The difficulty with sustainability arises from its abstract nature and the fact that these problems have long term horizons. However, the seeds for sustainable development lie already in the lives of millions of people, if we just think that two important facets of sustainable development are:

urban transportation sustainability (measures and solutions able to tackle mobility challenges that lead to uncontrolled growth of vehicles and downgrading of quality of life) and

societal metabolism (models that facilitate the description of flows of material and energy within cities and provide a framework to study the interaction between human and natural systems).

Furthermore, sustainable development is among the grand challenges of the next decades. To come closer to achieving that state, the EU is committed to mainstream the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the European policy framework and current Commission priorities. Moreover, special attention is paid to the means for the achievement of the SDGs, their universal application to all countries and the simultaneous address of the economic, environmental and societal dimensions of sustainability. Thus, there is the need of not only raising awareness, but acquiring a sustainability literacy, in the sense of a functional education process that will provide the necessary skills and motives to cope and contribute with the challenges of sustainable development.

The difficulty with sustainability arises from its abstract nature and the fact that these problems have long term horizons. However, the seeds for sustainable development lie already in the lives of millions of people, if we just think that two important facets of sustainable development are urban transportation sustainability (measures and solutions able to tackle mobility challenges that lead to uncontrolled growth of vehicles and downgrading of quality of life) and societal metabolism (models that facilitate the description of flows of material and energy within cities and provide a framework to study the interaction between human and natural systems).

Already in these aspects lies the implication of a need to fully comprehend the long-term horizon of sustainability problems and its backward relation with the present (how the choice of a transportation means affects the future status of an urban system), as well as the need to translate complex notions into concrete ones (what is the impact of citizens’ consumption habits versus the implications to the local environment).

What is the purpose of SUSTAIN?

It is essential to provide an innovative pedagogy to students of higher education that will be the policy makers of tomorrow. In particular, their education should be exploring sustainability and the complexity among its different dimensions; moreover, it should provide the necessary means for the students to experience processes of complex decision making, sharpen, their clarity of thought, enhance their communication abilities and help them develop critical thinking as well as key competences to address the complexities of sustainable development.  This type of education needs to become a process that moves towards being transformed into a more experiential and student-centered way of learning: thus helping students to constantly assess the environment, operating and adapting to it through processes of revision from their frames of reference and provide the appropriate materials to comprehend systemic complexity.

The objective of the SUSTAIN project is to commence and promote sustainable literacy among students of higher education (and young people in general) through an innovative and student-centered education. To achieve this objective, we have designed, developed and implemented a course to be taught in students of higher education; a course hybrid in nature, as it combines game-based learning with an analytical style of education. In detail:

Which goals does the SUSTAIN project target?

By Combining game-based learning with an analytical style of education, SUSTAIN created:

• an illustrative Simulation Environment that makes the definitions of various sustainability aspects more concrete and allows students to experiment in a consequence-free environment, with scenario examples.
• a Board Game, that allows students learning about urbansustainability in a socially relaxed interactive learning environment.
• a Management Course, dealing with various topics like transportation sustainability,societal metabolism, etc. as well aswith decision making under thosecontexts, at the same time formalizing the mathematics neededto makerobust decisions. The course was heavily based on theBoardGame and its scenarios.

Impact

The project is making an impact in three main areas:

– At the EU level, the project provides added value in the efforts of the EC to disseminate the principles of sustainability, while at the same time educatingthe future generation of policy makers to be better equipped to promote and achieve the SDGs. Furthermore, the project takes on the effort of attaining an enhanced education by using and incorporatingthe principles of game-based learning and IC Technologies.

– For the partners of the project, the impact takes the form of a strengthened cooperation and networking of different organizations among different European countries and with different scopes and experiences. At the same time, it strengthens the role of the participating partners in their respective areas, as the project brings cutting-edge research closer to students and citizens.

– Finally, for the students that participate in the project, the new course provides a more student-centered education that informs them on important EU and global issues, and at the same time helps them develop the key competences to deal with complex situations that they will have to face in the near future. The project brings them in touch with the work performed by the partners and connect them with other facets of the European culture.