Student Survey

BOKU has been committed to sustainability for many years. Already in 2015, the following goal was ranked highest in the 1st BOKU Sustainability Strategy by the participating BOKU members: "Every BOKU student should come into contact with basic sustainability topics in a condensed way at least once during their studies".

As a result, the working group "Education for Sustainable Development" (AG BNE) was founded to discuss possibilities to strengthen sustainability in BOKU teaching. The AB BNE consists of about 15 people from different departments, the service unit E-Learning and Didactics and the Center for Global Change and Sustainability (gW/N), as well as student representatives.

Since 2020, BOKU has been publishing an annual, externally certified sustainability report in accordance with GRI standards. The topics "Education for Sustainable Development" and "Inter- and Transdisciplinary Teaching" are two of twelve essential topics that are mapped in the report with indicators and action plans. In order to improve the hitherto very poor data situation on this topic area, the AG BNE suggested conducting a student survey.

The survey is based on the guiding question:

To what extent does BOKU create the space to acquire knowledge and skills relevant to sustainability and to reflect on value attitudes?

With this question, the focus was placed on the framework conditions that BOKU provides. Knowledge about sustainability was deliberately not to be asked.

An German abridged version of the results can be downloaded here.

The questionnaire is based on the key sustainability competencies described by Wiek et al. (2011). Competencies are defined there as "a functionally linked complex ofknowledge, skills, and attitudes that enable successful task performance and problem solving" (Wiek et al., 2011, page 204). In relation to sustainability, sustainability competencies thus comprise knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are functionally linked and enable people to perform tasks in relation to real sustainability problems, challenges, and opportunities and to solve corresponding problems.