Students
You could affect change for sustainable development through your University assessment.
We have hundreds of Projects set by a range of organisations, real research that they need for sustainable development. Our Projects are framed with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The Projects are broad, almost like concept notes, or a statement of the problem from the organisation’s perspective. They range in focus, scale and place. You can adapt the Projects to your methods and theoretical approach and for any assessment- a dissertation, an essay, an assignment, and so forth. We will return quality (marked as 65%+ or equivilent) research that addresses our projects back to the organisation who set it and, over time, return any feedback of how it was used.
You represent an incredible force for change for sustainable development just through your assignment – at the University of Manchester alone, every year there are 7.5million hours of research time that could be directed to solving the world’s sustainability challenges. And it’s great for your employability. Win win.
And if you have to write assignments, why not do something useful?!
How it works….
How students can use the University Living Lab to affect change for sustainable development through their assessment
What next?
Have you decided you’d like to use your assignment to affect change for sustainable development?! BRILLIANT!
Next, Go to our ‘Projects’ page and have a look at the range of projects that we have available. We ask you to “sign up” for a project via the green button to ensure we know you are committed to ethical research and to gauge demand for research projects. It is ok if you change your project, or for whatever reason don’t complete the work.
You undertake your work and have it marked by your academic as normal. Send us work that achieves 65% or over and we will return your research to the organisation that set it. In time, we will share with you any feedback from the organisation about the impact they made through your research. We may display your research on our website to build an open source of knowledge and to enhance your profile.
These are not supervised projects or placements. This is almost a circular economy of knowledge. We are drawing on the fact that if half of the 40,000 students at the University of Manchester alone, spent a quarter of their time addressing “wicked problems” like this, we could harness 7.5 million hours of research time, annually. Again, if you have to write assessment, why not do something useful!
Moreover you add value. You are not free research labour but can bring new perspectives and ideas to the issue. If these were supervised projects the organisations would receive the work they ‘commission’. We want you to bring your insights to these development issues.
“The student reports were really helpful to us as they pointed us to research and potential partners we wouldn't otherwise have known about, and they formed a key part of the plan going forward”
— Craig Thomas, the Old Abbey Taphouse,