OU and OU Students Association achieve first Responsible Futures Accreditation

Thanks to all involved in securing the OU and OU Students Association’s first Responsible Futures accreditation, demonstrating work across the four faculties to embed sustainability in our curriculum. Responsible Futures is an externally assessed accreditation mark (audited by our own students) to ensure all our students gain the skills and experience needed to thrive as global citizens.

Responsible Futures is a whole-institution approach to embedding holistic sustainability across the formal, informal and subliminal curriculum across both Higher and Further Education. It is a supported change programme and accreditation mark that works to put sustainability at the heart of education.

The OU and OU Students’ Association have collaborated and have now been awarded the full Responsible Futures Accreditation, meaning we’ve exceeded the score threshold and have demonstrated and evidenced our commitment and progress for embedding sustainability and social responsibility across the whole institution. This accreditation will be valid for two years, at which time another audit will be required to re-validate our accreditation and show evidence of activities over the two years to April 2026.

Jethro Tieman, the OU Students’ Association’s elected Sustainability Representative said:

“Responsible Futures accreditation unlocked proof that our university and students are serious about sustainability.

But let’s be honest, this isn’t just a shiny badge for us to wave around; it’s the start of something bigger. As Sustainability Rep, I’m excited to build on this great collaborative start and work to make sustainability a core part of our university, extending the social justice mission we were founded upon, to climate and environmental justice.”

 

For more information about and to get involved in Responsible Futures and sustainability at the OU and OU Students’ Association, please contact sustainability@open.ac.uk.

 

Score overview:

Key Findings

On Tuesday 23^rd and Wednesday 24^th April 2024, eight OU students were trained and audited the Open University and Open University Students Association on their progress on embedding sustainability in all student learning. Through the experience, auditors gained valuable employability and education for sustainable development (ESD) skills while playing a leadership role in supporting their institution and students’ union to advance sustainability in informal, formal, and subliminal learning. Throughout various points in the audit, student auditors reflected on their experiences on the auditing process and the work of Open University and Open University Students Association’s Responsible Futures Partnership.

 

Here are some of their thoughts:

• “I am impressed by the level of commitment at all levels in taking action in embedding sustainable practices as part of this programme and feel proud to be a student at a university that cares about making meaningful change.”
• “The Partnership has clearly made great strides towards attaining the Responsible Futures accreditation; it was amazing to see just how much evidence was shared with auditors and the work being done is just so interesting. I feel proud to be a student at the OU!”
• “I think having this accreditation will become more and more important as years go on.”
• “I think they are doing the best they can under the circumstances, and I think they are doing a great job so far, but more can be done.”
• “It is clear that they have put a huge amount of work into documentation, seeking out examples and showcasing the work they're doing - and are brutally honest in areas they know they could do better.”
• “The Partnership has worked really hard together to attain the Responsible Futures accreditation and I hope they are successful in doing this.”

 

Feedback

 

Baselines and benchmarks

Overall positives:

- Statistically significant results of the National Student Survey (NSS) and OU Student Association Annual Membership Survey (AMS)

- Students’ involvement in curriculum mapping; whole curriculum mapped in 2022

Overall recommendations:

- Develop longitudinal analyses of survey results

- Complete follow-up curriculum mapping

- Develop more formal mechanisms to explore staff knowledge and confidence with sustainability at the institution, and capture how this has informed their practices

 

 

Partnership and Planning

Overall positives:

- Broad range of stakeholders involved in work related to Responsible Futures

Overall recommendations:

- Ensure formal engagement with trade unions

- Develop a SMART action plan to progress work on Responsible Futures and enable holistic monitoring of progress
 

 

Leadership and Strategy

Overall positives:

- High level of senior buy-in and support for the sustainability agenda and Responsible Futures work

- References to sustainability in strategic documents

-Clear support for sharing sustainability messaging from the marketing team

Overall recommendations: 

- Develop a collaborative statement on what holistic sustainability means to the referring to institutional values

- Provide detail on how implementation of the various plans is being monitored (e.g. Teaching and Learning Plan)

 

 

Policy and Commitment

Overall positives:

- Extensive resourcing for staff working on sustainability across different levels of seniority

- Good work on widening participation

- Good training opportunities (Carbon Literacy, Open Learn resources)

- Careers and Employability Services support of Green Skills

Overall recommendations:

- Expand OU Students’ Association’s policy to cover sustainability holistically

- Continue progressing inclusion of sustainability in People Services processes, including all staff induction

 

 

Interventions

Overall positives:

- Broad range of formal, informal and subliminal activity

- Some great examples of students co-creating teaching, learning and assessment

Overall recommendations:

- Strengthen monitoring and evaluation of the interventions to enable demonstration of reach and impact

- Provide resource for grassroots student and staff projects supporting sustainability

- Organise sustainability events to bring staff and students together

- More collaboration between Academic and Non-Academic staff creating learning opportunities for students

- Utilise student coursework to progress

- Evidence students working together from different disciplines on Sustainability

- Increase subliminal learning to embed Sustainability into student key touchpoints (from first contact to enrolment and welcome to graduation and alumni services).

 

 

Impacts and Outcomes

Overall positives:

- Initial work on measuring impact and outcomes

Overall recommendations:

- More reflection on impact and measuring impact

- More reflection on progress, and why progress has been achieved

 

 

Outreach

Overall positives:

- A large variety of outreach activities delivered

Overall recommendations:

- Publish case studies highlighting sustainability-related achievements, impacts and outcomes beyond those in the formal curriculum

- Consider monitoring and evaluation of outreach activities to better demonstrate impact

- Every course across every level to have meaningful embedded content and teaching methods related to Sustainability.

- Consider how to meaningfully and routinely engage students in collaborative approaches

- Provide evidence on how training in sustainability translates into positive outcomes

 

 

As part of the Self-Defined Criteria, we were given the opportunity to submit up to three activities that highlight innovative, creative and unique practices, the feedback for each is below.

Received positive scoring for all three case studies:

- Citizen Science Platforms

It is great that nQuire is being piloted for students to promote sustainable ways of living through formal education.

It is absolutely brilliant that iSpot and Treezilla are used as teaching and learning tools on a number of modules within the STEM faculty.

The X-Polli:Nation projects, engaging thousands of school pupils in the UK and Italy with citizen science through outdoor learning on pollinators, are incredible. It is great to hear this is now being taken into wider community, too.

The Citizen Science and Artificial Intelligence research group and the interdisciplinary data science research grouping within the STEM faculty focused on applications of machine learning for data mining have generated a lot of grant funding for further development of other exciting initiatives in this area.

Auditors are really impressed with the evidence provided!

- Broadcast and Partnerships co-productions

Very unique completion of this criterion! The OU partners with the BBC and other broadcasters, creating content for teaching and learning whilst extending the University’s impact and reach at scale.

Many impactful projects related to the environment have been produced, including some well-known names such as Blue Planet, Planet Earth, The Green Planet, The Great British year, Springwatch, Greta Thunberg: A year to Change the World and Wild Ises.

Recommendations: Consider how students could be involved with these collaborations. Consider how the collaborations could cover holistic sustainability, as the evidence provided heavily focused on environmental sustainability.     

- Pollution Monitors

The provision of practical, low-cost air quality monitors to Mathematics and Statistics students enabled primary data collection and analysis as part of their assignment.

Recommendations: Explore how mechanisms used for this project can be used more widely within formal curriculum opportunities.