Sustainability Competences and Pedagogical Approaches at Universidade Aberta

Universidade Aberta (UAb) is the public Portuguese distance education university. It has around 6,000 students (full-time and exclusively engaged in distance education) and 340 employees (academic and administrative staff). UAb has focused on the quality of its service and has been recognised by several national and international entities, for example through its good practices in the areas of innovation and sustainability in higher education in 2019. This chapter presents the results from the 64 survey respondents. The main focus of the university is on cross-cutting themes, followed by social issues, environmental issues, and economic issues. The contribution is medium and the strength is medium. The ranking of the competences shows that Critical thinking and analysis is the highest, followed by Inter-disciplinary work. The ranking of the pedagogical approaches resulted in Project- or Problem-based learning and Case studies were the highest, followed by Participatory action research. The correlation analysis showed that Mind and concept maps, Lecturing, Case studies and Participatory Action Research developed the most competences. The competences most developed were Personal involvement, Communication and use of media, and Strategic action. The results show that improvements could be realised to develop the whole set of sustainability competences in the degrees of Universidade Aberta, and more sustainability oriented pedagogical approaches could be considered in order to improve the university’s contribution to interdisciplinary issues and Sustainable Development Goals.