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Sustainability Course Designation

Guidance for Good Practices

Recommendations for Sustainability Courses at Dickinson

The student learning assessment of the sustainability graduation requirement identified a number of good practices utilized by Dickinson faculty members which we share with you for your consideration. These practices are NOT required for sustainability courses at Dickinson. We offer them as suggestions that can improve communication to students about the sustainability content of your courses and help support sustainability learning.

  • State on the syllabus that the course meets Dickinson’s Sustainability Graduation requirement and is a Sustainability Connections (SCON) or Sustainability Investigations (SINV) course.
  • Explicitly address sustainability in the course description and communicate how sustainability concepts are relevant to the subject of the course.
  • Provide one or more definitions of sustainability on the syllabus and Moodle page.
  • Communicate in the syllabus and Moodle page that sustainability has social, economic and environmental dimensions and identify which dimensions are addressed in the course.
  • Make clear in the course schedule of topics, readings, and assignments when during the semester sustainability-related content will be covered. Also see guidance from SOAR on How to Create Inclusive & Accessible Syllabi and Moodle Pages.
  • Clearly communicate in instructions for assignments that are intended to support sustainability learning the sustainability concepts and dimensions that students are expected to address.
  • Introduce sustainability early in the semester to help students build vocabulary and skills for seeing connections between sustainability and other course topics as the semester progresses.
  • Use sustainability terminology deliberately and frequently.
  • Highlight on the syllabus where and how dimensions of sustainability (social, economic and environmental) are addressed.
  • Highlight sustainability content, assignments and readings as applicable with subtitles, headers, icons, green color etc. to make them more evident and easy to identify. 
  • Identify the sustainability assignment that could be used to assess student attainment of sustainability learning outcomes before the start of the course.
  • Include an assignment near the end of the semester that asks students to reflect on the relevance of sustainability concepts for the topic and field of study of the course.

Do you have your own good practices for sustainability learning?
Please share them with us at sustainability@dickinson.edu.

DOWNLOADABLE GUIDELINES RESOURCE

The following syllabi highlight and provide examples of the above: