EFFORT members Silke Bustamante and Cristian Loza Adaui, presented the EFFORT Project during the Meeting of the DACH Chapter of the UN Principles of Responsible Management Education in the city of Innsbruck, Austria. During this meeting also some ideas for further exploitation and sustainability of the intellectual outputs of the EFFORT project were presented and discussed.

Save the date! (21-23 Sept. 2022, Pescara, Italy). EFFORT members Fabio Pizzutilo and Elisabetta Venezia are going to chair a session at the upcoming conference of the Italian Association of Evaluation dedicated to “Methodologies and tools for evaluating the effectiveness of university teaching on sustainability”. More information here: https://valutazioneitaliana.eu/2022/04/22/xxiv-congresso-pescara-2022/

The paper on “Fostering Key Competencies for Sustainability: Development of a Higher Education Teaching Format based on Service Design" authored by EFFORT team members Silke Bustamante, and Martina Martinovic, as well as by Thomas Afflerbach has been selected as best paper award candidate for the  HEAd conference 2022.  Fingers crossed!

Under the umbrella of the EFFORT Project (Effectiveness of Responsibility Teaching), a diverse collection of innovative responsibility-related teaching formats has been gathered into a Handbook entitled “Shaping a Sustainable Future: Innovative Teaching Practices for Educating Responsible Leaders” (to be published in Fall 2022).

Join us on June 29th, 2022 at 1.30 – 5.00 p.m. (CET) for the introduction of the Handbook and a discussion with the authors! You will have the opportunity to participate in training sessions on three innovative teaching formats presented in the Handbook.

Programme:

• EFFORT project overview 1.30 – 2.00 pm

• Introduction to Handbook and discussion with authors 2.00 – 2.30 pm

• Teaching format training “Future Scenarios for Sustainable Business Solutions” 2.30 – 3.10 pm

• Coffee Break 3.10 – 3.30 pm

• Teaching format training “Engaging for Sustainability” 3.30 – 4.10 pm

• Teaching format training “Innovation and Technology for Sustainable Future” 4.10 – 4.50 pm

• Concluding remarks 4.50 – 5.00 pm

The training will focus on the following innovative teaching formats:

Future Scenarios for Sustainable Business Solutions

This teaching format is designed to introduce participants to scenario development and futures studies; develop visions/scenarios of respective futures, evaluate, and implement them in line with sustainable development, and consider our current social/environmental challenges.

Trainer: Marina Schmitz Marina Schmitz serves as a researcher and lecturer at the Coca-Cola Chair of Sustainable Development at IEDC Bled School of Management, Slovenia. She worked for several years as a project manager, research associate, and lecturer at the Center for Advanced Sustainable Management (CASM) at CBS International Business School, Germany.

Engaging for Sustainability

The teaching format aims at engaging students to contribute to achieving the sustainability goals set in the Agenda 2030. It combines small lecturing inputs, reflection tasks and a project work brought in by an external partner (company, NGO, start-up) using the service design methodology.

Trainer: Silke Bustamante Silke Bustamante is the coordinator of the EFFORT Project, Professor for (Responsible) Management, and Vice president for Sustainability, Student Advisory Services and Communications at the Berlin School of Economics and Law, Germany.

Trainer: Martina Martinovic Martina Martinovic is a research associate at the Berlin School of Economics and Law, Germany, at the Department of Cooperative Studies. Currently, she is doing her doctorate in business administration. Her research interests comprise especially responsible leadership, corporate social responsibility (CSR), sustainability in education as well as sustainable consumption.

Innovation and Technology for Sustainable Future

This teaching format explores the role of technology and innovation in sustainable development by applying a theater-based teaching approach into STEM education. The teaching format is designed to enable participants to start sensemaking among uncertainty by combining creative and analytical skills to create visions and inspire action for the future.

Trainer: Ellen Saltevo Ellen Saltevo is a junior researcher at Lappeenranta University of Technology, LUT School of Engineering Science, Finland. She is currently conducting her doctorate degree in technology with research interests on sustainable system innovations and their effective implementation.

REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR: https://lutlsb.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3WaHpoUxULsEcbI

The paper authored by EFFORT members Martina Martinovic and Silke Bustamante entitled “Engaging for sustainability – an innovative teaching format building on experiential, active and collaborative learning” has been accepted to be presented at EURAM 2022 conference to be held 15-17 June at the ZHAW School of Management and Law, Winterthur, Switzerland. Please find information about the conference here: https://conferences.euram.academy/2022conference/

The paper authored by EFFORT members Martina Martinovic and Silke Bustamante entitled "Fostering Key Competencies for Sustainability: Development of a Higher Education Teaching Format based on Service Design" has been accepted to be presented at HEAd'22 conference as a full paper, in Valencia (Spain). Please find more information about the conference here: http://headconf.org/

EFFORT member Ellen Saltevo presented the work entitled “Effective methods for sustainability and innovation teaching” in the last ISPIM Connects Valencia conference. She presented the teaching format which is being developed at LUT University within the EFFORT project. Please find more information and the full programme here: https://www.ispim-connects.com/programme

Silke Bustamante and Martina Martinovic presented and discussed their concept of impact factors for the effectiveness of CSR and sustainability related teaching at the 8th Responsible management education research conference in October 2021. The impact factors will be integrated in the self-evaluation tool “EFFSET”; their influence will be analyzed in the statistal analysis of students’ responses to their sustainability related behavioral intentions that have been measured by means of the Controlling tool.

HWR, the coordinating  University of the EFFORT project, organizes a 10 days intensive event on sustainability, the "International Week on Sustainability". For the inauguration of the International Week of Sustainability at HWR, two outstanding keynotes are planned: Luis Jabobs, editorial journalist of ZEIT ONLINE Green, will talk about "Sustainability: How to talk about the biggest challenge of the 21st Century” and Prof. Dr. Angelika Brandt, Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt, will adress  “The Future of the Oceans and the UN Decade of Ocean Sciences for Sustainable Development”. The keynotes will be streamed via the following link (MS Teams) Link

More information of the event can be found here: https://www.hwr-berlin.de/aktuelles/veranstaltungen/veranstaltung-detail/313-international-week-on-sustainability-sustainability-and-responsibility-in-the-21st-century/

Elisabetta Venezia and Fabio Pizzutilo from the University of Bari (UNIBA) discussed the paper "EffSET, autovalutazione della sostenibilità e della responsabilità sociale delle Università: prime applicazioni" at the 23rd National Congress of the Associazione Italiana di Valutazione (AIV). The paper illustrates the very first simulation results of EffSET, the self-evaluation tool, that UNIBA team is developing as part of the EFFORT project.
A fruitful discussion followed. Great interest in the tool was showed by the participants.
The annual national congress represents one of the most important moments of the associative life of AIV, where issues of particular relevance and topicality in the field of performance evaluation are debated between actors from different expertise (researchers, academics, decision makers, public sector, managers, professionals, etc.).

Congratulations to Fabio Pizzutilo and Elisabetta Venezia, from the University of Bari Aldo Moro, on recently publishing their paper “On the maturity of social responsibility and sustainability integration in higher education institutions: Descriptive criteria and conceptual framework“ in the International Journal of Management Education, one of the leading journals in higher education studies. The paper and developed framework are linked to the IO3 intellectual output of the Erasmus+ EFFORT project. 

Fabio, P. and Venezia, E. (2021). On the maturity of social responsibility and sustainability integration in higher education institutions: Descriptive criteria and conceptual framework, The International Journal of Management Education, 19 (3). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijme.2021.100515.

Fabio Pizzutilo and Elisabetta Venezia, from the University of Bari Aldo Moro, on June the 3rd 2021 discussed the paper “Assessing Social Responsibility Integration in Higher Education Institutions” at the 2nd  International Conference “Reinventing Education” organised by Scuola Democratica, the most important Italian journal about education, with the support of other relevant partners and promoters. The Session Chair and the audience showed great interest and appreciation. The criteria of Social Responsibility Maturity Integration in Higher Education Institutions were presented, and the methodology behind the self-evaluation tool was illustrated. In particular, attendees appreciated the topicality of the research, the innovativeness of the approach, and the relevance of the contributions to the existent literature.

Silke Bustamante and Martina Martinovic will introduce the model of the Controlling Tool (see IO1) on the 7th International Conference on CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance, that will be held online in June 2021.

► In May 2022 three webinars to indroduce the single teaching formats developed during the EFFORT project – “Thinking Today from the Future: Developing Future-fit Businesses through Scenario Analysis”, “Engaging for Sustainability”, and “Innovation and Technology for Sustainable Future” -  will be hold. If you are interested in participating and want to have more information or register, please contact:

For webinar on “Thinking Today from the Future: Developing Future-fit Businesses through Scenario Analysis” (see IO4): Marina Schmitz (m.schmitz@cbs.de ) and Silvia Damme (s.damme@cbs.de)

For webinar on “Engaging for Sustainability” (see IO5): Silke Bustamante (silke.bustamante@hwr-berlin.de) and Martina Martinovic (martina.martinovic@hwr-berlin.de)

For webinar on “Innovation and Technology for Sustainable Future” (see IO6): Daria Podmetina (daria.podmetina@lut.fi) and Alena Chistiakova (alena.chistiakova@lut.fi)

► In June and July 2022 five final events in five European cities will take place, where EFFORT team members will present the main results of the whole project and you can get connected to the team as well as other relevant guests. If you are interesting in participating and want to have more information or register, please contact: For the event in Bari, Italy (June 2022): Fabio Pizzutilo (fabio.pizzutilo@uniba.it) and Elisabetta Venezia (elisabetta.venezia@uniba.it)

For the event in Bilbao, Spain (June 2022): Julen Castillo (julen.castillo@ehu.eus) and Unai Tamayo (unai.tamayo@ehu.eus)

For the event in Budapest, Hungary (June 2022): László Varga (varga.laszlo@uni-bge.hu) and Krisztina Szegedi (szegedi.krisztina@uni-bge.hu)

For the event in Lappeenranta, Finland (June 2022): Daria Podmetina (daria.podmetina@lut.fi) and Alena Chistiakova (alena.chistiakova@lut.fi)

For the event in Berlin, Germany (July 2022): Silke Bustamante (silke.bustamante@hwr-berlin.de) and Martina Martinovic (martina.martinovic@hwr-berlin.de)

Fabio Pizzutilo and Elisabetta Venezia from the University of Bari Aldo Moro (Italy) discussed their paper entitled “CSR integration in higher education institutions: identification, description and categorization of maturity criteria”, receiving great interest from the audience.

The paper is part of their work for the EFFORT project and a milestone towards the development of the self-evaluation tool (IO3). It presents and discusses the criteria on the basis of which the third expected intellectual output will be delivered from EFFORT

In February 2021, CBS International Business School (Germany) hosted the fourth transnational project meeting. At the two-day online meeting partners discussed project management tasks as well as next steps for dissemination and IO development.

After several rounds of pre-testing, the questionnaire, that allows testing the impact of CSR and sustainability related teaching on intentions to take responsible decisions, is now ready to use in an English and a German version. Please contact the EFFORT team (effort@hwr-berlin.de) if you would like to apply it to your course.

The Steering Committee of the EFFORT project met mid of December 2020 to approve the first results of the EFFORT project. Among others, the questionnaire was judged as manageable and easy to handle by respondents.

The EFFORT team is currently working on a call for a handbook, which collects innovative teaching formats for responsibility- and sustainability related teaching around the world. Lecturers that are teaching in these domains will be invited to contribute to the handbook by publishing a chapter on their teaching format.

Berlin International Week on Sustainability and Responsibility took place at HWR Berlin for the second time. 25 students across the globe participated in seminars, workshops, field trips and a service design project work. Researchers of EFFORT contributed to the teaching. The controlling tool (IO1) elaborated by the EFFORT team was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the event.

EFFORT members had to meet online because of travel restrictions and related situations generated by COVID-19. Nevertheless, it was great having the chance to see each other.

In February 2020, the HWR Effort team presented the project at the PRME chapter DACH meeting in Berlin and suggest modes of collaboration.

A new teaching format developed within the EFFORT project, that combines Service Design for Sustainabilty with responsibility teaching, has been piloted this autumn and evaluated with the controlling tool. Students enjoyed dealing with sustainability issues from a practical viewpoint while experts from Universities in India, Australia and Germany praised the linkage between theory and practice.