinkedIn and plaxo, aimed at supporting business communications, are emerging. Astute organisations recognise that having a presence on such sites is important for marketing purposes but that they also allow their young employees to communicate in ways which, to them, are normal (Marshal, 2008).

The ubiquity of such technologies is, of course, part of the sustainability problem but they can be deployed to support sustainability. Students of computing, in particular, can be encouraged to identify such applications. They may realise that many documents never need to be printed but might be processed and retained electronically. They may see that an online document development system (such as GoogleDocs or wikis) could be used for collaborative work without contributors ever needing to physically meet and without the need for printing or emailing documents. They may identify opportunities where a blog, forum or social network could support discussion or information dissemination, internally or externally. They may spot situations where a ‘mashup’ can support the organisation’s objectives. (This is an approach which brings together data from different sources, typically combining map data with locationally-based information, into a webpage, such as used by http://www.housingmaps.com/.) Learners ought to be able to identify ways in which the IT tools which they are accustomed to using in their personal lives can be adopted in business practice, improving sustainability. Today’s IT employees ought to be encouraged to look for such opportunities.

Taking a wider perspective, all students may be able to see other ways to deploy IT to enhance sustainability. Social inclusion could be supported by identifying situations in which some staff could work from home or some other remote location using broadband communications and perhaps accessing the organisation’s systems remotely. These remote workers could be located anywhere in the world and might effectively support organisational globalisation objectives. Students may be able to see that meetings with remote partners can sometimes be conducted online, using online meeting or video-conferencing facilities, reducing the amount of travel necessary. Students need to look at such solutions holistically, considering the full complexity. When staff work from home they would save the energy costs of their journey, and the employer may save energy by them not being at work: maybe there are fewer PCs to power or maybe the organisation can operate from smaller premises. But this needs to be offset by the recognition that the employee will have to heat at least one room in their house which may not otherwise be heated; they will probably need to own and power a PC and there will be energy required to support any communication. The saving to the ‘world energy economy’ is not self-evident (Craig-Wood, 2008).

As well as looking at ways of reducing commuting, computing students could look at, say, ways to use ICT to make transport more sustainable. They could look at ways to intelligently control vehicle speed or ease congestion; they could look at ways to integrate public transport systems to make them more efficient, effective and attractive. They could look at road pricing schemes, car sharing schemes or car clubs (SDC, 2010).

5. Implementing Sustainability Literacy in Computing

As has already been alluded to, encouraging students to engage with sustainability can be problematic. In 2001 Kofi Annan, the then UN Secretary General, pointed out that there was a need to take an idea which may seem abstract, sustainability development, and to make it relevant to people’s lives (Haigh, 2009). Direct engagement requires learners to come to the understanding that, as individuals, we are all part of the community of life: part of a global, inter-connected eco-system.

Today’s young people, or at least those who have been brought up in Western Europe, are well aware of the most obvious needs of sustainability: the need to reduce power consumption; to develop alternative renewable energy sources; to recycle waste; and to protect fragile environments and species diversity (SDC, undated). However they may need some encouragement to see that these principles apply to them personally or that they ought to be adopted in the workplace, particularly since they may well have had jobs with employers who pay little heed to such imperatives. It is important that learners are encouraged to question such a stance, particularly as they move forward into more professional, responsible roles. The transfer of environmental awareness into a workplace context can lead to a discussion of the ‘triple bottom line’ of ‘people, planet and profit’, corporate social responsibility and the ethos of organisations. Some students already have this awareness and express a wish to gain employment with organisations that are environmentally conscious and that strive for corporate social responsibility (Cade, 2008; HEA, 2008).

At Coventry University, second year computing students undertake a Group Project module in which they work on a major group development project. The module also covers project management, groupwork, ethics and professionalism. Sustainability forms one element in this module. Some students are reluctant or resistant to engaging with much of this material and care is needed to ensure that its relevance is evident. When sustainability content was introduced some years ago it too was met with some reluctance: some computing students do not readily relate to sustainability issues (Payne, 2009a). Gordon (2009) investigated the attitudes and expectations of students at the University of Hull and found that, there too, computing students were not expecting their course to encompass sustainability. Creativity is needed to motivate student engagement. Computing students are recognised as not being good at ‘soft skills’. They usually score very low on ‘feeling’ in a Myers-Briggs personality type assessment: instead they are typically dispassionate and analytical (Capretz, 2003). These students are often highly motivated by technical material and find it very difficult to see the relevance of sustainability to them.

In order to provide firm motivation for learning about sustainability, students were given an assessment on the subject. First they were given a context-setting introductory lecture on the subject of sustainability. After that they were required to find all relevant information for themselves: an activity-led pedagogy was adopted, in which students are treated as investigators. Working in groups, students were given a case study, a brief description of a fictional IT organisation which they could imagine as a future employer. They were then asked to derive sustainability tips for the organisation, which would allow it to improve its sustainability. For each tip, students were required to provide evidence to support their advice. Since these students cannot be expected to make judgements about the accuracy of the technical supporting material they locate, they were instead asked to assess the authoritativeness of their sources. More detail about the assignment, and part of a sample student submission, can be found in Payne (2009a).

In the first two years of running the assignment, 2007/8 and 2008/9, students were asked to derive 10 tips across the whole spectrum of sustainability. Understandably, many tips which students proposed had no connection with ICT. Therefore, to enhance the assignment’s relevance, for 2009/10 students were asked to focus just on the implementation and application of ICT to enhance the organisation’s sustainability. However many students still offered generic energy creation and efficiency tips, pointing to the connection between ICT and its power needs. (To avoid this confusion, in future assessments, we may revert to the previous requirement.)

6. What did they learn?

The intended learning outcome for this work package is that students will be able to demonstrate an understanding of sustainability issues. Every group of students successfully derived advice which would have the potential to make the organisation more sustainable. Examples included:

“Consider the energy usage of new hardware”

“Introduce server virtualisation”

“Use heat recovery ventilation”

“Create a virtual private network in the office so people can work from home. This saves space in the office and reduces commuting”

“Move servers into the roof space where there is more room for better cooling and then naturally cool them with an outdoor cooling system”

“Set up video conferencing between the staff and their clients. This saves travel expenses and time for both clients and staff”

Reduce car use for commuting “by offering a discount on other methods of transport”

“Buying recycled products when possible … Many products are available such as paper to printer ink cartridges and … it [helps] the company budget each year.”

“Investing in solar water heating”

“Link lights to movement detectors so they automatically switch off when the room is empty”

“Buy locally sourced food”

“Have lunches delivered, to avoid the need for all staff to each collect their own”

Students located supporting evidence online, in most cases this was from some recognised source. The sources identified were very diverse and included:

• Department of Energy and Climate Change - UK Government department

• Department for Transport - UK Government department

• Energy Star - US Department of Energy

• National energy foundation - UK charity promoting the cutting of CO₂ emissions

• Energy Saving Trust - independent, UK organisation focused on promoting reduction of CO₂ emissions

• WasteOnline - managed by WasteWatch, a UK environmental charity

• RecycleNow - UK promotional site from WRAP: a not-for-profit government funded organisation

• Chalmor - UK energy consultancy

• Carbon Trust - not-for-profit company with the mission to accelerate the move to a low carbon economy

• ToolBase - US housing industry’s resource for technical information

• Recycling-guide.org.uk - created by Fubra, a website development company

• Western Area Power Administration - an agency of US Department of Energy

• UK Carbon Footprint Calculator Project - from Google: a promotion for their other services

Students were somewhat less effective in appraising the authority of their sources. Probably as a consequence of frequent reiteration, they did mostly recognise that wikipedia entries may be inaccurate. However many students failed to recognise that there is a possibility of bias in information presented by a campaigning organisation. Of even more concern, some students accepted, without question, data from ‘big name’ commercial organisations, sometimes even asserting that such an organisation would have nothing to gain from misrepresentation.

Almost all students reported positively on the assessment. In 2007/8 they were specifically asked for feedback on this task:

“We actually learnt about the points we had to discuss and it was good”

“It gave us more in-depth knowledge on what sustainability [is] about”

“Learnt more about the concepts that link the environment and computing world.”

“Allowed me to know more about the ways to keep a company sustainable”

“Deals with themes such as ethics and environmental/legal issues that are increasing in importance in the working world, helping to raise awareness and a sense of responsibility.”

7. Conclusions

The introduction of sustainability into the computing curriculum at Coventry University has not been particularly easy. Rather than embedding it throughout the curriculum it has been approached as a discrete work package, with some later references. This has led to an explicit focus on sustainability concepts, albeit for a relatively short period of time. It has also however led to more challenges from poor student engagement than might have been encountered with a more embedded approach.

This poor engagement has been countered by adopting an assessment regime based on case study using a fictional IT company. Under this regime every group submitted work which showed that they understand at least some issues relating to sustainability, in that they all derived some tips which would enhance the organisation’s sustainability. Also, every group identified online resources which supported their suggestions. In their research, students will have encountered many other resources, and much more information, than they presented within the assessment and hence their awareness of sustainability will be broader than evidenced in the assignments.

However the knowledge of specific subject content was neither the need nor the intention. The aim was to raise students’ awareness: to ensure students can see the connections between IT and sustainability and to encourage creative thinking in the application of IT. By giving students a task which was clearly contextualised in the IT industry and forcing students’ active engagement and investigation, led to students identifying positive potential links between IT and sustainability. It is this application of sustainability principles into personal and professional contexts which sustainability literacy seeks to engender.

Note

Parts of this paper are substantially the same as Payne, 2009b.