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Learning and Teaching

We are committed to embedding sustainability across our learning and teaching experiences, supporting learners to understand and address the environmental, social, and economic challenges facing society and the wider world.

Our Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) activities aim to enable students to develop the knowledge, skills and values required to actively co-shape a more equitable and sustainable future. This involves facilitating learning experiences that address and tackle key sustainability challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity, social justice, sustainable production, resource depletion, over-consumption and waste.

Our strategic commitment to ESD

Our University strategy ‘Our Future, Together’, strongly supports Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) by embedding sustainability in our research, education, operations, and community engagement. It champions the use of our campus as a ‘Living Lab’ for real-world, experiential learning and highlights our commitment to developing resilient, critical, and problem-solving graduates who are equipped to lead sustainable change in an uncertain world. Our approach to ESD is guided by our Education for Sustainable Development Action Plan Overview 2024-2030 and further supported through our Environmental Sustainability Action Plan 2024-25 and Education & Students Sub-strategy.

Training and resources for promoting sustainability within the curriculum

Sustainability is a core theme in our Education Development Toolkit , which includes information and resources such as: key definitions; an overview of sustainability in higher education and its alignment with international, national, and Cardiff University strategic goals; practical guidance on embedding sustainability in learning and teaching across disciplines; case studies from diverse subject areas demonstrating ESD in action at Cardiff University and beyond.

We also provide a range of Sustainability Learning and Teaching CPD courses and workshops:

  • The Sustainability Conversation: an introduction to Education for Sustainable Development
  • Evolving Education for Sustainable Development: Considerations for Practice
  • Purposefully designing change agents: Enhancing Education for Sustainable Development in (co)design
  • Future-proofing pedagogy: how to adapt teaching practice to develop change-agents
  • Teaching across disciplines: how to adapt teaching practice to develop integrated problem-solving skills in students

Living Lab projects

We support a range of projects that use our physical environment, operations, and partnerships as a testbed for real-world research, teaching, and learning. By promoting our campus as a 'Living Lab', we create hands-on opportunities for students, researchers, and Professional Services staff to collaborate on sustainability challenges in ways that benefit both the University and the wider community.

This project involved two co-design workshops aimed at defining design themes that integrate biodiversity, architecture, and user experience for the front areas of University buildings 39–45 along Park Place. Using a co-creation approach:

  • the Discover + Design workshop explored how users perceived and experienced the space, focusing on local flora and fauna through mapping and site appraisal activities
  • the Dream + Deliver workshop engaged participants in identifying design themes and creating a collective design vision for the outdoor spaces of Park Place through a hands-on model-making exercise

The workshops were led by two PhD students with relevant expertise. Participants included university staff and students who have a connection to the project site, as well as  representatives from relevant university departments and local community groups. .

Conducted in association with Cardiff University’s Ecosystem Resilience and Biodiversity Action Plan, this study examined how passive acoustic monitoring and automated classifiers can be jointly used to assess bird diversity and community structure across five urban sites in Cardiff, Wales. It also evaluated the detection range and confidence thresholds of the tools used. The findings highlight the vital role that small, high-quality habitats play in supporting distinct avian communities within urban environments. The impacts of the project include:

  • improved understanding of bird species richness and activity on campus
  • greater collaboration across university departments and locations
  • laying the groundwork for long-term urban biodiversity monitoring in Cardiff