Concrete Thoughts About Sustainability

The issue of sustainability is becoming the most important one to our society. We attach great importance to act sustainably. UniLine Education & Consulting GmbH deals intensively with the topic of sustainability. It is not an actual state, but a process based on continuous development to improve it through economical, ecological and social dimensions. 

We do understand sustainability in a multidimensional way.

(1) Foremost we apply sustainability by managing our business resource-efficiently, we avoid prints we do not necessarily need, and we save power and gas in the office. (2) Apart from this we see take on sustainability as a guiding principle on our business level of the practice enterprise UniLine. This is reflected in our product portfolio (e.g.CO2 compensation, fictious rainforest project) and in our procurement.
(3) Last but not least we also consider sustainability in designing learning processes in our practice enterprise with long-lasting effects for our students (as multipliers), and their future students.

With reference to promote sustainable learning in our PE course, we focus on giving students the possibility to further develop their competencies by taking on decision making and responsibility. We also ensure they gain a deep understanding how practice enterprises can be designed and led from a pedagogical as well as from a business point of view. We aim to enable our students, to use the knowledge, competencies and abilities they gained during the class, in any new situation in an independent and solution-oriented manner. Apart from the given goals for the practice enterprise, the students also set individual learn-goals for the semester and they take on responsibility for reaching their goals as well as for evaluating and reflecting on the achievement of their objectives, doing so we also ask them to consider they development potentials in terms of expert knowledge as well as method-, social-, and self-competencies.

Self- and external assessment are characteristics for performance evaluation in UniLine practice enterprise. By comparison of self- and external images the students can deduct measures for their future behaviour. Also, the evaluation of the portfolio (with the learning results and reflections on the semester) and the assessment by the management form part of the grading for the course. The weighing of the different component for grading is negotiated with the students. Therefore, different forms are used, such as interactive PE-competency grid, evaluation sheet or 360°-evaluation-grid with 360°-Feedback, are developed together and selected. We also offer individual reflection-talks at the end of the semester between management and students. 

Ongoing feedback, (e.g. by software tools such as Menti) and reflection following the P-D-C-A-cycle (Plan-Do-Check-Act) are principal building blocks of our practice enterprise work. Throughout the whole semester students create a Portfolio that reflects the milestones of their learning processes. Part of the portfolio are for example the individual goal-definitions, the documentation of their best three pieces of work and their thoughts on planning for their own practice enterprise as well as the reflection-report. 

On all levels (business-, pedagogical- and meta-level) the learning-working process yields results (for example the monthly controlling report, but also the reflection on didactical implications for the role of a teacher). By splitting the meetings in business and pedagogical meetings, we continuously keep the multidimensionality present. 

Some actions we take:

• Buying sustainable products  
• Waste separation 
• No paper consumption 
• Supporting local practice enterprises 
• Offering sustainable product options
• Implementing sustainable learning
• Reflecting our business and learning activities with focus on sustainability