Auditing the University: Promoting Business Education for Sustainability Through Audit-based Learning

Efforts to improve university-wide sustainability generally include sustainability learning, teaching, assessment, and campus sustainability activities; traditionally discrete activities facilitated separately by academics and estates’ management staff. In order to incorporate a local context into the University of Worcester Business School’s Education for Sustainability and improve university-wide sustainability performance, these two strands have been combined to create a constructivist, learner-centred business sustainability curriculum based on sustainability audits of the University.
Auditing the University provides practical, active audit-based learning to deliver students’ evolving preferences for experiential, collaborative learning and employers’ demands for employment ready graduates. The sustainability audit undertaken uses real-life business processes to develop sustainability knowledge and skills that are vital to promote sustainable business futures and softer employment skills such as negotiation, collaboration and influencing, which are essential for future career success.
This paper presents a case study analysis of an audit-based learning module for Business Management Students and explores opportunities and challenges associated with delivering it. It reports the findings of a study into students’ experiences of audit-based learning in the Level 5 undergraduate Business Sustainability Module, which operates as a ‘Living Lab’, to explore its ability to promote innovative learning, teaching and assessment in Education for Sustainability.
The paper also utilises the Framework for 21st Century Learning to explore audit-based learning’s ability to develop knowledge and skills appropriate for 21st Century businesses. Research findings are synthesised to capture and share this innovative approach to learning, teaching and assessment of business sustainability and offer insights to developers of interactive, experiential sustainability learning, teaching and assessment tools.