A Digital Supportive Tool for Assessing Sustainability in Programme Courses: A Case of Universiti Sains Malaysia

Abstract

Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) has started to embark its journey towards becoming a sustainability-led university soon after being coveted the Accelerated Programme of Excellence (APEX) in 2008. Embedding sustainability relevant topics in the teaching and research missions is imperative to expedite USM in achieving its vision. Thus, a tool is required to ensure that the sustainability assessment of all programmes offered in USM is carried out systematically and efficiently. The purpose of this study is to assess the sustainability content of 18 programmes offered in USM. The sustainability content of each programme's curriculum is measured and assessed by using World University Sustainability Assessment (WUSA), a digital tool that is designed to help universities, educational institutions, as well as practitioners in sustainable development field or any related field to assess the sustainability content of any manuscripts. The result suggested that the relevant schools in USM that offer the programmes should revise the programme curricula thoroughly to ensure that more sustainability relevant topics are embedded into the curricula. The main limitation of the study is that the study only employed the programme book from each of the programme, which contains the synopsis of the programme and courses offered to prospective students to assess the sustainability content. This paper will be useful to the management of each school in the university in incorporating sustainability element in all of the programmes offered to prospective students.