Living Lab degree projects

In addition to extra-curricular summer internships and short projects, we are always pleased to support degree courses that enable students to benefit from applied learning using our campus locations as a living lab. Every degree subject taught at Heriot-Watt University can find an application to sustainability, whether through directly addressing one or more of the UN Sustainable Development Goals or through finding innovative ways to focus in on one of the many specific actions underpinning them.

If you are involved in teaching at Heriot-Watt and would like assistance or support in embedding sustainability into your teaching, numerous external resources exist that can enable you to do so (a selection of recommended ones can be found at the end of this page). However, if you would like to present your students with real-world examples and challenges to be found across our campus locations, please reach out to the sustainability team at SustainableHWU@hw.ac.uk to discuss access to data (where available), support and inspiration.

Some examples of current and previous living lab projects include:

Shaping Tomorrow Together, a multidisciplinary year-long course for all first year undergraduates within our school of Engineering, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society. Selected as an AdvanceHE case study in 2021, the course explores the myriad ways in which different subjects can be applied to global challenges. The sustainability team is proud to have contributed to the course through the provision of data on Heriot-Watt’s institutional sustainability goals and emissions trajectory, in addition to supporting student projects focussed upon suggesting ways in which our sustainability and net zero goals can be met.

Sustainable Design and Management, a course covering three different disciplines for students based within our school of Textiles and Design. This intensely practical course provides its students with an applied task based on different lecture topics, including one focussing upon sustainability successes and challenges at Heriot-Watt. Semester-long group research projects have examined creative ways in which design projects can be incorporated into our sustainability strategy and into their careers post-graduation.

Geography (undergraduate) students have been supported in learning how to effectively apply quantitative and qualitative primary data into their studies, using the university campus and its student population as a resource for analysing survey data about sustainability behaviours and attitudes towards sustainability measures on campus.

Languages students within our School of Social Sciences have also been tasked with compiling sustainability surveys and assessments, prior to completing a report on their findings.

We welcome approaches from teaching staff who would like to embed sustainability applied learning activities into their courses. Please just email SustainableHWU@hw.ac.uk