JISC Green ICT

An essential part of our project is to involve and engage students with the ’Green @ CU’  Facebook page as a way of promoting energy messages, prompting responses, and sharing links, such as to the game.  During the year, one of our reflections has been ‘How do you get students continuously involved, particularly in a formal way?’.  For instance, Hall Representatives are volunteers, and currently can choose what takes their interest.  During this year, the Students’ Union has reviewed the structure between Vice Presidents and Halls Reps.  One of the great outcomes, which will be used to continue ‘Green @ CU’ beyond the formal funding by JISC, is that three Environmental Hall Representative posts will be created for students in 2012/13.  They will receive a bursary only after completing certain tasks which will include termly targets for meeting with University environmental staff and, for instance, posting items on the Facebook site.  Hopefully they will also be enthused by environmental issues.  It will be interesting to see if this new structure supports student to student communication on sustainability.

In the meantime, we have arrived on YouTube – the environmental day in February, and a short piece about getting involved in ‘Green @ CU’:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpsHxqkXrt0&feature=relmfu

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IKI_jDS6N4

We met with our Student Energy Ambassadors for the last time before Christmas.  In our reflections on this term’s activities, we recognise that getting students involved and interested in Green@CU (student branding for CUSTOMER) is tough.  Our enthusiasm is still high and we have put together our action plan for the launch of the “serious” game in January, including actively signing-up students to Facebook and gaming with small prizes. The game uses the floor plan of one of our typical student residences – Singer Hall – and will challenge players to a series of low energy quests as they explore their living environment.  This will make for an exciting and unique phase of the project.  We are all meeting in the New Year to play the game before its launch- looking forward to it!

Wrote the progress report for JISC yesterday, but need to update it with the news about meter installation dates and check a few bits with others.  Elise Smithson will finish it off and submit it in my absence.

A meeting with BAS re sensor costs and site survey planned for next week.  CO2 detectors probably not sufficient and now considering wireless PIR detectors.  I just hope they won’t be too expensive.

We now have revised dates for meter installation to commence on 22 August, which wll be confirmed on Monday.  They should be in when I get back from my holiday.

The survey and focus group data has now been analysed and a report on the findings submitted to our JISC Programme Manager. 

159 students from across Coventry University’s different accommodations completed an online survey on accommodation, energy and the environment. 

Key findings include:

• 65% of the respondents already try to save energy and improve their environmental behaviour
• approx 65% of respondents wanted to know how much gas, electricity and water they used in their student accommodation
• 58% of the respondents said they were only slightly interested in environmental issues, with only 26% stating they were very interested
• Two third of respondents wanted to know how their room occupany affected energy usage and 58% were happy to have sensors in their rooms in accommodation to facilitate improved energy management
• A substantial majority of respondents stated they would be strongly motivated to change their behaviour if there were financial incentives, either through cost savings, receiving vouchers or discounts, or to avoid fines.

Our University Ethics Approval process has signed off the student survey and focus groups, and we can now proceed with capturing responses.