SDG’s in University of Groningen courses

The University of Groningen (UG) puts great emphasis on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which are used as guidance for its sustainability effort in education, research, and societal impact. The SDGs have 17 main goals and 169 targets . They together express the overall aim for ‘peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future’.

But to what extent are these SDG already included in UG courses?

The Rudolf Agricola School for Sustainable Development aims to identify the educational content offered within the university with the help of UG students and teachers.
We do this at the level of both the main SDGs and the 169 more specific SDG targets. This is a task that needs quite a bit of precision, since the long description of the main goals often uncovers aspects not expected by the very short formulations (like ‘No Hunger). Furthermore, going through the whole list of 169 targets is quite tedious and time consuming.

The Sustainability Evaluation tool therefore uses a video-enhanced ranking and selection tool. In this tool you watch a short video that introduces the main SDGs – fully described. Per main SDG a selection of the underlying targets is shown that expresses their breadth (without you needing to read them all). Based on this overview you can select the main SDGs that are relevant. After selecting the main goals in the 5 minute video you rank them. Then, for only the selected main SDGS you go through the full list of targets that are potentially relevant and select the ones that are touched upon in your course.
Through this approach you can be certain that you identify for your course all SDGs and targets that are relevant and that you – commonly – only have to review say 30 SDG targets instead of 169.

For an overview of the 17 main SDGs and their most important subgoals, please find a pdf here.

How to use the sustainability evaluation tool:

1. Create an account
2. Click on “Create a new course”
3. You will be asked to identify the core SDGs of your course.
   The video can help you to understand the Goals and it provides examples of subgoals. When you evaluate the course, think of lecture and course materials, but also group assignments and class discussions.
4. You will be then asked to rank the SDGs in your course. Drag and drop them based on the crucial role they have played in your course.
5. After you identified the main goals, you are asked to identify the subgoals for each SDGs and rank them according to their importance in the course. 
6. After identifying and ranking the main SDGs and SDG subgoals, you are asked to estimate the time spent in hours on each of these.
7. At the end of the evaluation, you will see a downloadable report that offers a comprehensive overview of the different SDGs and the time spent on each of these, of your course. (See example below)
8. Please note that for students RAS/UG aim to provide a supplement to their Bachelor or Master diploma that gives an overview of the time they spent on the different SDGs based on the information that lecturers provide per course.