Integration of the sustainable development Goals (SDGs) in architecture curriculum – quantifying the extent of SDG contributions

Abstract

Addressing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has become of paramount importance for higher education institutions; however, a lack of a transparent, transferrable approach to identifying and quantifying the extent of SDG contributions hinders the ability to benchmark against past performance or other institutions. In this study, a four-level, quantitative SDG contribution classification system was developed and applied to a Bachelor of Architectural Design program of an Australian university, by analysing all learning contents and assessment tasks for all the course of the Program. Results show that overall, the highest contributions were towards targets from SDG11 and SDG7, though most SDGs were addressed at some level. Contributions were mainly associated to lower cognitive learning levels, though there was a shift to higher-level (e.g. applications) contributions towards the last year of the program. Results also show that convenor-driven contributions, especially for some specific SDGs, can be significant, though in most cases SDG contributions were deemed part of core assessment/learning contents. The proposed approach provides a numerical assessment of SDGs contributions of a university-level program, which could be refined in the future and used more systematically by other institutions to benchmark and track progress towards achieving these goals.