Online sustainability education: purpose, process and implementation for transformative universities

Abstract

Purpose

Universities strategically organize themselves around sustainability, including transformative goals in teaching and learning. Simultaneously, the role of online education has become more prominent. This study aims to better understand the purpose and process of creating online sustainability education (OSE) and to identify challenges and opportunities for implementing these courses and programs to achieve universities’ broader transformative sustainability goals.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses a multiple case study design to research three universities in diverse geographical and institutional contexts (Finland, the USA and Colombia). Qualitative data was collected by interviewing program-related experts (n = 31) and reviews of universities’ strategic documents.

Findings

The findings suggest that despite important advances, further attention is merited regarding aligning the purpose of OSE with student learning outcomes, clarifying the values underlying the process of online program/course creation and developing transformative and process-oriented approaches and pedagogies to implement OSE. The authors also highlight emerging challenges and opportunities in online environments for sustainability education in different institutional contexts, including reaping the benefits of multilocality and diverse student experiences regarding sustainability issues.

Originality/value

There is a paucity of studies on university-level sustainability education in relation to online environments. This research expands on the existing literature by exploring three different geographical and institutional contexts and shedding light on the relationship between the practical implementation of OSE and universities’ broader sustainability goals.

Citation

Hakkarainen, V., King, J., Brundiers, K., Redman, A., Anderson, C.B., Goodall, C.N., Pate, A. and Raymond, C.M. (2024), "Online sustainability education: purpose, process and implementation for transformative universities", International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, Vol. 25 No. 9, pp. 333-357. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSHE-06-2023-0227

1. Introduction

Higher education institutions (HEIs) can play a pivotal role in advancing sustainability and act as transformative change agents for local and global communities (Stephens et al., 2008; Fazey et al., 2021). Fundamentally, this approach to transformative changes means to “cease to participate in, pardon, and propagate patterns of competitiveness and exploitation and, instead, become singularly dedicated to restoring and regenerating the conditions for life in all its meanings” (Moser and Fazey, 2021, p. 5). Providing high-quality sustainability education is one way that HEIs can execute the aspirational role of supporting sustainability transformations. However, to date, HEIs’ progress in advancing sustainability has been narrow and slow (Kohl et al., 2022; Moser and Fazey, 2021), and many still seek guidance in implementing sustainability education (Isenmann et al., 2020).

To fulfill their transformative potential, universities need to critically engage with trends in higher education, particularly online education. Online education in HEIs has been advanced by two main drivers: attempts to increase accessibility by reaching larger student populations and the marketization of education. Both drivers often result in reduced costs for both students and institutions, while offering additional revenue for the latter (Morris et al., 2020). Additionally, the growth of online education, further boosted by the COVID-19 pandemic, has made online settings more relevant to applied topics. Therefore, online environments are expected to play an increasingly important role in sustainability education (Otto and Becker, 2019). However, as sustainability education and online environments converge, there is a crucial gap regarding how the distinctive characteristics of sustainability education translate to online environments.

Online education can take various forms depending on the type of learning environment (e.g. the tools used, design methodology), the degree to which the program/course is instructor-led and the intended learning goals (Moore et al., 2011). The time and place dimensions of online education vary from synchronous (typically live video/audio) to asynchronous approaches (e.g. recorded media or modules) and from completely online to blended or hybrid models that are partly organized in person (Greenhow et al., 2022). Online sustainability education (OSE) can include various formats, such as formal learning through mandatory online courses and capstones, facilitated through digital platforms, videos and simulation and non-formal learning, facilitated and through approaches such as UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) assessment tools or virtual conferences (Hueske et al., 2022).

Previous OSE studies have focused on its broad contribution to sustainability, such as how Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) can advance the SDGs (Hajdukiewicz and Pera, 2020; Hueske et al., 2022) and how new and interrelated pedagogies can be used to enhance student learning (Li and Zhou, 2018). Recent studies have begun to investigate the suitability of certain pedagogies in online platforms (e.g. challenge-based learning, see Kasch et al., 2022; video co-creation workshops, see Arima et al., 2022), as well as educator perceptions of online environmental learning in relation to their competencies during COVID-19 (Corres Gallardo and Ruiz-Mallén, 2023). However, there has rarely been research that examines institutional strategies and impacts of implementation processes. This gap has been shown to play an important role in the operationalization of sustainability education (Weiss et al., 2021; Cheeseman et al., 2019). Moreover, few studies have focused on the challenges and opportunities faced by different HEI actors in the process of developing OSE.

The need to assess the quality and accessibility of online education has become increasingly important because of its heterogeneity and the rapid changes in traditional modes of teaching and learning (d’Orville, 2020). To ensure the effectiveness of online education, it is necessary to determine appropriate pedagogies and evaluations specific to online settings, as these cannot be simply transferred from in-person settings (Peters et al., 2020). Thus, institutionalizing online learning in context-sensitive and student-centered ways necessitates a multifaceted approach that incorporates faculty competencies (Azorín, 2020), student engagement (Neuwirth et al., 2021) and technological tools that are logistically feasible (Turnbull et al., 2021) and affordable and accessible for students. In sustainability education, these issues are further complicated by the complexity of place-based, interdisciplinary, social constructivist and critical approaches common in the field (Walsh et al., 2020; Baumber, 2022). Additionally, sustainability education emphasizes a transdisciplinary understanding of sustainability challenges, emancipating students and fostering transformative learning experiences and change agency (Sandri, 2022). These distinctive characteristics of sustainability education present specific requirements for the alignment of learning objectives, pedagogies and assessments in program design and evaluation in online environments, which have rarely been studied in a process-oriented manner.

As sustainability education emphasizes systems understanding and change (Brundiers et al., 2021; Redman and Wiek, 2021; Walsh et al., 2020) and considering the transformative potential of HEIs regarding sustainability (Fazey et al., 2021), there is a need for a detailed assessment of how universities engage with OSE in course and program design. This study investigates faculty/staff perspectives of designing and implementing OSE by considering purpose, the creation process and challenges and opportunities and uses case studies in three distinct contexts, Helsinki (Finland), Phoenix (Arizona, USA) and Bogotá (Colombia), to answer the following research questions:

RQ1.

What are the university’s objectives for sustainability, and how do they reflect the purpose of OSE in each context?

RQ2.

How did faculty/staff in each case navigate the process of program/course creation, particularly in relation to their diverse approaches to sustainability?

RQ3.

What are the challenges and opportunities of teaching and learning sustainability when implementing online programs/courses?

Based on reviewing these universities’ strategic documents and semi-structured interviews with university faculty/staff involved in relevant programs/courses, the study aimed to understand the interplay of institutional sustainability goals and practical implementation of OSE. The paper concludes with a set of principles derived from the findings to enhance the transformative potential of OSE at HEIs.

2. Theoretical background

2.1 Sustainability at the institutional level

HEIs are increasingly engaging with sustainability, which takes various forms at the institutional level and in their educational offerings (Weiss and Barth, 2019; Hueske et al., 2022). UNESCO (2020) promotes a Whole Institution Approach to holistically integrate sustainability into teaching, facilities and operations and interactions with communities and decision-making as an institution-wide process. Furthermore, universities are called upon to play a more active role in policymaking and transformations in wider society (Kohl et al., 2022; Fazey et al., 2021). To this end, Stephens et al. (2008) categorize HEIs’ potential relationship to sustainability transformations into four stages:

1. the HEI being a microcosm of society as a model for sustainable practices;

2. a place of concentrated teaching and sustainability skills needed to cope with complex challenges;

3. a place where knowledge is created and exchanged through use-inspired, applied research; and

4. in the last stage, HEIs act as transdisciplinary agent of change through collaboration with societal partners to integrate research results into planning, policymaking and community development.

In this progression, HEIs are embedded in their local contexts, which shape their transformative potential (Stephens et al., 2008).

Sustainability education is typically at the core of universities sustainability goals (Isenmann et al., 2020). According to Otto and Becker (2019), OSE can be a useful strategy for increasing sustainability in HEIs overall. However, changing curricula to include sustainability involves complex, long-term processes that are influenced by institutional culture, academic structure, socio-economic context and individual actors. These processes can be bottom-up, top-down or have bidirectional drivers and can be catalyzed by internal or external actors (Weiss et al., 2021). Deliberately involving faculty, students, staff and external actors can help overcome some challenges, such as potential lack of leadership from authorities, and build skills around communication and inter/transdisciplinary collaboration (Weiss et al., 2021; Dmochowski et al., 2016).

2.2 Sustainability education

Education on sustainability has evolved from a focus on environmental and natural sciences to including inter- and transdisciplinary education on social and ecological sustainability issues and finding practical solutions to real-world problems (Acosta Castellanos and Queiruga-Dios, 2022). This article uses the concept of sustainability education that promotes change agency in addressing complex sustainability issues (Brundiers et al., 2021; Redman and Wiek, 2021). This means the focus has shifted from merely providing knowledge about sustainability issues such as climate change (Barth, 2014) to developing the competencies of sustainability change agents (Redman and Wiek, 2021).

A comprehensive framework of eight key competencies in sustainability (KCS) education is proposed to address learning objectives (Brundiers et al., 2021; Redman and Wiek, 2021). These key competencies include systems thinking (e.g. analyzing an issue’s systemic complexity and history), futures-thinking (e.g. crafting scenarios, visions), strategic thinking (e.g. developing sustainability transitions), values-thinking (e.g. identifying and negotiating values), collaborative competency (e.g. facilitating co-creation approaches) and integrated problem-solving (i.e. the ability to integrate these competencies into collective and iterative sustainability problem-solving efforts) (Wiek et al., 2011). Additionally, implementation (e.g. translating a proposed solution into actions on the ground) and interpersonal and intrapersonal competencies (e.g. activating self-reflection and resilience) have been proposed (Brundiers et al., 2021; Redman and Wiek, 2021). These competences reflect problem- and solutions-oriented research and teaching approaches (Miller, 2015).

Sustainability education involves addressing inner and outer transformations (Wamsler, 2020). These are supported by transformative learning approaches that guide learners to rethink their inner worldviews and beliefs that shape their thinking, feelings and acting and link the development of new personal skills and perspectives with systems change (Boström et al., 2018; Sipos et al., 2008). Foundational pedagogies in sustainability education are thus interdisciplinary, experiential, collaborative and action-oriented (Rieckmann, 2018). Additionally, there have been calls for more relational, justice- and process-oriented, place-based, transdisciplinary and reflexive pedagogies (e.g. Walsh et al., 2020). Effective pedagogies for training students in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research include problem-based learning, service-learning, transformative learning, inquiry-based learning, deep education and authentic and integrative curricula (McGregor, 2017). Furthermore, real-world experience is essential for students to develop competencies and understand sustainability challenges (Brundiers et al., 2021). These approaches imply that faculty should critically reflect on the implications of their pedagogies and how they align with educational goals on sustainability (Sandri, 2022).

Given the distinctive features of sustainability education, its online implementation may face unique opportunities and challenges when compared to more conventional fields. The following section summarizes current knowledge on the challenges and opportunities of online education, particularly in relation to sustainability education.

2.3 Online environments for implementing sustainability education

Online education provides a range of benefits that include accessibility, diverse learning modalities and innovative pedagogies (Peters et al., 2020; Otto and Becker, 2019). It can also offer communication benefits, such as providing alternative forms of self-expression for shyer students, offering more time to formulate thoughts and potentially reducing pressure to fit in (Arasaratnam-Smith and Northcote, 2017). OSE can broaden the reach of students by leveraging accessibility (e.g. for people with full-time jobs) (Azeiteiro et al., 2015), thus increasing inclusiveness and the democratization of sustainability education (Berchin et al., 2021). Moreover, online environments can stimulate interdisciplinary dialogue and cultural exchange, which is beneficial for sustainability education (Barth and Burandt, 2013).

Online education poses several challenges, including inequitable access to technology and digital skills among students and teachers, creating engaging learning communities in virtual environments and developing skills in online pedagogy for both faculty and students (Greenhow et al., 2022). Additionally, the social dimensions of online learning, such as expressing emotions, are not yet fully understood in online environments (ibid.). Students can face difficulties in interacting with peers and instructors, leading to dissatisfaction with online education (Cole et al., 2014). Crafting effective policies and structures for managing online courses and programs, adapting in-person assessments to online settings and addressing the tensions between public education institutions and private educational technology companies are additional challenges in the rapidly shifting landscape of online education (Pokhrel and Chhetri, 2021; Moore et al., 2021).

2.4 Conceptual approach: relating institutional and sustainability education contexts to online environments

This research addresses the gap in understanding how sustainability education is translated into online environments. The study examines the relationships between sustainability education and online environments through the purpose, process and challenges/opportunities of online programs/courses (Figure 1). The study applies a process-oriented approach and draws on Stephens et al. (2008) classification of HEIs’ relationships to sustainability to understand institutional change processes toward sustainability (Weiss et al., 2021), and then focuses on the practical creation of OSE and study the implications of challenges and opportunities, reflected through and beyond KCS (Brundiers et al., 2021).

3. Methods

3.1 Case study research design

The research is based on a multiple case study (Stake, 2005) to examine sustainability education in diverse online environments across various institutional and geographic settings. Three distinct contexts were chosen for analysis, each representing a different type of program/course including both undergraduate or graduate levels (see Supplementary Material A.1 for descriptions of the studied institutes and programs/courses). The cases included:

• a bachelor-level sustainability course at the University of Helsinki (UH) in Finland for all students (sustainability-related introductory course);

• a bachelor’s in Arts Program in Sustainability at the School of Sustainability (SOS) at Arizona State University (ASU) in the USA (genuine sustainability program); and

• a Master of Science Program in Sustainable Development Projects at the Universidad EAN (previously Escuela de Administración de Negocios) in Colombia (sustainability-related, disciplinary program).

The aim was not to strictly compare the cases, recognizing their inherent differences, such as in the scope, level and design of the courses and diverse geographic contexts.

3.2 Data collection and analysis

The authors draw on a social constructivist research approach (Creswell, 2014) and focus on the experience of the interviewed faculty/staff and how they construct and comprehend this experience. Document reviews and semi-structured interviews were conducted to understand the purpose, process of creation, challenges and opportunities of OSE. This study follows an ethical protocol approved by the UH’s ethical review board in Humanities and Social and Behavioral Science. To protect participant confidentiality, personal details and specific roles are not disclosed, but participants are referred to as members of broader groups: instructors, instructional designers or faculty.

3.2.1 Semi-structured interviews.

Semi-structured interviews offer a flexible method to gather insights from the perspectives of interviewees (Bryman, 2012). The authors conducted interviews with faculty and staff involved in course design, teaching and program administration (Table 1) and used a purposive sampling strategy (Bernard, 2006) to select participants who had a broad knowledge of the studied programs/courses in leadership positions and/or experience in designing specific course content or teaching online courses.

Participants were recruited through institutional relationships (i.e. authors who work in the studied institutions) and through a site visit to the Universidad EAN to discuss the project with authorities and faculty. There were differences in the size of the sampling populations at the three universities (working groups/faculties involved in OSE), with EAN being the smallest. However, despite different case study population sizes (Table 1), participants described processes at the university in similar ways, demonstrating sufficient saturation in data collection.

The interview guide consisted of six sections:

1. purpose of the program/course;

2. strategic guidance from universities;

3. approaches to sustainability in the process of program/course creation;

4. success/opportunities for further development;

5. challenges and opportunities for online implementation; and

6. KCS in online environments (Supplementary Material B.1).

The authors used KCS as a framework (see Supplementary Material B.2) to approach the different dimensions of sustainability education and relate them to the challenges and opportunities of online implementation but did not aim to evaluate their delivery and ask about challenges and opportunities beyond the KCS framework. The interview guide was developed collaboratively by the research team and piloted in two test interviews with topic experts. This process helped validate the instrument, including its suitability for the study objectives (Bryman, 2012).

3.2.2 Analysis of the interviews.

The approach to thematic analysis was data-driven, and transcribed interviews were analyzed in ATLAS.ti 23. The authors used inductive and abductive coding strategies (Timmermans and Tavory, 2012) to identify transferable principles from case studies that can apply to other contexts. Thematic analysis was chosen for its flexibility in identifying and reporting patterns in data (Braun and Clarke, 2006). The coding process used several rounds, starting from familiarizing ourselves with the data, searching for and reviewing themes, defining and themes and finally reporting the themes (Braun and Clarke, 2006).

The authors inductively analyzed the questions regarding the purposes and processes (Supplementary Material B.1) for each case. The coding of process-related questions focused on guidelines and approaches taken for sustainability and how discussions were navigated in practice. Challenges and opportunities were coded in an abductive process, using existing knowledge of the issues (see Section 2.3; Supplementary Material C.1), comparing them to sustainability and identifying new themes. The challenges and opportunities were first coded in individual cases and then they were integrated into overarching themes (Section 4.3; Tables 4 and 5). This study did not seek to quantitatively rank the themes because of the small number of interviewees and their different positions at HEIs.

3.3 Qualitative document analysis

Qualitative document analysis was used to obtain information about the context in which the study participants operated (Bowen, 2009) and to understand the higher-level strategic goals and the purpose of OSE at the university level. Documents are essential in shaping and establishing formal rules and social norms that define a university as an institution (Owen, 2014). The authors thematically analyzed formal university documents, including strategic plans and official websites (see Supplementary Material C.2), coding passages related to sustainability and change agency and classified them according to Stephens et al. (2008) four categories of HEI relationships to sustainability.

4. Findings

4.1 Universities’ relationship to sustainability and purpose of online sustainability education across the cases

Based on the document review, the three cases included elements from all four categorizations of HEIs’ relationship to sustainability by Stephens et al. (2008) (Table 2). While sustainability was a crosscutting strategic theme in strategic plans at UH (2020) and EAN (2020), ASU’s five-year strategic plan (2020–2022) only mentioned sustainability in relation to expanding research capabilities and operations. However, sustainability is mentioned in other mission statements and the ASU sustainability goal. Furthermore, ASU has the SOS that offers degrees in sustainability at all levels. UH clearly expresses the specific importance of the online Sustainability Course for measuring their sustainability education goals (UH Sustainability and Responsibility Program, 2022–2024). All the studied online programs/courses named on their websites or marketing materials the aim to educate change agents or equip students with skills to contribute to societal impact.

4.1.1 Purpose of online sustainability programs/courses according to the interviewees.

Interviews presented various perspectives on the purpose of respective OSE programs/courses (Table 3). Some interviewees in each case mentioned action-oriented competences and developing students’ change agency. However, some interviewees at the UH and ASU pointed out that the program/course remains at an introductory level and the purpose is primarily to promote interdisciplinarity and a basic understanding of sustainability. Particularly, at UH, the course’s length and scope were seen to limit goals related to change agency.

4.2 Process of creating online sustainability education

4.2.1 Institutional process of change supporting online sustainability education.

The process for initiating online programs/courses varied. At UH, the Sustainability Course was created in a bottom-up way, based on the initiative of one professor, whose idea of a crosscutting, open sustainability course was supported by the rector’s office. The course’s development was crowdsourced within the UH, and it was conducted with relatively few resources. The call-to-contribute was open to all faculties to achieve broad participation in course creation.

At ASU and EAN, developing online programs was a higher, strategic-level initiative. At ASU, the effort to complement in-person with OSE originated in the creation of ASU Online/EdPlus as a specific entity responsible for the online university, which was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a driver to scale-up courses via online education, some interviewees at ASU identified the university’s general aim to “reach the masses” (ASU Interview 4). At EAN, interviewees described that developing the Master’s Program in Sustainable Development Projects was a multiyear process, including actors within and outside academia. This effort stemmed from a purposeful reframing of the university around sustainability and used existing online education strategies, pioneered by EAN, ranging from a “technology assisted presence” program for synchronous online night classes, to hybrid courses blending in-person and online learning, to entirely virtual options.

4.2.2 Negotiations of content and scope of sustainability in online program/course creation.

The creation of programs/courses varied in the engagement with and discussion about various approaches to sustainability. At each university, interviewees stated that the content and approach to sustainability ultimately depend on the course creator/faculty member in charge. Three types of negotiation processes regarding approaches to sustainability in program/course creation were identified:

1. discussions at the module level facilitated by the coordination team when needed (UH);

2. limited program-level discussions and coordination facilitated by SOS (ASU); and

3. a deliberate decision-making process on approaches to sustainability coordinated through institutional leadership (EAN).

4.2.2.1 University of Helsinki: discussions and diverse approaches to sustainability are navigated only as they emerge.

During the development of the online course at UH, the project coordination team used six themes from a UN report (UN, 2019) as a basis for the course’s structure, linking it to the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. While all KCS were addressed to some extent in the planning process, according to leadership-level interviewees, systems thinking was the primary guiding competency because of its prominence in the UN report. Although the course modules emphasized additional competencies, there was no explicit follow-up on how they were integrated within and across the modules.

Interviewees with a background in sustainability-related research expressed a need to reflect on the approaches to sustainability in the course creation process. However, there were differing views on engaging with the normativity of sustainability in course creation, with one steering committee member believing it was necessary not to take stance on political or ideological questions, but to present different aspects of sustainability discussions and allow students to draw their own conclusions, while some interviewees argued that normativity cannot be avoided in sustainability, for example as follows:

We tried to be descriptive rather than prescriptive and though we used a particular frame that focuses mostly around this idea of ecological interactions and environmental wellbeing and personal health and rights, these sort of things, we still had to take a little bit of a stance and try to balance those perspectives on what sustainability meant in our module. (Module leader, UH Interview 3)

Other interviewees echoed that laying out diverse normative assumptions regarding sustainability could have benefited the process of collaborative work. Nevertheless, many interviewees described that the process brought together members of different faculties and created learning opportunities. For example, interviewees from the educational sciences stated that they had learned about sustainability through their participation in course creation.

The ways to reconcile views in course creation included having an introductory module where different definitions of sustainability were discussed, establishing a peer-review system for the content created, asking the coordination team to resolve conflicts if they were not manageable within the module. Trust in more experienced colleagues also helped module leaders guide content creation.

4.2.2.2 Arizona State University: limited space for discussions and alignment on approaches to sustainability.

At the time of the interviews, the ASU interviewees indicated that they had limited opportunities to discuss various approaches to sustainability. The program started from thematic domains, which today shows as disciplinary courses and courses with sustainability and KCS approaches added. Interviewees expressed that until recently there had not been extensive discussions on approaches to sustainability, nor a systematic follow-up to align courses around KCS. Divergent approaches to sustainability advocated by faculty members have even led to disparate philosophies in online and in-person versions of courses. One interviewee described these differences in a particular course as ranging from colonial to decolonial foundations. One faculty member noted a lack of engagement with questions about approaches to sustainability:

I think the School of Sustainability has largely survived by not engaging too deeply in these debates and sort of being accepting of different people’s views. […] [It’s] a big tent that welcomes anyone at the university who does sustainability or calls what they do sustainability. (Instructor, ASU Interview 7).

ASU’s SOS uses the principles of “justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion” (JEDI) to orient sustainability content and approaches to course design, as mentioned by many interviewees. However, these transversal broad values raised tensions regarding the program’s growth aspirations and existing resources to dedicate to it. As a faculty member stated:

We have to think about how this global reach can be done within the JEDI framework that really honors and respects our partners. And do we bring in the time and the resources and the emotional work that it requires them [faculty] to do intercultural work and to do that? (Instructor, ASU Interview 6).

To overcome some of these challenges, ASU Online offers resources to help instructors design student learning experiences with a focus on JEDI. The Peralta Online Equity Rubric, a research-based tool, is used to evaluate and redesign online courses. Training to design and teach online courses, including an ASU master’s class, is also provided. The SOS has implemented the role of a “course custodian,” a coordinating faculty member, who tries to ensure consistent learning experiences across in-person and online courses.

4.2.2.3 EAN: coordinated process to align approaches to sustainability.

In contrast to UH and ASU, EAN deliberately coordinated discussions on sustainability per se. Interviewees described that the debates on what sustainability entails began in 2011, when the university started to reorient itself toward sustainable entrepreneurship, forming a “think tank” to explore understandings of sustainability. One interviewee described this process as follows:

We had a think tank that brought together representatives of professors, managers, students who, for about four years, we were debating about what it meant for the university to think about changing towards sustainable entrepreneurship or focusing on sustainability or focusing on entrepreneurship. And in that line, the revision of what we understood by sustainability came up and then it emerged from there. (Instructor, EAN Interview 2).

The course syllabi at EAN were created by multidisciplinary teams using international reports and the sustainability goals stated therein (e.g. UN SDGs and the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services). Although the responsible faculty member/instructor decides the final approach to sustainability in each course, the interviewees also described a collegial environment that promotes interaction among faculty members and a general feeling of progress toward shared goals. These include a practice-oriented approach in which students are placed in situations that simulate working in real organizations, guided by EAN’s principles of sustainable entrepreneurship.

4.2.3 Resources and relations in program/course creation.

Limited monetary and personnel resources and pressure to scale-up were discussed as influential factors in program/course creation at the UH and ASU. These limitations were not discussed by EAN interviewees, perhaps because of a longer tradition of offering online education than UH and ASU.

Several interviewees at UH mentioned the issue of unpaid voluntary work and limited resources allocated to course creation as a problem. Contributions to course content at UH were voluntary and not compensated and module development was often led by early-career researchers. Another limitation of program/course creation was seen by some interviewees in the lack of courage to address resistance from faculty members to incorporate the new sustainability course in their curricula, despite the university’s strategic aims related to sustainability.

At the ASU, online courses were also perceived to be labor-intensive for faculty and instructional designers to create, update and scale up. One instructional designer (Interview 8) noted: “[…] it’s more like a production line, and this is a more corporate environment.” Some faculty members found program creation to be difficult, particularly when developing project-based courses that needed to be scaled up from original in-person settings with around 20 students to twice that number and taught in half the time. This shift has impacted transdisciplinary approaches, such as organizing workshops and inviting external actors, like community partners and working professionals, to the courses. However, one faculty member also shared an example of successful collaboration with a company during an online course.

At ASU, some faculty and instructional designers faced additional challenges in creating online courses because of a lack of trust and collaboration. Interviewees suggested that faculty could benefit from more knowledge about online course delivery and instructional designers could better understand sustainability-related content, and that instructional designers would be more familiar with the content of sustainability-related courses. However, successful collaborations based on personal relationships were also described.

4.3 Challenges and opportunities in implementing online sustainability education across the cases

In principle, the interviewees shared similar challenges and opportunities related to OSE across the three case studies (Tables 4 and 5). Technical limitations and access to online environments was only emphasized at EAN particularly when working with remote communities. A few interviewees at all institutions noted that there are no unique challenges or opportunities in implementing OSE, as the quality of both online and in-person classes depends on the organization and applied learning activities.

The main challenges across cases included facilitating more transformative and action-oriented approaches to OSE, as well as creating meaningful interactions among students, which then hinder engagement with emotions and linking education to concrete places to foster embodied and place-based learning (Table 4). Combined, these challenges impact particularly the development of interpersonal, intrapersonal and implementation competencies.

The key opportunities included increasing accessibility and inclusiveness for diverse students (Table 5). The opportunities afforded by geographical diversity were discussed from different perspectives. Interviewees at UH emphasized the possibility of including Global South perspectives; interviewees at EAN emphasized the possibility of creating international networks and reaching remote communities within Latin America to include their knowledges of sustainability questions. A shared emphasis across the cases was that online environments are particularly suitable for teaching/learning about systems thinking compared to other KCS.

Some issues were identified both as challenges and opportunities. For instance, geographical diversity was seen as an opportunity for sustainability education, if the course was designed to integrate students’ experiences from various locations. Simultaneously, creating local relevance and connections for a globally reaching student body was perceived as a challenge in course design. In some courses, online environments have enabled connections with actors outside academia, such as remote communities and companies, and facilitated more transdisciplinary approaches in education. Nevertheless, other interviewees mentioned that arranging meaningful interactions between students and practice partners is harder in online environments. Additionally, many interviewees believed that asynchronous online education poses a risk to sustainability education, as it reduces group work and hands-on experiences, which are recognized as the primary means to develop interpersonal competencies and practice collective change agency.

5. Discussion

This research investigated the purpose, process of creation, as well as challenge and opportunities in OSE programs/courses in three diverse institutions. The discussion focuses on the main implications of the findings, emphasizing how to confront obstacles to better design and implement OSE.

5.1 Disconnects in aligning the purpose of online sustainability education with its implementation

The findings show that sustainability and transformative social engagement are strategically important for universities, as described by Stephens et al. (2008). However, the contribution of OSE to sustainability objectives is often unclear, as OSE has emerged as a formal process prior to or alongside evolving sustainability strategies. OSE may, thus, remain dependent on fortuitous coincidences (e.g. individuals teaching sustainability are also in positions where they can achieve the administrative changes necessary to implement these programs; Disterheft et al., 2015). However, there is potential in OSE efforts to integrate sustainability across entire institutions (UNESCO, 2020), if program/course creation supports faculty and staff learning and fosters new relationships.

The research reveals that online sustainability programs/courses, despite being promoted by universities through the concept of change agency, can fall short in promoting transformative and action-oriented learning. This outcome is particularly evident in the acquisition of interpersonal and intrapersonal and implementation competencies (Brundiers et al., 2021). The goal of developing students’ change agency was perceived as particularly difficult to achieve within the limitations of online courses at UH and ASU. To address this issue, it is crucial to align OSE learning outcomes, pedagogies and assessment with HEIs’ strategic sustainability goals. Additionally, efforts to foster space for bottom-up innovations through input from various external actors in the process of refining sustainability education strategies have been recommended (Weiss et al., 2021). The case studies suggest that EAN placed greater institutional emphasis on sustainability, integrating it across operations and education through a transdisciplinary approach. This alignment between university and program objectives is central to EAN’s approach to OSE, which focuses on collaborating with local communities and businesses at various levels.

5.2 Resources and collaborations for careful design and implementation of online sustainability education

The creation of programs/courses was often perceived to face financial and human resource constraints, which can be exacerbated when OSE prioritizes quantity over quality without allocating sufficient resources. Interviews at ASU revealed that marketing pressures were a significant driver of OSE. This is a common issue for online formats (Morris et al., 2020), in which the tension between generating income and democratizing education can limit the potential of OSE.

The findings illustrate that OSE brings new requirements for collaboration among university faculty and staff with community partners to create sustainability education programs based on transdisciplinary principles (Tijsma et al., 2023). To achieve its transformative and action-oriented purposes, OSE benefits from closer collaboration among faculty/staff with expertise in both sustainability and online pedagogies, as well as with instructional designers with technical and pedagogical expertise. Functional relationships, such as those between faculty members and instructional designers, which were deemed important at ASU, have been shown to enhance the uptake of sustainability agendas at universities (Purcell et al., 2019). More engagement is also needed to address inequities in both course development/delivery. Inequities in program/course development and delivery were evidenced at UH, where content creators volunteered their time, and at ASU, where instructors are often employed in short-term contracts, despite evidence that such working conditions negatively impact student learning outcomes (Davis, 2017).

5.3 Limited coordinating spaces for discussions on approaches to sustainability among faculty and staff members in program/course creation

The case studies show that a lack of shared vision, follow-up and discussion about sustainability in program/course creation can lead to arbitrary or conflicting content. Making values and norms explicit in classroom discussions has been highlighted as critically important (Leichenko and O’Brien, 2020) and is also needed in the online course creation process to understand upon what visions and knowledges OSE is based (Leal Filho et al., 2018). Online program/course creation can be a way to foster exchange and learning between faculties regarding sustainability and to create new relationships and leverage sustainability teaching to new faculties. Hence, clarifying the underpinning values and epistemological and ontological assumptions of staff members, faculty, instructors and instructional designers would improve transparency in course creation processes, including the competency development of staff regarding sustainability (Barth and Rieckmann, 2012). In many cases, course/lecture/module content depends largely on individual faculty members, leading to inconsistencies across the curriculum. The diversity of values is amplified in OSE, as delivery/teaching is often disconnected from those who create the content, unlike the teaching of in-person courses. Furthermore, online programs/courses are often accessed by learners in different contexts who have diverse views and experiences regarding sustainability. This difference between in-person and online environments should be acknowledged in the design and implementation of OSE.

5.4 Development of transformative and transdisciplinary activities and pedagogies for online sustainability education merits more focus

The findings indicate that incorporating transformative and action-oriented approaches, such as transdisciplinary projects, place-based education, emotional connections and empathy, into OSE poses greater challenges than implementing descriptive–analytical methods that dominate the field. As the KCS are interconnected (Brundiers et al., 2021), this gap between these two types of approaches hinders the development of these competencies in online environments. Online environments tend to prioritize descriptive-analytical methods because of limited financial and personnel resources, technical constraints and the need for larger classes and asynchronous teaching formats. These problems were particularly seen to influence the cultivation of interpersonal competence, even though many interviewees acknowledged that collaboration and interactive learning could be facilitated by bringing new kinds of exercises to online environments.

5.5 Understanding the limitations of online environments, while harvesting their potential

This research and previous studies (Greenhow et al., 2022) show that online education faces various challenges including equity in access, the technical competencies of students and instructors and the ability to achieve collective tasks from remote locations. Expanding OSE to a larger, global audience poses inherent difficulties in organizing interactive sessions, which indicates that chasing quantity through the commodification of OSE can undermine its potential transformative and action-oriented quality for students. Some scholars have argued that universities will “fail” to achieve their transformative sustainability goals if they continue to focus on cultivating technical expertise and ignore more relational aspects of transformations toward sustainability (Moser and Fazey, 2021). The findings illustrate that online environments create challenges for building relationships and promoting embodied interaction. To fulfill its transformative and action-oriented potential, OSE needs to carefully consider what pedagogical models can be applied in a meaningful way in online environments (e.g. challenge-based learning, Kasch et al., 2022) and connection to real-world activities and diverse societal actors (Singer-Brodowski, 2023) to foster place-based and transformative learning (Sipos et al., 2008). EAN’s applied sustainability programs and its focus on territorial realities that reach out to people who would not necessarily be included in in-person education are examples of ways OSE might hold transformative potential in relation to wider society through its capacity of leverage accessibility and inclusion.

5.6 How can online sustainability education contribute to transformative universities and society?

Table 6 summarizes five overlapping principles derived from the findings to address these challenges and enhance the design and implementation of OSE in HEIs and other societal contexts.

The challenges and opportunities outlined in this study are crucial for universities worldwide that aim to expand their online sustainability programs, enter new learning “markets,” and provide equal access to academic learning, while addressing rising costs of higher education. The results emphasize the importance of critical reflection on alignment of universities’ sustainability goals and pedagogies and learning outcomes of OSE (Principle 1). University strategies should address not only the “what” and “why” of sustainability education but also “how” it can be delivered and the resources required to achieve the desired outcomes (Principles 2–5). The authors argue that without critical assessment and deliberate design regarding the purpose, process and implementation of OSE, HEIs follow the development model linked to market economies rather than constructing a more socially-conscious notion of “development” that incorporates diverse perspectives, values and alternative philosophies of good living (i.e. sustainability transformation) (Beling et al., 2018; Ala-Uddin, 2019).

It is essential to evaluate the effectiveness of OSE beyond HEIs in diverse contexts of adult learning and professional development. While increased knowledge of sustainability is beneficial to society, it alone will not enable transformative changes. To achieve transformative outcomes, educational approaches must be tailored to different online learning contexts and audiences, going beyond the current offerings of MOOCs and focusing on the development of more transformative and action-oriented pedagogies (Principles 4 and 5). As sustainability challenges and solutions are often specific to local contexts and institutions (Stephens et al., 2008), it is crucial to consider what kinds of sustainability values are promoted and transferred between different contexts and countries through online education (Principle 3). Hence, OSE must be rooted more strongly in the political and ethical environments of learning encounters (Sund and Öhman, 2014) and use the benefits of multilocality and intercultural exchange to develop students’ change agency beyond the classroom. Otherwise, the ambiguity of the concept of sustainability, multiple related approaches and its translation into educational policy and practice (Cheeseman et al., 2019) may be amplified by online environments, leading to empty promises about transformative changes toward sustainability through higher education.

5.7 Limitations

The authors recognize that the findings are based on the perceptions of faculty and staff, which may differ from those of students or an impartial third party. Additionally, the depth of the data collected from EAN is less comprehensive than that from UH and ASU, owing to not being directly affiliated with the authors of this paper. Responses to questions about previous program/course creation processes relied on individuals’ memories and may not have provided an overarching view of the program/course beyond their individual roles. Therefore, embedded and longitudinal studies would be more effective in detecting such omissions and further evaluating programs/courses.

6. Conclusions

OSE can be crucial for universities to promote sustainability and achieve broader transformative goals in education and societal engagement. By studying the development and implementation of OSE in three different universities, this research reveals that more efforts are needed for HEIs to bridge the gap between their stated sustainability goals and practical implementation. Sustainability education differs from more conventional disciplinary studies in its focus on normative questions, application of knowledge, interaction, emotions and embodiment, making it challenging to transfer to online formats without deliberate and intentional efforts. As such, program leaders and faculty members must critically reflect on the limitations of online environments for sustainability education, assess the sustainability perspectives they engage with and determine if there is adequate support for course and program development to overcome obstacles and seize opportunities.

OSE increases accessibility, but it may also compromise the quality and outcomes. The findings highlight several areas for improvement that can be proactively addressed, including inadequate resources for course development, perceived gaps in expertise and collaboration and the limited scope and length of courses that sometimes remain at the introductory level. Additionally, the authors suggest developing more transformative and transdisciplinary activities, engaging with emotions and embodied experiences and place-based exercises that can help convert sustainability goals into action by promoting inter and intrapersonal and implementation competencies that were perceived challenging in online formats across the three cases.

Figures

Figure 1.

The rise of OSE requires consideration of the special characteristics of sustainability education (e.g. focusing on transdisciplinary and transformative learning and development of change agency in addition to content knowledge) and translating them to online environments

Table 1.

The scope and characteristics of the interviews

University	Interviews and sample	Positions of interviewees
UH	n = 14; 7 in person interviews / 7 Zoom interviews; length 30–75 min; language Finnish/English	3 project lead/coordinators, 2 instructors, 9 module leader/content contributors, 3 steering group members, 2 interviewees had two different positions in the course development
	Interviewees included one module leader/key contributor from each module, project coordinators/leadership and steering group members as well as instructors. Key interviewees were identified with the help of the project lead, who was able to tell who had been actively involved and had a significant role in the course development out of the over 160 contributors
ASU	n = 12; all interviews conducted on Zoom; length 30–75 min; language English	3 program administrators, 2 instructional designers, 7 instructors
	While the whole sustainability faculty includes about 50 members, the aim was to target instructors in several areas. First, instructors who teach courses in the online undergraduate program focused on each of the KCS. Second, instructors who teach courses focused on different dimensions of sustainability (social, economic, environmental). Third, instructors teaching courses at different levels (e.g. introductory vs upper-level) and through different types of courses (e.g. lecture-focus vs applied workshop). The primary program administrators and instructional designers were interviewed
EAN	n = 5; all interviews conducted on Zoom; length 30–60 min; language Spanish	5 instructors, 1 of whom was a leader of a disciplinary area
	The whole sustainability faculty includes 19 people. 10 relevant interviewees were identified for the study and after several attempts managed to arrange interviews with 5

Source: Authors’ own creation/work

Table 2.

Examples of how UH, ASU and EAN express categories of university relationships to societal transformations toward sustainability at the strategic level (c.f., Stephens et al., 2008) based on a review of university strategies, goals in sustainability and responsibility programs and program/course websites

Category	UH	ASU	EAN
Microcosm of a society (campus operations)	Aims to become carbon neutral by 2030	Sustainability goals centered on making on-campus activities more sustainable (e.g. ASU has been climate neutral since 2019)	Aims to reduce its own impacts and implement sustainable architecture, including its emblematic main campus building
Place of concentrated learning	Seeks to educate students to become “experts who change the world and the direction of responsibility and sustainability” Sustainability is to become a part of all programs, and the success of this aim is measured with the number of students taking the online sustainability course	The online bachelor’s in arts in sustainability and the masters of sustainability leadership emphasize practical and experiential learning and community engagement that can support students in “making an impact on the world after graduation”	The master’s program in sustainable development projects portrays itself as providing students with skills to design and lead projects that contribute to the sustainable development of their surroundings
Place where knowledge is created but also exchanged	Research and teaching seek to support problem-solving for sustainability issues	Prioritizes interactions with the wider society to “co-develop solutions” that would ensure sustainability and resilience, particularly in relation to the regional scale of Arizona	Undertaken changes in internal structure, implemented programs that have sustainable entrepreneurship and knowledge embedded in them and promoted research on those topics
Transdisciplinary agent of change	Strategic goals of creating knowledge in interaction with the society and exchanging knowledge to decision-making	As part of efforts to become a “new American university”, has embraced design principles that emphasize student success, transforming society, transdisciplinarity and being socially embedded in communities	Envisions supporting and promoting businesses that align with resilience, prospection, ethics-esthetics and bio-inspiration Active engagement with small businesses, industries and government agencies (e.g. for compliance with the SDGs)

Source: Authors’ own creation/work

Table 3.

Purpose of the online sustainability program/course as described by interviewees from UH, ASU and EAN

UH	ASU	EAN
Introduce the topic of sustainability through providing general and accessible sustainability education Enhance interdisciplinarity Develop students’ change agency and sustainability expertise in the society	Develop students’ change agency and related competencies Support professional development and careers in sustainability Provide general sustainability education Enhance interdisciplinarity	Develop measurable sustainability actions Embed the program in territories and achieve local/regional impact through developing students’ competences

Note:

Themes are listed in order of frequency

Source: Authors’ own creation/work

Table 4.

Challenges related to implementing OSE, as identified from interviews in the case studies

Main challenges for designing and delivering OSE courses	Related sub-themes regarding pedagogical difficulties
Interaction	Creating sense of community Facilitating engagement among students (particularly asynchronous online courses) Developing group projects Providing more-than-human encounters Honing interpersonal competency
Emotions	Dealing with climate/future anxiety Transmitting reactions and feedback Creating empathy Engendering inspiration Honing intrapersonal competency
Embodiment	Implementing hands-on exercises Using head, hands and hearts
Place connections	Conducting field work/visits Finding shared entry point to the topic despite geographical diversity Relating new knowledge to own experiences Linking with place-based sustainability Scaling courses to international levels Contextualizing competencies for people in different contexts
Depth and complexity of issues	Making complex things and phenomena tangible Reacting timely to recent events (e.g. droughts) Discussing topics in-depth
Action	Implementing transformative learning Perceiving teaching a competency-based approach requires more work Organizing transdisciplinary education Applying knowledge and providing practical tools Honing implementation competency
General practical challenges in delivery of online sustainability programs/courses:	Instructors: Grading KCS (qualitative assessment takes resources) Managing instructors’ (insufficient) training on sustainability Course designers: Engaging with sustainability as a fast-moving field, which requires constant updates of courses Organizing group work because of time zones/changes Translating in-person courses to online Connecting to communities without internet (e.g. indigenous people, local communities) Adjusting group work for automated/asynchronous courses Overarching: Overcoming faculty traditions/lack of knowledge of sustainability Lacking prior experience in online environments as a teacher or a student Separation between sustainability expertise and (online) pedagogical expertise

Source: Authors’ own creation/work

Table 5.

Opportunities related to implementing OSE in online environments as identified from interviews conducted in case studies from Finland, the USA and Colombia

Main opportunities for designing and delivering OSE courses	Related sub-themes regarding pedagogical opportunities for students
Accessibility and inclusivity	Not being time/place bound Having greater access to information Being more affordable Allowing more heterogeneity in students (e.g. people working, different ages) Integrating remote communities and their knowledge
Participation	Providing anonymity Expressing views more easily (for some)
Use of technology	Incorporating new games/artefacts
Interdisciplinarity	Facilitating interactions between students from diverse disciplines who would not otherwise meet on the same course
Geographical diversity	Creating international networks Including the global South perspective Using students’ multiple experiences from many locations as an entry point
Transdisciplinarity	Promoting new possibilities for collaboration (e.g. with companies)

Source: Authors’ own creation/work

Table 6.

Principles for enhancing transformative potential of OSE

Principle 1	Assess strategic alignment	It is crucial to enhance the synergies of OSE with broader sustainability policies for the effective implementation of HEIs. On the one hand, instructors and program designers need to seek space and value addition by orienting their objectives within HEIs’ overall strategic goals of transformative societal engagement, and authorities need to appreciate that OSE, in turn, can be used to achieve those institutional goals
Principle 2	Ensure resources and collaborations	Implementing online sustainability education at HEIs is heavily dependent on adequate resources (e.g. human, financial and infrastructure), which can be most effectively allocated for the successful design of online education through collaborations among faculty, technical experts, students and relevant societal actors. Such collaborations allow resilience and longevity to initiatives to overcome idiosyncrasies, such as individual leadership or changes in funding, and online sustainability education requires the active development of new relationships between instructional designers, sustainability content and pedagogical experts to ensure outcomes
Principle 3	Promote reflexivity	Thoughtfully structured deliberative processes and critical reflexivity on what kinds of sustainability values programs/courses support play a pivotal role in designing online sustainability education. Together, they enhance the transparency of the normative assumptions that shape and underlie the field of sustainability itself. The need for transparency is particularly heightened in online environments, where content creation involves individuals who are not directly responsible for teaching the program/course and students are embedded in diverse socio-territorial contexts
Principle 4	Develop pedagogies to embed a full suite of competencies	OSE needs to move beyond the transmission of knowledge to encourage action on sustainability problems. This crucial step entails combining both content knowledge and the full suite of sustainability competencies, which requires developing and testing new online pedagogical approaches that facilitate transformative and action-oriented learning and follow-up on the integration and achievement of these competencies in online courses and programs
Principle 5	Anticipate online environments’ strengths/weaknesses	Implementing OSE requires awareness of the risks, while leveraging the potential and acknowledging the limitations of the online format. Ideally, online sustainability education should also include in-person or synchronous interactions to cultivate interpersonal competence. Each of these formats and their combination means that designers and instructors need to be prepared for different learning environments

Source: Authors’ own creation/work

Supplementary material

The supplementary material for this article can be found online.