Environmental Sustainability and Online Education

Due to the COVID pandemic, online education is prevalent all around the world. Has this online education helped the environmental sustainability? In what ways has it helped?

Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2015 (The Paris Agreement) European nations have committed themselves to keep global warming well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. For Netherlands, this means improving energy efficiency by 30% and using energy sources with less carbon emissions.

One of these emission sources is student and staff travel. A good strategy to reduce student travel emissions is the use of online education. However, most of the online education professionals are not aware of the fact that online course delivery can lead to a reduction of the carbon footprint. In addition, there are the challenges that online education puts on the students, such as non-committal behavior of students, under achievement, ineffectiveness of online communications to learn, social skills such as presenting, discussion, and collaboration.

Therefore, in order to successfully implement online education as a means to reduce carbon emissions, blended education (blending of online and offline courses) is considered. This demands leadership of professionals, technical and pedagogical support of service departments, development of lecturers, adaptive design of curricula, and an active learning attitude of students. Hopefully this can be realized to help reduce carbon emissions and contribute to environmental sustainability.

By Sangwook (Alex) Ahn