Towards a more sustainable university: exploring PBL-SDG innovative strategies to contribute to the sustainable development

Abstract

With a view to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), UNESCO has been promoting the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) as a transformational tool to educate critically literate, socially connected and ethically responsible and engaged citizens. In this sense, universities should start incorporating sustainability in different fields of knowledge and investigating efficient learning methods to do so. Previous studies suggest an association between ESD and problem-based (PBL) and project-based (PjBL) learning methodologies. In this context, we hypothesize that i) little has been done to incorporate the SDG into the Human Biology bachelor’s degree; and ii) PBL and PjBL methodologies could be usefull to incorporate the SDG in health sciences studies. The results show that even though there is little presence of the SDG in the Human Biology bachelor’s degree, PBL and PjBL approaches can be very useful aids to work on them. This study provides insight into how student-centered and activelearning pedagogical practices can be optimally designed and implemented to foster sustainability amongst health sciences university students. And ultimately, intends to be a reference for others to start introducing sustainability in their pedagogical practices and curricula.