Pedagogy and Learning for Sustainability in a Virtual World Scaffold

Abstract

Higher education institutions have an important contribution to make to learning for sustainability and education for sustainable development. A blended learning approach utilising a virtual world called Second Life was utilised in The Case for Sustainability, a second year core subject at James Cook University in Cairns Australia. The aim was to provide a rich contextual landscape to stimulate learner engagement with sustainability curricula. Data from student assessment tasks—a written review, an oral presentation, and ePortfolio submission, a voluntary online survey, tutorial observations, and conversations with students—were comparatively analysed with subject learning outcomes and desired graduate attributes. Findings confirm a high level of learner engagement with the topic, improved student engagement with the subject’s learning outcomes, and developed graduate attributes of information literacy, self-reliance and interpersonal understanding, and using tools and technologies. This blended learning activity in a virtual world scaffold augmented undergraduate critical thinking and problem solving for real-world sustainability learning.