In this post I will reflect on my ARP – what went well, what didn’t, to what extent was I able to answer the research questions, what part of the AR cycle did I complete and what’s next? This post is intended to bookend my ARP alongside the ARP overview post, where I laid out the research questions and action research cycle.
I am going to use Gibbs reflective cycle (1988) and The University of Edinburgh’s reflective toolkit (2020) in order to think through these questions.
Description
In this ARP, I wanted to answer the following questions:
- How aware are UAL digital learning staff members about digital sustainability?
- How can knowledge and confidence of this topic be increased to create best practice?
I wanted to do this because digital sustainability appears to be an under explored area of UAL’s Climate Action Plan as well as the progress update report (2023) that was released towards the end of my project. It felt like there was a disconnect between this and the university’s strategy to reach more students outside of London through online means. I couldn’t point fingers because I myself, working in an online learning role, knew little about the topic of digital sustainability. So this project was about trying to take action in my own context, hoping that that leads to something larger.
To answer these research questions I had a mixed methods approach. First I needed to survey UAL digital learning staff, which I did through an anonymous online questionnaire. I need to also understand what knowledge and guidance were out there, so I completed document analysis of the Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG). Lastly, to understand how training and knowledge of this topic could be cultivated, I attended UAL’s Carbon Literacy Training programme. The outcome of each method ultimately was that I had a better understanding of where UAL learning technologists are in relation to digital sustainability – much to learn but eager to do it. I found ten low-effort and actionable guidelines from the WSG. And I observed the efficacy of gamified learning approaches to this heavy and complex topic. Ultimately all of these things have contributed to a prototype low-tech game I have made and will test out with my CSM colleagues.
Feelings
Uncertainty and the feeling of being over my head were common feelings. Those are symptomatic of any research project, but specifically for me they arose because of my own lack of knowledge of digital sustainability. There were points, particularly when making the game that I felt I was positioning myself as someone experienced and knowledgable of this topic. I was drawing on the WSG to author the game, rather than pulling things from my head, so perhaps there’s a bit of imposter syndrome going on there.
There were also hash truths and uncomfortable learnings about the role of the internet – and my extension my professional practice – in the climate crisis. This made me feel guilty for my ignorance. But I did feel empowered by the ARP as it gave me an opportunity to enhance my understanding and importantly to do something with that.
How do I feel now – whatever feeling is the opposite of accomplished! Not because I didn’t make headway against my research questions – I feel that I have. But because this really is the tip of the iceberg with regard to this topic and the wider UAL conversation around it. But I guess that is the nature of an ARP – carving out small areas bit by bit to make change.
Evaluation
What worked and didn’t work about the ARP? I had about a 36% response rate to my questionnaire, which while it gave me a range of perspectives, may not have been the largest sample size. Another reality of doing this ARP as part of the PgCert is that it was quite an individual activity… it was crucial for me to include the perspectives of other UAL digital learning staff via the questionnaire, but I think for the next stage of where this goes it needs to really happen in the context of an action group. This is because achieving digital sustainability requires institutional change. I’m pleased to have started something and have the fire to take it forward beyond the ARP but I can’t do justice to it on my own!
Equally the game feels very much like a prototype. I don’t think I’ve quite pulled that off yet as a super engaging and fun game, so that’s an area that needs improvement, hopefully with the input of my digital learning colleagues at CSM.
Analysis
As well as what I’ve learnt from answering my research questions, an overarching takeaway from this project is that digital sustainability is a burgeoning area of knowledge and practice, not just at UAL but in general. I think this is partly because the internet feels less tangible and ethereal climate change culprit than, say, taking a flight. I also think it’s largely about awareness raising though; we only know about the huge environmental cost of industries because activists and campaign groups shine a light on this. I don’t think this has happened yet for the internet – if anything we are driven to using it more and more, to the benefit of large social media and tech companies.
So I certainly started this ARP from the beginning and in a place of ignorance. But I learnt that I certainly wasn’t alone in that. And I learnt about the complexity of the topic – what do we mean by digital sustainability, is it hardware procurement and disposal, is it how we use the internet, or is it (how I define it for elearning ) about how we design content for the web? It’s also hard to get a sense of how applying best practice to elearning tangibly makes a difference, largely because we don’t have carbon costs for this specific area yet – although Mike Berners Lee (2020) has mapped many other things!
So these complexities contributed to the direction of the project. I initially started out thinking I could apply some changes to Moodle based on my reading of the WSG and see some tangible results to the carbon count of that site. Things sadly were not as simple as that, but that complexity woke me up to the potentials of other actions, ie the ideas of engaging our digital learning team in the topic, which I think is a more meaningful approach overall.
Conclusions
Apart from the specific learnings – ie digital learning’s staff knowledge of the topic, guidelines we can follow, pedagogical methods of delivering training – one of my conclusions is that the social justice angle of the project has left an impression on me. I hope to maintain this after the project and have applied to join UAL’s Carbon Calculation working group in order to do so. Again, I learnt that this is a huge and burgeoning topic, but there is a willingness to develop it at UAL and there beginning to be tools emerging out there for us to do that.
Action plan
- Share the game prototype with my CSM Digital Learning colleagues in order to improve and develop it for wider distribution.
- Participate in the UAL Carbon Calculation group to get digital learning activities (and more broadly UAL’s internet usage) on the table for discussion on and institutional level.
If I were to do things differently, I’d have maybe bounced my reading of the WSG against some others in UAL, ie digital learning staff. Because I realise in analysing the guidelines I have made assumptions about what are feasible for us at UAL, so it would be great to have others’ input into that. Also – are the ten guidelines too much? If we’re at the beginning of trying to create more sustainable elearning content, maybe I should have really focused on the absolute basics with 5 points or even 3. I do intend to explore that though while testing the prototype with digital learning colleagues and by choosing a low stakes format of game – powerpoint – it is not a huge effort to revise and change things.
Overall I feel things went to plan for this ARP and also not to plan – I registered for the Carbon Literacy Training thinking it might help me learn about the topic but realising swiftly it was also a chance to observe the teaching of this topic. And the planned and unplanned aspects of the project have helped me to answer my research questions. Ultimately I feel able to carry out the full action research cycle beyond the scope of this Pgcert and to continue to reiterate it in the future.
References
Berners-Lee, M (2020). How bad are bananas? : the carbon footprint of everything. London: Profile Books.
Gibbs G (1988). Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Oxford Polytechnic: Oxford.
University of Edinburgh (2020) Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle. Available at: https://www.ed.ac.uk/reflection/reflectors-toolkit/reflecting-on-experience/gibbs-reflective-cycle (Accessed 25 January 2024).