This is the fifth in our series of blog posts showcasing work presented at ESD Exchange. Jenny’s talk takes place on day one of the ESD Exchange conference on April 16th 2026
Across higher education, sustainability is now firmly on the agenda.
From institutional strategies to estates plans and curriculum frameworks, universities are increasingly aligning themselves with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). And yet, despite this progress, a familiar challenge remains:
How do we move from commitment to meaningful student engagement?
This question feels particularly pressing at a time when the sector is navigating significant pressures. Student recruitment is becoming more competitive. Financial constraints are sharpening the focus on what we prioritise. And student experience and satisfaction remain central to how institutions are understood and evaluated.
In this context, sustainability can sometimes feel like something that sits just slightly to one side — important, but difficult to fully integrate into already busy programmes.
And yet, in my experience, students are already asking for it.
Not always explicitly, but in the kinds of questions they bring into the classroom:
What does this mean for the world I’m going into?
Where do I fit within that?
What kind of impact can I have?
The challenge, then, is perhaps less about relevance — and more about translation.
From awareness to something more meaningful
Over the past few years, we have been exploring this challenge through the development of a digital SDG Action-Planning approach, co-designed with colleagues at NETpositive Futures.
The intention was not to add more content into the curriculum, but to create a structured space within it. A space where students could pause, reflect, and begin to connect what they are learning with what matters to them.
The approach is built around three stages:
- Providing basic contextual info so the tool can provide the most relevant information based on student type
- Identify individual priorities around the themes of People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace and Partnerships.
- Refine a personal plan based around individual priorities, the plan recognises existing activity and progress.
It can be used flexibly — as a formative activity, an assessed component, or an employability-focused exercise — and importantly, it does not require specialist sustainability expertise.
What are we noticing?
Drawing on a dataset of over 600 students across multiple disciplines, a number of patterns are beginning to emerge.
Students consistently engage with themes such as climate action, consumption and social inequality. They take action in ways that are often modest but meaningful such as changes in behaviour, conversations within their communities, or small interventions in their everyday lives.
But what has been most striking is not just what they do but how they begin to talk and write about it.
We are seeing:
- growing confidence in taking sustainability-related action
- clearer connections between their studies and future career pathways
- an increasing interest in purpose-driven work
- and, in some cases, a greater sense of direction and wellbeing
There are also some unintended outcomes.
Students are using sustainability as a way of making sense of their learning more broadly. It becomes a lens through which they explore questions of responsibility, ethics and identity — not just content.
Why this matters now
At a time when the sector is focused on student experience, engagement and outcomes, these insights feel important.
They suggest that sustainability when approached through values, reflection and action, can support not only environmental or social awareness, but also:
- engagement with learning
- a sense of purpose
- employability and skills development
- and overall student satisfaction
Crucially, this does not require wholesale curriculum redesign. Colleagues working in disciplines outside of sustainability have found that this approach offers a manageable way in, working with what already exists rather than adding to it. In a context where time and resource are limited, that matters.
Rethinking how we evidence impact
One of the persistent questions in ESD has been how we understand whether it is “working” the use of learner generated data offers one possible route forward. By capturing what students prioritise, what they choose to act on, and how they reflect on that process, we begin to build a richer picture of engagement and not simply whether sustainability is present in the curriculum, but how it is experienced.
This has potential not only for teaching and learning, but also for how institutions think about:
- learning gain
- graduate attributes
- and the kinds of capabilities students take with them
Where next?
This work is still developing.
We are now exploring how this approach might be scaled across disciplines and organisations, and how it might translate into other contexts, including professional and organisational learning.
But perhaps the more important question is a broader one for the sector:
What if sustainability education is less about what we include in the curriculum, and more about the spaces we create for students to reflect, connect and act?
If we can support students to link global challenges with their own lives, values and aspirations, then sustainability becomes something more than a topic it becomes part of how they understand themselves and their role in the world.
This is based on my workshop at the ESD Exchange conference (April 2026)
