An Investigation on the Effectiveness of Balanced Case Studies for Sustainability and Business as Pedagogy Tool in Teaching Sustainability in Higher Education

Grant Recipients

Tingting Wu, School of Environment, Enterprise, and Development (SEED) 

(Project timeline: September 2024 - August 2025)

Description

Researchers advocate the case-based approaches as key pedagogical methods for teaching sustainability. It builds the students with comprehensive capacities, i.e. systems-thinking, strategic, interpersonal, anticipatory, and normative competencies, which are believed to be essential to address sustainability issues. This study fills the gap in pedagogical research by providing quantitative and qualitative evidence on the effectiveness of implementing case-based approach as pedagogical tools in sustainability and businesses. In addition, this project investigates the effectiveness of the PI-developed balanced case studies (CS) as an innovative case-based approach for teaching sustainability management in higher education, e.g. Environment and Business(EB) Program at University of Waterloo. The balanced CS allows students to enhance the key competencies mentioned above to become successful leaders in sustainability management. The balanced-CS leverage a systems thinking lens which allow students to analyze the interconnections among systems in sustainability (environment, economy, society), whereas traditional CS focused on business case of environmental initiatives.  

Project Objectives

1. Student Learning 

  • 1-1. Understand the interconnections between businesses and sustainable development holistically; 

  • 1-2. Applying systems thinking to understand the complexities of sustainability management; 

  • 1-3. Enhance the five competencies mentioned in the project summary through case-based approach; 

2. Enhanced Teaching 

  • 2-1. Better align course objective of ENBUS 112 with multiple program level learning outcomes; 

  • 2-2. Improve the balanced case studies developed by the author to benefit students learning outcomes; 

  • 2-3. Better prepare the instructor to effectively apply balanced case-studies for teaching sustainability management. 

3. Research Questions

What are the benefits of using case-based methods as the pedagogical tool to teach sustainability in a multi-disciplinary setting? 

  1. What are the benefits of using the balanced case-studies, which applies a holistic approach in describing and discussing the interconnection and feedback loops amongst three pillars of sustainability? 
  2. What are the levels of depth of understanding in sustainability and business with using the balanced case-studies? 
  3. Are there improvements in students’ performance with the balanced case studies(CS)?