| Overall Rating | Gold |
|---|---|
| Overall Score | 76.02 |
| Liaison | Megan Litke |
| Submission Date | Sept. 17, 2024 |
American University
AC-5: Sustainability Literacy Assessment
| Status | Score | Responsible Party |
|---|---|---|
|
4.00 / 4.00 |
Lia
Gomez Sustainability Analyst Office of Sustainability |
5.1 Sustainability literacy assessment design and administration
Narrative and/or website URL providing an overview of of the instruments/tools used to assess sustainability literacy:
The Literacy Assessment was internally developed and deployed to a representative sample of 25% of students, faculty, and staff and included an even breakdown across student year and school enrolled. The literacy assessment includes questions about a variety of sustainability topics. The first assessment for the 2024 academic calendar was sent October 16th, 2023, and the follow up assessment was sent April 1st, 2024.
The assessment was administered by the Office of Sustainability using American University's Qualtrics surveying platform. An email was sent to the representative sample (provided by the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment to ensure a proper sample), and a follow up reminder email was sent several days later to those who hadn't yet completed the survey. Reminders are sent out via social media and in the Sustainability newsletter as well.
Description of the institution’s recent sustainability literacy assessment findings and any notable trends:
- The overall response rate, percentage of people who opened the survey and partially answered and/or completed the survey, decreased from 9% to 7% between the fall and spring semesters.
- An average of 81% of respondents received a passing score of 75% or higher. 84% of faculty participants' passed in both the fall and spring semesters while staff and student passing scores decreased from 87% to 75% and 87% to 71%, respectively.
- The questions that received the highest score with 94% answering correctly was "Why is reducing single-occupancy vehicle traffic to campus important from a sustainability perspective?'
- The questions that received the lowest scores asked about microplastics (74% passing), composting (78% passing), and the definition of sustainability (80% passing).
- Students, faculty, and staff all saw improvements in their scores for at least one question. For example, 96% of student participants responded correctly to Which of the following systems is an example of a sustainable and resilient system?, compared to 90% responding correctly in the fall.
- The average percentage of participants who selected I'm not sure as an answer remained consistent between students (5%) and faculty (7%) but increased from 5% to 10% for staff.
Overall, our community has a strong understand of sustainability concepts, but we would like to work to increase our response rate in the next administration of the survey.
Were academic staff engaged in sustainability education at the institution involved in developing and/or adopting the methodologies used to assess sustainability literacy?:
Description of the process through which academic staff were involved in developing and/or adopting the methodologies used to assess sustainability literacy:
AU's Office of Sustainability developed a working group of faculty and staff to assess, edit, and review the sustainability literacy survey questions. Faculty provided detailed comments and suggestions on a Microsoft Word version of the 2022/2023 survey to ensure survey clarity and relevance. After the faculty feedback was implemented, the new version of the survey was presented to the entire working group and further edited.
Are the literacy assessments designed and administered in such a way that the results can be used to evaluate the success of the institution’s sustainability education initiatives?:
Description of how the design and administration of the sustainability literacy assessments supports the evaluation of the success of the institution’s sustainability education initiatives:
The survey has been periodically distributed to a representative sample of students, faculty, and staff in both the fall and spring academic semesters every few years since 2010. This allows results to be compared between the begining and end of the academic year. Pervious surveys can also be compared to more recent surveys. The shifts in responses allows us to benchmark how sustainability literacy has changed with the implementation of different sustainability programming.
The Reporting Tool will automatically calculate the following figure:
5.2 Percentage of students assessed for sustainability literacy
Description of the process used to measure or estimate the percentage of students assessed for sustainability literacy:
The Office of Institutional Research and Assessment (OIRA) provided a representative sample of the entire campus population of faculty, students, and staff. OIRA checks the samples against the population on all of the characteristics included to ensure they are exceedingly close in terms of representativeness.
The Reporting Tool will automatically calculate the following figure:
Optional documentation
The survey questions are provided in the additional documentation section of this credit.
Scores noted in the survey analysis are for participants who completed 100% of the survey.
Additional documentation for this credit:
The information presented here is self-reported. While AASHE staff review portions of all STARS reports and institutions are welcome to seek additional forms of review, the data in STARS reports are not verified by AASHE. If you believe any of this information is erroneous or inconsistent with credit criteria, please review the process for inquiring about the information reported by an institution or simply email your inquiry to stars@aashe.org.