Supporting sustainability through innovation

Across the Atlantic, the University of East London are also looking at sustainability a little differently. They have committed to becoming net zero carbon by 2030, and while that alone isn’t exactly a unique pledge, it’s a commitment which goes beyond the box-ticking exercise you’ll find at many schools.

That’s because UEL have partnered with Siemens to deliver a range of energy-reducing measures around campus, including the installation of LED lighting, solar panels and electric vehicle charging points. UEL’s Head of Sustainability Nicola Hogan believes this unique commercial partnership allows them to be a little more bold in their green pledges.

"I think we're being a little bit more daring in our use of technology,” she tells QS Insights. “Because we've partnered with Siemens, we feel like we've got that extra level of support.”

Besides the energy-saving measures on campus, the school is also trying to plug the 'green skills gap' by introducing a Siemens Scholarship and launching an MSc in Sustainable Energy Engineering. According to Hogan, these measures also allow students to look at sustainability in a different light, long after they have left UEL.

"Students are saying they want to save the planet and they're passionate about sustainability, but they're not looking to make a career out of it,” she says. “We want students to leave UEL having really understood sustainability, how they can embed it into their careers and keep that thread of sustainability going even as they change careers."

UEL’s pledges are more ambitious than most schools, but Hogan believes they’re ‘well on track’ to achieve them. "We're doing pretty well. I'd say we're up there with the best of them."

Yet it’s not just in sustainability where higher ed is finding innovative ways to get ahead.

Innovating in inclusion and accessibility

Like many businesses founded during the pandemic, Sensations English had to pivot quickly. Their product was originally designed to support individual English language learners, but its adherence to Universal Design for Learning principles widened its appeal to a more diverse set of learners. Now, it’s used in higher education more widely.

The tool produces one news article a week based on current affairs, which has been fact-checked and modified for five different levels of English proficiency. Students can use these articles to improve their critical thinking skills, boost their comprehension and widen their range of vocabulary, with teachers able to assess the progress of each student on a granular level.

"It has a lot of scope for making adjustments – you can slow down audio, you can have a transcript, you can have captions, you can practice reading at different speeds... there's a lot of flexibility in it," explains Dr Gemma Williams, Sensations’ Product Manager and ELT Consultant. "So, although it isn't specifically designed for neurodivergent learners, it has the flexibility in it that really supports neurodivergent learning too.”

Universities are having to cater for an increasing number of learning styles, which Dr Williams believes is placing a lot of extra pressure on faculty. She says that Sensations brings some much-needed simplicity to an increasingly complex learning environment.

"Speaking to other lecturers, it seems there's a growing apprehension that there are more students coming in that require reasonable adjustments and accommodations. And it can feel a bit overwhelming on top of all of the lesson content. So, I think the way to deal with that is to build the flexibility in from the beginning."

That’s also part of the thinking behind Anthology Ally; a tool designed to improve the accessibility of online learning materials. Dr Amy Lomellini, the firm’s Director of Accessibility, says it is ”helping faculty see that accessibility is not complicated or overwhelming, but entirely achievable with the right guidance and tools”.

“Ally gives institutions a comprehensive view of their accessibility performance,” she explains. “Instructors receive an accessibility score for each file, along with step-by-step guidance to improve the content. This removes any guesswork and replaces it with practical insight. Over time this builds genuine understanding of accessibility, strengthens digital design skills and fosters a culture where accessible content creation becomes second nature.”

Like Sensations, Ally is also designed to improve accessibility from the ground up. It automatically generates alternative versions of the original learning material, allowing teachers to create accessible content in a short amount of time. According to Dr Lomellini, it’s also having a measurable impact on students’ learning experience.

“After the University of Staffordshire integrated Ally and established a requirement that all content achieve at least an 80 percent accessibility score, the university saw meaningful improvements. Student requests for help accessing documents decreased, and content downloads increased by 22 percent in a single year.”

In both cases, universities have been able to provide more accessible and inclusive content to its students without increasing the workload on its faculty. But what happens when a university doesn’t just want to support its own learners, but learners around the world?

Expanding meaningful internet access

Weighing in at just 1.27kg and slightly bigger than an iPad, at first glance the SolarSPELL Charge Controller doesn’t look like a revolutionary piece of kit. But dig a little deeper, and there’s far more to this device than meets the eye.

That’s because the SolarSPELL is an offline digital library, learning centre and tool for learning empowerment all in one. Once learners have connected to the device via WiFi, they have unlimited access to a library of educational material that they can surf for free, and can download any of the content directly onto their devices when they’re no longer connected to the SolarSPELL server.

It provides people in even the remotest of areas with ‘meaningful’ access to the internet – defined as being reliable, affordable and secure, with users having the right skills and device to be able to access it. It’s estimated that around half of the Earth’s population don’t currently have meaningful internet access. SolarSPELL is Arizona State University’s attempt to start reducing that inequality.

"Those of us who are digital natives don't think about the fact that there is an entire skill set [related to internet usage] that one isn't born with,” explains Laura Hosman, the initiative’s Co-founder and Director. She says that even when the internet did reach some places for the first time, they were often using social media “but not progressing beyond that”. It got her thinking about ways to provide meaningful internet access when things like electricity and a solid connection aren’t a given.

To turn that idea into reality, Hosman called on the support of a university’s most valuable resource: its students. “We said to our students: let's build a solar-powered, offline digital library that can fit into a backpack."

The result was the SolarSPELL. Around 200 ASU students are involved in the initiative every year – mostly as part of an internship or credit-based class – and they have been part of every stage of the product’s development. Many stay on voluntarily after their internship is done, and for many more the very mention of the word ‘SolarSPELL’ has caught the attention of recruiters. "I can't even count how many students have come back to us and told us 'Hey, I got the job because I talked about SolarSpell in my interview!'" says Hosman.

The idea is that SolarSPELL users can also teach others in their community to use the technology, creating a kind of domino effect. The numbers certainly suggest it’s having the desired impact. More than 90 percent of healthcare workers say that using SolarSPELL improved their patient care, with 93 percent reporting that it supports their nursing education. Ninety percent of farmers implement conservation agriculture practices learned from SolarSPELL, while users' plots are nine percent more productive than farmers who haven't used it.

Though it has already made huge strides in widening access to quality educational materials, Hosman believes the tech’s potential is virtually limitless. "There are still 4 billion people on Earth who could benefit from using these libraries,” she says.

A winner in this year’s QS Reimagine Awards, SolarSPELL is one of countless innovative initiatives impacting higher ed from around the edges. And given the often precarious nature of university finances, these initiatives are showing that innovation doesn’t have to be budget-breaking to be ground-breaking.