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Developing behavior change interventions to promote campus sustainability involves blending education with action. Having background knowledge of approaches that link these two areas can support collaborations among different stakeholders in processes that lead to both learning and impact. In this section, we consider some of the approaches that can be used in leading intervention projects that generate multiple benefits for faculty, students, and staff.
The process of facilitating intervention projects as potential collaborations among faculty, students, and staff draws on teaching, learning, and action strategies from the field of sustainability education. One strategy is applied learning projects, which are collaborative educational efforts that seek to promote action and learning through engaged, real-world problem-solving (see Beaudion & Brundiers, 2017).
These learning experiences engage students’ heads, hands, and hearts to combine cognitive, tactile, and socio-emotional learning (Sipos et al., 2008). Through intentional and interactive designs, these real-world learning experiences help students to bring in, visit, simulate, and engage with the world (learn more on this model here). To achieve these types of learning, applied learning projects utilize different approaches.
Diverse Learning Approaches
Inquiry-Based Learning: Students learn through investigation of a research problem and scholarly discussions related to the investigation (Kalsoom & Khanam, 2017)
Service Learning: Students learn through meeting the needs of a specific community or setting, supplemented by reflexive exercises (Hernández-Barco et al., 2020)
Experiential Learning: Students learn through translating knowledge into action by working to engage with real-world situations (Savage et al., 2015)
Project-Based Learning: Students learn through self-directed, collaborative learning that focuses on addressing place-based issues, often through stakeholder engagement (Wiek et al., 2014)
Transdisciplinary Learning: Students learn through generating knowledge in the form of novel solution options to sustainability problems in collaboration with stakeholders within and beyond higher education settings (Brundiers & Wiek, 2013)
Campus as a Living Lab
Beyond taking different teaching and learning approaches, applied learning projects utilize the campus as a living laboratory for learning action. This means that applied learning projects provide opportunities for students, in collaboration with faculty and staff, to test solutions to sustainability challenges that can later be implemented in the community and beyond. In the context of driving sustainability on campuses and in communities, applied sustainability learning projects can bring together a variety of stakeholders, engage them in addressing a place-based issue, and facilitate the co-creation of knowledge and solutions through collaboration.
This "campus as a living lab" approach has become popular across universities, producing research insights (see Crosby et al., 2018), reports, international networks, and recognition of the importance of these efforts by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. These resources offer examples of a variety of applied learning projects and their impacts to promote campus and community sustainability, such as at The California State University and the University of British Columbia.
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