PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the issues involved in designing appropriate problems or scenarios suitable for sustainable development (SD) education, in the context of problem‐based learning (PBL) and experiential learning. Manchester's PBL approach to interdisciplinary Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has been well reported, for example, in papers at the Educating Engineers in Sustainable Development conference in 2008. This paper poses the question: to achieve transformational education, is design of student problems for ESD itself a wicked problem? The design process that has been used to generate ESD projects for one PBL unit is reflected upon, to share good practices and highlight points of ongoing contention.Design/methodology/approachWorking from the background to the original pilot project to develop an inter‐disciplinary course to heighten student skills in sustainability and change management, the paper looks at some of the theoretical approaches taken to the design of PBL scenarios and tries to place these in the context of education for SD.FindingsThe initial project found that using inter‐disciplinary, problem‐based approaches to embedding SD in the curriculum is not only practicable but also desirable. However, the approach to design of problem scenarios has to be adjusted to the nature of the “wickedness” of sustainability issues and be appropriate to the student cohort and institution.Research limitations/implicationsThe approaches are felt to be applicable to a much wider range of situations than is demonstrated in the paper but, clearly, the findings can only be grounded on the particular situation of the project.Originality/valueThe 2006 curriculum development action research project was intended to help other institutions to replicate the process but, much of the external attention since that time has focussed, inappropriately, on simply re‐using the scenarios that were described in the initial project rather than applying the design process that has been developed in order to devise new scenarios more appropriate to another course or institution.
As the number of new publishers and journals increases, so does the emergence of deceptive or 'predatory' publishers. Inexperienced researchers, particularly those in the developing world, are known to be vulnerable to spam e-mails inviting them to submit papers to journals with no discernible reputation. Think.Check.Submit. is a collective response to this problem from cross-industry stakeholders. The campaign provides clear and simple guidance to help researchers make informed choices about their publications. The resources can also be used by librarians responsible for developing researchers' knowledge of the scholarly communication landscape or disseminated by industry groups working to support researchers in their publishing. Think.Check.Submit.: the campaign helping researchers navigate the scholarly communication landscape IntroductionIn the summer of 2015 a number of stakeholders from across the scholarly publication sector who were concerned about what they termed 'deceptive publishers' and who recognized the value of providing guidance to support researchers in their publication choices came together to plan the 'Think.Check.Submit.' campaign. MembershipThe original group comprised representatives from Springer Nature, Ubiquity Press, CoAction Publishing, the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), the International Association of STM Publishers (STM), the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the ISSN International Centre, the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), INASP, LIBER and UKSG. I was invited to represent librarians on the group on behalf of UKSG. The campaign has been funded by contributions provided from within the group and has been promoted by commissioned communications experts. The campaign group is co-led by representatives from ALPSP, STM and DOAJ. Getting the message outAlthough researchers are the primary audience for the campaign, in the first year the working group aimed to raise awareness of it across the publishing industry and the academic library sector, to encourage support for the campaign as well as the adoption and dissemination of a consistent message to researchers worldwide. Communication efforts began in the autumn of 2015 with an initial press release, 1 the delivery of presentations at a number of events attended by members of the publishing sector, including the ALPSP 2015 conference, STM Week and the OASPA Conference 2015, and by distributing leaflets.The online resource, which helps researchers to identify trustworthy journals to submit their work to, was launched in October 2015, 2 followed in November by posters that can be downloaded and, in January 2016, by a video. The resources have been A global focusHaving focused on communicating the campaign to sector partners in the first year, the second year of the campaign is targeted at the global community, with an emphasis on early career researchers (ECRs). The group aims to identify key ECR networks and is engaging ECRs v...
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