SDGs & the City: Co-designing a model for postgraduate research hackathons

Glasgow Caledonian University London is a postgraduate satellite campus delivering a range of Masters Programmes covering fashion, luxury, marketing, finance, business and management. Glasgow Caledonian University’s mission, as the University for the Common Good, is to deliver social benefit and impact. Being the first university to adopt the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) as the framework for research, the SDGs are central to both teaching and learning strategies. This paper introduces the context, aspirations and practices of a small team working to integrate sustainability into a post-graduate research module. The Introduction to Research Methods Module is delivered to all GCU London post-graduate students, necessitating a broad approach that takes account of the wide range of disciplines our students’ study. Our aspiration in joining the Learning Design and ESD Bootcamp was to frame learning within the context of the SDGs and by so doing create authentic and impactful ways of exploring predominant research philosophies and practices. Our desire for our students to get head, hands and hearts-on with research meant a re-design to include more active learning opportunities. The resulting curriculum development applied the CoDesignS ESD Toolkit to disrupt the standard delivery of a postgraduate research methods module and created opportunities for students from diverse disciplines to explore local and global sustainability challenges and work together taking trans-disciplinary approaches in a series of SDG-focused Research Hackathons. The learning design described in this case study was created by Professor Natascha Radclyffe-Thomas EdD, Professor Antony Morgan PhD, Habeeb Mustafa MA and Laia Cargol MSc. Based at the London post-graduate campus of Glasgow Caledonian University.