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Article

A Participatory Workshop Design for Engaging Young People in IT Sustainability

by
Olga Levina
,
Friederike Lindauer
and
Aleksandra Revina
*
Department of Business and Management, Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences, Magdeburger Str. 50, 14770 Brandenburg an der Havel, Germany
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Educ. Sci. 2025, 15(12), 1570; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15121570
Submission received: 29 September 2025 / Revised: 31 October 2025 / Accepted: 18 November 2025 / Published: 21 November 2025
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Abstract

This paper presents an approach to teaching and consolidating skills in the context of sustainability “Prototyping Sustainability–Designing Sustainable IT” (ProS), using the workshop format for participatory and creative learning. The workshop integrates principles from Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), transformative and experiential learning, participatory design, and critical reflection on the digital age to engage participants in critically examining the environmental, economic, and social impacts of digital technologies in the context of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Structured in five modular phases, from self-reflection and knowledge activation to collaborative prototyping and peer evaluation, the workshop offers a hands-on, gamified learning experience centred on real-world sustainability challenges. Learners create user-centred paper-based prototypes for digital products using tactile materials, persona-driven scenarios and knowledge of sustainable product characteristics gained in the workshop. Outcome measurement is supported through pre- and post-workshop surveys, peer voting templates, and paper-based prototype artefacts, enabling rich insight into behavioural intentions and learning gains. The paper discusses the educational value and sustainability relevance of the workshop engaging young people in critically reflecting on the environmental, economic, and social consequences of digitalization. Finally, it highlights challenges and limitations and proposes directions for future research.

1. Introduction

The ongoing digital transformation, characterized by the rapid proliferation of digital technologies and infrastructures, has reshaped modern society in profound ways. While digitalization offers numerous benefits such as enhanced connectivity, process efficiency, and access to information, it simultaneously presents significant sustainability challenges (Goel et al., 2024; McCorry, 2025; UN Trade & Development, 2024). The environmental footprint of digital technologies is substantial: data centres consume vast amounts of energy, the manufacture and disposal of devices contribute to resource depletion and electronic waste, and global supply chains often involve labour practices with social and ethical concerns (CELI, 2024; Hintemann & Hinterholzer, 2020; Obringer et al., 2021; Rinke, 2022; Zorman, 2024). Moreover, the fast-paced development cycles of digital products lead to increased consumption and waste generation, compounding these challenges (Andrae, 2018).
Conversely, digital technologies have the potential to advance sustainability by enabling more efficient resource use, facilitating data-driven optimization of processes, and fostering sustainable consumption behaviours (Ternès, 2019). As Vaishnav (2024) highlights, digital transformation can significantly contribute to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including improvements in energy and material efficiency, emission reductions, and enhanced transparency of environmental impacts throughout product life cycles (United Nations General Assembly, 2015). Platforms and applications empowered by digital data allow consumers to potentially make more informed decisions regarding product sustainability and personal behaviour, for example, through CO2 footprint indicators or eco-labels integrated into online shopping experiences (Jha et al., 2025). In this context, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has gained increasing visibility within both policy frameworks and educational practice, aiming to equip learners with the competencies needed to navigate and shape complex sustainability challenges (Rieckmann, 2018; UNESCO, 2020). However, despite its normative aspirations, the pedagogical implementation of ESD remains fragmented and inconsistent across educational contexts (Lim et al., 2022; Riess et al., 2022) (see also Table 1 and Table 2). This tendency results in a disconnect between ESD’s intended goals and the outcomes, i.e., prevailing unsustainable patterns of consumption and production (Elhacham et al., 2020). Moreover, discussions of digital transformation in education tend to focus on technology integration or digital skills (Giannini, 2025; Selwyn, 2021) as well as the use of resources such as water and energy (Tobel, 2024), rather than engaging learners with the environmental, economic, and social consequences of digital infrastructures.
This disconnect leaves learners ill-equipped to holistically assess how digital technologies shape and are shaped by sustainability challenges ranging from energy and water consumption and e-waste to algorithmic bias and platform economies (Goel et al., 2024; OECD, 2022) and addressing environmental, economic, and social dimensions. Hence, there is also a growing need for integrative educational formats that help young people understand and reflect on these issues in the context of the three dimensions and not merely as consumers or users, but as potential co-creators of sustainable digital futures.
Hence, this need for ESD approaches specifically focusing on digitalization and at the same time holistically considering the socio-technical dimensions of digitalization and sustainability has served as a motivation for the workshop concept presented in this paper. Such approaches should not only convey knowledge but support learners in developing competencies that enable them to critically engage with and co-create sustainable digital futures. The workshop concept “Prototyping Sustainability–Designing Sustainable IT” (ProS)1 responds to this need by merging participatory, experiential, and design-based pedagogies. Engaging young people in hands-on, creative, and collaborative activities, the workshop aims to activate critical reflection on the environmental, economic, and social impacts of digital technologies while also empowering learners to imagine alternative futures.
Hence, this paper explores how such participatory learning formats can support young people in engaging meaningfully with the sustainability challenges posed by digital technologies. Specifically, it addresses the following research question: Which teaching format can be used to convey the three dimensions of sustainability in the context of digitalization in a way that can be put into practice?
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 outlines the theoretical background and pedagogical foundations of the workshop, including the state of the art and problem statement, alignment with ESD competencies, and diverse pedagogical approaches. Section 3 presents the overall workshop design and methodological principles, detailing its modular structure, learning objectives, and instructional strategies. Section 4 discusses the implementation process, including facilitation strategies, materials, and evaluation instruments used during delivery. Section 5 provides a critical discussion of the workshop’s outcomes, limitations, and implications for broader educational practice and sustainability, as well as possible future research directions. Finally, Section 6 concludes the paper by summarizing the key contributions.

2. Theoretical Background and Pedagogical Framework

The ProS workshop is grounded in a comprehensive pedagogical framework that combines principles from ESD, experiential learning theory, and participatory design methodologies. This integrative approach aims to cultivate not only knowledge about sustainability and digital technologies but also the practical skills and critical competencies needed for learners to become active and responsible agents of change in a complex socio-technical world (Jensen & Schnack, 1997).

2.1. Education for Sustainable Development Competencies

In ESD, competencies are regarded as central learning outcomes, capturing the knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes that enable learners to act for sustainability in complex and uncertain contexts (UNESCO, 2017; Wiek et al., 2011). UNESCO (2017) defines eight key competencies that have become widely recognized benchmarks and served as a basis for the workshop design:
  • Systems thinking competence: understanding and analyzing complex systems, their interdependencies, and feedback loops.
  • Anticipatory competence: envisioning and evaluating multiple future scenarios, including risks and uncertainties.
  • Normative competence: understanding and reflecting on values, principles, and goals for sustainable development.
  • Strategic competence: designing and implementing effective actions toward sustainability.
  • Collaboration competence: learning and working with others across cultures and disciplines.
  • Critical thinking competence: questioning assumptions, norms, and opinions in sustainability debates.
  • Self-awareness competence: reflecting on one’s values, motivations, and role in sustainability contexts.
  • Integrated problem-solving: combining and applying different competencies to address complex sustainability challenges.
The workshop not only reflects these core competencies but also extends them by integrating:
  • Design thinking (Macagno et al., 2024): fosters creativity, prototyping, and innovation and is crucial in the context of digital sustainability and product design.
  • Eco-digital literacy (Salto Youth, 2024): an emerging term promoting a critical understanding of how digital solutions are designed, operated, and embedded in broader sustainability challenges.
These competencies form the conceptual foundation of the ProS workshop. Yet, competencies alone do not provide guidance on how to design effective learning environments. For this, educators must draw on pedagogical approaches that translate competencies into concrete practices, as outlined in the next section.

2.2. Core Pedagogical Approaches in ESD

According to the numerous UNESCO publications that have consistently emphasized the importance of advancing ESD (UNESCO, 2005, 2009, 2017, 2020), ESD has emerged as a key priority on the global education agenda and become a key reference for equipping learners with the knowledge, skills, and values needed to shape sustainable futures (UNESCO, 2020). Moreover, ESD has been assigned as a task to schools and universities already since the mid-1990s (Riess et al., 2022).
Over the past twenty years, numerous pedagogical models have emerged to promote ESD including transformative learning (Macagno et al., 2024; Mezirow, 1997; Nicholson et al., 2024; Sterling, 2010b; Trevisan et al., 2022), experiential education (Gattinoni et al., 2025; Kolb, 2014; Sipos et al., 2008; Van Gerven, 2024), participatory design and co-design (Brandau & Alirezabeigi, 2023; Poirier, 2009; Stavholm et al., 2024; Vyas et al., 2023), and problem-based learning (PBL) (Bessant et al., 2013; Cavadas & Linhares, 2022; d’Escoffier et al., 2024; Lamere et al., 2024; Llach & Bastida, 2023) among the most prominent ones (see Table 1). Each offers valuable didactical insights, yet implementation has remained fragmented and inconsistent (Lee, 2025).
Table 1. Overview of selected pedagogical approaches commonly discussed in the ESD literature.
Table 1. Overview of selected pedagogical approaches commonly discussed in the ESD literature.
ApproachKey CharacteristicsRelevance to ESDSources
Transformative LearningCritical reflection; change in worldview; confronting assumptionsPromotes deep shifts in learners’ perspectives to support sustainability-oriented mindsets(Macagno et al., 2024; Mezirow, 1997; Nicholson et al., 2024; Sterling, 2010b; Trevisan et al., 2022)
Experiential EducationLearning through direct experience; action-reflection cyclesBuilds learner engagement with sustainability through real-world, hands-on contexts(Gattinoni et al., 2025; Kolb, 2014; Sipos et al., 2008; Van Gerven, 2024)
Participatory Design/Co-DesignLearners as co-creators of knowledge; shared authorship; often community-orientedEncourages democratic and collaborative exploration of sustainability issues(Brandau & Alirezabeigi, 2023; Poirier, 2009; Stavholm et al., 2024; Vyas et al., 2023)
Problem-Based Learning (PBL)Solving open-ended, real-life problems; learner-driven investigationSupports systems thinking and interdisciplinary understanding(Bessant et al., 2013; Cavadas & Linhares, 2022; d’Escoffier et al., 2024; Lamere et al., 2024; Llach & Bastida, 2023)
Despite broad policy endorsement, sustainability indicators show that education alone has not shifted societal trajectories onto sustainable pathways (Elhacham et al., 2020; Kalsoom, 2024). Research suggests that ESD has had the greatest impact on knowledge acquisition, while its influence on values, awareness, and especially behaviour remains limited (Ardoin et al., 2020; UNESCO, 2020). This gap highlights the need for integrative formats that explicitly target competencies and combine multiple pedagogical traditions to achieve more transformative outcomes.
While the educational approaches introduced above each provide important pedagogical foundations, their relevance for sustainability education becomes most apparent when examined in terms of how they foster the competencies discussed in Section 2.1. To illustrate this connection, Table 2 compares four established approaches, i.e., transformative learning, experiential learning, participatory design, and problem-based learning (PBL), with the key ESD competencies as defined by (UNESCO, 2017). In addition, two emerging competence areas relevant to sustainability education are included: design thinking and eco-digital literacy (see Section 2.1).
Table 2. Comparison of pedagogical approaches.
Table 2. Comparison of pedagogical approaches.
Pedagogical Approach/
ESD Competence		Transformative LearningExperiential LearningParticipatory Design/Co-DesignProblem-Based LearningProS
Systems thinking++ −+++
Anticipatory competence++ −+ −++
Normative competence++ −++ −+ −
Strategic competence+ −+ −+++ −
Collaboration competence+ −++++
Critical thinking++ −+++
Self-awareness+++ −+ −+ −
Integrated problem-solving+ −+ −+++
Design thinking (extension)−−+ −+ −+
Eco-digital literacy (extension)−−−−+
Legend: “+”—strongly addressed, “+ −”—partially addressed or context-dependent, “−”—typically not addressed.
The comparison reveals that while some pedagogical approaches contribute to many core ESD competencies, each approach varies in emphasis. For instance, transformative learning strongly supports critical thinking, normative competence, and self-awareness, but is less focused on strategic and collaborative aspects. Experiential learning facilitates hands-on engagement and personal reflection but tends to lack systemic or future-oriented structure unless deliberately integrated. Participatory design and PBL, meanwhile, offer strong alignment with competencies such as collaboration, problem-solving, and strategic action.
The comparative analysis in Table 2 highlights that no pedagogical approach fully supports the entire spectrum of ESD competencies which led to the fact that integrative pedagogical approaches are needed to foster transformative, future-oriented learning (Barth & Michelsen, 2011; Wals, 2015). Indeed, according to (Wals, 2015), sustainability can be defined as a so-called wicked problem (Jordan et al., 2014), i.e., inevitably ill-defined and ill-structured concept, which poses didactical challenges as well.
Several recent initiatives demonstrate how combining approaches can enhance learning for sustainability. For example, the DICA4Schools project (Gattinoni et al., 2025) integrates experiential, problem-based and inquiry-based methods to help learners explore digitalization and climate change through simulation and reflection. Further, (Macagno et al., 2024) explore a hybrid pedagogy that combines transformative learning with design thinking using the case study of the Innovation Academy Professional Diploma of Innovation for Sustainability in Ireland. Similarly, already in 2008, Sipos et al. (2008) describe the importance of a so called “head, hands, heart” approach that blends transformative and experiential education in community-based learning projects. Leicht et al. (2018) stress the need for integrative models that combine action orientation, reflection, creativity, and problem-solving to develop key sustainability competencies. These examples show a clear shift toward co-creative and multimodal learning environments capable of addressing the complex, socio-technical nature of sustainability transitions.
The ProS workshop builds upon this trend by merging transformative, experiential, participatory, and design-based pedagogies. It goes beyond the capabilities of any single approach by engaging learners in critical reflection (transformative), tangible prototyping (experiential), and collaborative co-creation (participatory design). In doing so, it supports not only the eight ESD competencies identified by (UNESCO, 2017) but also introduces design thinking and eco-digital literacy as additional, necessary dimensions in light of growing digital sustainability challenges. The workshop thus contributes to a new generation of sustainability learning formats that are holistic and future-oriented.

2.3. Positioning Within Sustainability-Oriented Educational Design Approaches

A growing number of design- and participation-based interventions demonstrate how sustainability education can be advanced through creative, workshop-style learning across both school and university contexts. For school-aged learners, several initiatives highlight the value of playful and hands-on engagement. Sá et al. (2023) present a sustainability-themed serious-game that helps primary pupils reflect on ecological footprints. Further, Albar et al. (2024) synthesize 39 playful interventions that use games to promote environmental sustainability understanding among children, revealing the growing interest in experiential sustainability education at early ages. At the same time, the review by (Vasalou & Gauthier, 2023) finds that most Child-Computer Interaction studies addressing environmental sustainability have not yet engaged with children’s own visions for technology design that would empower them to inform sustainability through participatory design. This identified gap underscores the need for formats that invite children and adolescents to express and prototype their ideas for sustainable technologies using creative, often non-digital materials. At the same time, practical initiatives such as the TINK@School Project (TINKERING for Sustainability at School, 2024) further illustrate how tangible, maker-based activities, using tools, recycled materials, and physical prototyping, can stimulate reflection and systems thinking in sustainability education. Such projects emphasize the value of tinkering and experimentation rather than IT-driven learning.
At the university level, several initiatives demonstrate how design-oriented and participatory pedagogies can foster sustainability competencies. Ryan et al. (2025) describe a studio-based sustainability course that enables students to iteratively prototype and refine solutions to complex socio-ecological problems through collaborative inquiry and critique. Ahmad et al. (2023) propose the CoDesignS ESD Framework, which integrates co-creation and design thinking into higher-education curricula to address institutional and community sustainability transitions. Bernert et al. (2025) develop design principles that link transformative research with higher-education learning to tackle broad environmental and social challenges. Although these examples illustrate a shared orientation toward participatory and co-design learning, their thematic foci vary: most emphasize environmental sustainability, the circular economy, or community engagement, while relatively few directly examine digital technologies as a sustainability issue. This gap highlights the distinctive contribution of ProS, which centres explicitly on digitalisation and its hidden environmental, social, and economic consequences.
The ProS workshop combines participatory and design-based traditions into a modular, hands-on format adaptable to both school and university contexts. ProS critically examines digitalisation itself as a sustainability challenge. Participants investigate the hidden environmental, social, and economic impacts of digital technologies, such as resource consumption, data infrastructures, or social media use, and explore how these can be addressed through design and daily usage patterns. Using analogue, tangible materials, including building blocks, mock-up templates, and printed cards, learners collaboratively prototype alternative concepts for more sustainable digital products of the future. In this way, ProS situates digitalisation as a core thematic focus for understanding and mitigating sustainability consequences, extending design-based sustainability education toward the socio-technical and ethical dimensions of contemporary digital life.

3. Workshop Design and Methodology

The ProS workshop was carefully developed to provide an engaging, learner-centred educational experience. The design and methodological approach reflect contemporary pedagogical principles, emphasizing active participation, collaboration, and reflection, which align with the broader educational technology research agenda on transformative learning and competence development (Hutchins & Biswas, 2024).

3.1. Target Group and Objectives

The primary target audience consists of secondary school students (grades 8 and above) and young adults within both formal and informal education settings. To date, the workshop has been conducted mainly in formal education contexts such as secondary schools and university courses, but also in semi-formal and informal settings, including public events like the Summer Coding Festival and the Day of the Future at the Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences. These implementations, described in Section 3.5, demonstrate the workshop’s adaptability beyond classroom settings and its potential for engaging young adults in voluntary, interest-driven learning environments (see also Section 3.5 for contextual differences).
The workshop is designed to accommodate groups of approximately 18 to 30 participants to foster effective small group collaboration while ensuring sufficient individual engagement. The core objectives of the workshop are multifaceted and address cognitive, affective, and practical domains of learning:
  • Awareness building: Raise critical awareness about the environmental, economic, and social impacts of digital technologies, particularly focusing on the life cycle of IT products and their broader implications in all three sustainability dimensions.
  • Competence development: Equip participants with sustainability-oriented design and decision-making competencies to develop sustainable IT solutions. This involves systems thinking, creativity, and reflective judgement, enabling learners to balance user needs with sustainability principles in environmental protection, social responsibility, and economic viability.
  • Empowerment and agency: Encourage learners to act as capable contributors to sustainability challenges by engaging in authentic design tasks, fostering self-efficacy and participatory attitudes.
  • Knowledge documentation: Systematically collect young people perspectives on sustainable digital futures to inform educational research and policymaking, thus bridging the gap between learner experience and societal discourse on sustainability.

3.2. Workshop Structure, Learning Phases and Competence Development

The workshop is organized as a full-day event structured into five interrelated phases that support learning from activation to reflection. This design facilitates progressive complexity, maintaining learner motivation while enabling deep engagement (see Figure 1). Below, a detailed description of the phases with respective activities and targeted competences follows.

3.2.1. Phase 1—Activation and Self-Reflection

Activities: Participants begin with a self-assessment survey capturing their digital usage patterns, sustainability awareness, and attitudes. This initial reflection is immediately contextualized through a sustainability-themed building block ice breaker, where learners construct “sustainability towers” (see Figure 2) representing their personal environmental footprint related to their device (smartphone) use, including carbon emissions, water consumption, and social impacts (labour conditions). The physical and visual nature of this task specifies abstract sustainability concepts and fosters peer discussion.
Competences: Self-awareness (learners reflect on their own digital routines and environmental/social footprint), systems thinking (towers make visible interdependencies between devices, resources, and global production chains).

3.2.2. Phase 2—Interactive Knowledge Input

Activities: Following the activation phase, participants engage in a brief warm-up survey designed to capture their initial perceptions, attitudes, and understandings of sustainability. This survey invites learners to reflect on what sustainability means to them. Afterwards, participants receive theoretical input on sustainability, digitization, IT, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which is rounded up by an interactive card-based reflection activity that introduces key sustainability concepts linked to digital products and the SDGs. The card contains a term (e.g., ‘supply chain’, ‘material costs’, ‘health’, ‘click worker’, ‘content moderation’, ‘doom scrolling’) and an icon—smartphone, app or website—which is representative of digital products that will be used later in phase 3 Collaborative Design and Prototyping. The person’s task is to explain in their own words what the term drawn has to do with the respective icon. As a support, there are relevant SDG icons as well as sustainability dimensions represented through the three colours—orange for people, blue for profit, green for planet (see Figure 3). This gamified knowledge transfer supports engagement and aids retention, aligning with best practices in educational technology for complex content delivery (Deterding et al., 2011).
Competences: Systems thinking (linking terms across economic, social, and environmental dimensions), critical thinking (questioning assumptions and recognizing hidden impacts of digital infrastructures), normative competence (identifying sustainability values and reflecting on ethical issues such as data exploitation or working conditions).

3.2.3. Phase 3—Collaborative Design and Prototyping

Activities: At the workshop’s core is an intensive group design activity inspired by design thinking principles. Participants are organized into small teams and assigned digital products (smartphone, app, or website) as well as personas (see Figure 4)—fictional profiles representing diverse user needs and contexts. Guided by persona-specific scenarios and sustainability criteria, groups ideate and develop paper-based prototypes for one of the digital products. Teams utilize cut-out kits (see Figure 5), mock-up materials such as stickers and markers, and sustainability catalogues with the sustainability criteria related to the digital products to visualize and assess their paper-based prototypes. The iterative prototyping process encourages critical reflection on sustainability trade-offs, usability, and social impact, embodying a learner-centred approach that fosters creativity and problem-solving skills (Brown, 2009).
Competences: Collaboration (teamwork in ideation, prototyping, and decision-making), strategic competence (turning ideas into actionable prototype concepts using design thinking), integrated problem-solving (balancing usability, economic, social, and environmental considerations), design competence (applying sustainability principles creatively to product design), eco-digital literacy (analyzing the environmental and social implications of digital products).

3.2.4. Phase 4—Presentation and Peer Voting

Activities: Teams present their paper-based prototypes to the entire group, articulating the sustainability rationale and design choices behind their products. Presentations (see Figure 6) are followed by a structured peer voting session using a template (see Figure 7) focusing on purchase decision and factors in favour and against purchase. Hereby, the most popular product and the most sustainable idea are identified.
This peer assessment promotes critical thinking, constructive feedback, and collaborative learning, while also reinforcing learner accountability and communication skills (Topping, 2009).
Competences: Collaboration (giving and receiving peer feedback in a constructive way), strategic competence (articulating design rationale and defending sustainability decisions), critical thinking (evaluating peers’ prototypes critically), normative competence (reflecting on values and trade-offs in group discussions).

3.2.5. Phase 5—Reflection and Measurement of Learning Outcomes

Activities: The workshop concludes with a structured reflection session where participants consolidate their insights and articulate personal commitments toward sustainable digital practices. Alongside, post-workshop surveys are administered to measure changes in participants’ knowledge, attitudes, and self-reported behaviours related to IT sustainability. These surveys provide valuable data for assessing the impact of the workshop on learners’ sustainability awareness and perceptions. It is important to note that the surveys are intended for outcome measurement and research purposes rather than embedded formative feedback tools guiding participants’ learning in real-time.
Competences: Self-awareness (connecting learning back to personal digital routines and responsibilities), anticipatory competence (reflecting on long-term consequences of digital product use and intergenerational impacts), integrated problem-solving (synthesizing insights from all phases into personal and collective action commitments).

3.3. Materials and Instructional Media

The workshop employs a carefully curated combination of tactile and cognitive resources to support active and diverse learning:
  • Building blocks and building guides: Used in phase 1 to visually and physically represent sustainability impacts, enhancing engagement and comprehension through multisensory learning.
  • Sustainability card sets and explanatory slides: Used in phase 2 to transmit knowledge regarding key terms, concepts, and negative effects related to IT and sustainability, facilitating gamified and collaborative knowledge acquisition.
  • User personas and cut-out kits: Used in phase 3 to enable empathetic, user-focused design work, encouraging learners to ground their paper-based prototypes in authentic contexts. Cut-out kits are used to trigger visual and tactile thinking supporting low-threshold prototyping, collaborative ideation, and reusability.
  • Sustainability catalogues: Used in phase 3, structured sustainability criteria assist participants in critically analyzing paper-based prototypes along environmental, economic, and social lines.
  • Surveys: Administered pre- and post-workshop surveys are used to capture learner knowledge, attitudes, and reflections on sustainable IT as well as related possible changes in the attitudes after the workshop.
Supporting workshop materials including help and fact sheets for sustainability-themed building block ice breakers ensure consistency, support adaptation, and provide deeper contextual information. Other materials include presentation templates and checklists, and peer voting templates. All workshop materials are openly available via Zenodo in a bilingual form: English (DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16961425) and German (DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16565393).

3.4. Instructional Approach and Facilitation

The instructional approach of the ProS workshop is grounded in an integrative pedagogical model that blends transformative, experiential learning, participatory design, and design thinking within a constructivist and learner-centred paradigm as well as elements of gamification and structured facilitation. Consistent with social constructivist theories (Bruner, 1996; Vygotsky & Cole, 1978), the workshop pursues its central aim, i.e., to transform abstract sustainability challenges into tangible learning experiences that foster active engagement, critical reflection, and collaborative creativity.
Experiential and participatory learning. Learners engage in hands-on activities such as sustainability-themed building block towers, card-based reflection, and paper prototyping, which anchor complex sustainability issues in concrete practice. These methods align with experiential learning theory by providing action-reflection cycles that deepen understanding and retention in practice (Kolb, 2014; Sipos et al., 2008). At the same time, learners are not passive recipients of content but co-creators of knowledge. Participatory elements, i.e., dialogue, collaborative prototyping, and shared decision-making, empower participants to shape the learning process, enhancing ownership and motivation (Cook-Sather, 2006; Freire, 1978).
Design thinking and creative problem-solving. The workshop is structured around design thinking principles, which guide learners through empathizing with user needs, ideating, prototyping, and reflecting on their solutions. Personas provide authentic scenarios that situate digital sustainability within real-world contexts. This design-based approach challenges participants to evaluate trade-offs between usability, functionality, accessibility, and environmental, economic, and social impacts, encouraging critical judgement and strategic thinking (Brown, 2009; Liedtka, 2018).
Gamification and peer learning. To sustain motivation and lower barriers to participation, the workshop integrates playful, game-informed methods such as timed design sprints, reward-based presentation rounds, and voting-based prototype evaluation. These elements enhance engagement and foster social interaction, while peer assessment encourages critical feedback and collaborative reflection (Deterding et al., 2011; Sailer & Homner, 2020). However, the implementation of gamification is guided by research cautioning against overreliance on gamification and the potential for bias in peer assessment (Falchikov & Goldfinch, 2000; Hanus & Fox, 2015; Topping, 2009). As such, facilitation in this workshop involves a delicate balance between learner autonomy and structured guidance, aligned with adaptive, context-sensitive models that respond dynamically to learner needs (Belland, 2017; Mercer & Howe, 2012).
Facilitation. Given the complexity of sustainability and digitalization, facilitation is both cognitive, emotional, and relational. Facilitators act as guides who foster understanding, mediate group processes, and ensure inclusivity in discussions (Hmelo-Silver et al., 2007). Facilitators are also responsible for creating a psychologically safe and inclusive environment that supports risk-taking and authentic participation (Edmondson, 1999; Mezirow, 1997). Since participatory and design-based methods often involve negotiation, feedback, and power-sharing, facilitation must be equity-aware, attending to group dynamics and encouraging diverse voices to be heard (Cook-Sather, 2006). In this sense, facilitation is not merely technical but relational and ethical. At the same time, the workshop acknowledges critiques of minimally guided instruction in complex domains like sustainability and digitalization. Research suggests that, without adequate instructional support, open-ended learning can lead to cognitive overload (Kirschner et al., 2006). Therefore, facilitators play an active role as cognitive and emotional guides (Hmelo-Silver et al., 2007; Mercer & Littleton, 2007). They moderate group processes, support meaning-making, and ensure that learners remain critically engaged while navigating ambiguity and open-ended design challenges.
In sum, the ProS instructional approach operationalizes the theoretical foundations outlined in Section 2. By bringing together experiential activities, participatory engagement, design thinking, gamification, and structured facilitation, the workshop creates a holistic environment that supports the development of sustainability competences in a dynamic and learner-centred way.

3.5. Adaptability and Transferability

The workshop’s modular and hybrid design enhances its adaptability and transferability across diverse educational contexts, learner populations, and technological settings. This aligns with calls in the educational innovation literature for scalable yet context-sensitive interventions (Fishman et al., 2013). However, the transfer of educational innovations remains a complex endeavour, often challenged by issues of fidelity, teacher agency, and contextual variation (Coburn, 2003; Spillane, 2012).
The workshop has been implemented with a broad spectrum of target audiences, ranging from secondary school students (grades 7, 8, 9, 11, and 12), among which also Montessori school students, to university students at both undergraduate (1st and 5th semester Bachelor) and Master’s levels. This demonstrates its high degree of pedagogical and thematic adaptability. These participant groups took part in separate workshop sessions rather than in mixed constellations. This approach allowed the facilitation style, level of discussion, and examples to be tailored to the participants’ age, prior knowledge, and learning context while keeping the overall structure, materials, and objectives identical across sessions to ensure comparability. While the core activities remain constant, emphasizing sustainability awareness, critical reflection, and participatory design, the level of facilitation, depth and variety of prototyping and discussion, and digital engagement are adjusted to suit the implementation context.
Originally designed and conducted in German, the workshop has been successfully translated and implemented in English, further demonstrating its linguistic and cultural flexibility. A notable example of contextual adaptation occurred during the Summer Coding Festival and the Day of the Future events at the Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences. There, the workshop was tailored to the event’s digital focus: participants developed sustainable website concepts first through paper-based prototypes and then implemented them using Canva (free version),2 a user-friendly design platform. This version maintained the workshop’s participatory and experiential character while incorporating more advanced digital tools for a technically inclined audience. In these event-based implementations, participants generally demonstrated a high degree of self-direction and technical curiosity, particularly when experimenting with digital prototyping tools such as Canva. The open, voluntary character of these settings encouraged spontaneous collaboration and creative experimentation. At the same time, facilitation remained important to maintain a reflective link to sustainability themes and to ensure that prototyping activities were critically connected to environmental, social, and economic considerations. These observations indicate that the workshop structure is sufficiently flexible to support varying motivational and contextual dynamics while maintaining its participatory and sustainability-oriented focus.
Such adaptations highlight the importance of contextual tailoring to maintain relevance and engagement. For instance, the original use of low-tech, tactile materials (e.g., building blocks, printed cards) ensures accessibility and inclusivity, particularly in school environments with limited digital infrastructure, especially Montessori schools. However, in contexts where students expect more technologically sophisticated formats, integrating tools like Canva or collaborative online platforms can enhance engagement without compromising sustainability objectives (Selwyn, 2021).
Effective transfer also depends on alignment with institutional policies, curricular frameworks, and educator competencies. The workshop is grounded in established ESD competency frameworks (UNESCO, 2017; Wiek et al., 2011), which facilitates curricular integration. Nevertheless, successful adoption depends heavily on educator buy-in, professional development, and systemic support (Biesta, 2015; Fullan, 2016).
Moreover, the workshop assumes a certain degree of learner readiness and motivation, which may vary depending on context, particularly where sustainability is a marginal topic (Jickling & Sterling, 2017). This highlights the importance of contextual diagnosis and iterative adaptation in any transfer attempt.
In summary, the workshop’s flexible, multilingual, and multimodal structure, combined with its demonstrated use across age groups, institutional types, and technological settings, offers significant transfer potential. However, realizing this potential requires deliberate, equity-aware implementation strategies that attend to the complex sociocultural, institutional, and pedagogical landscapes of sustainability education (Penuel et al., 2007; Sterling, 2010a).

4. Implementation

As highlighted in previous Section 3.5, the ProS workshop has been carefully crafted to facilitate immersive and participatory learning experiences in diverse educational settings. Its implementation balances practical feasibility with pedagogical rigour, ensuring meaningful engagement with sustainability.

4.1. Workshop Delivery and Facilitation

The workshop is designed for delivery within a full-day format, typically spanning approximately six hours. However, its modular structure allows adaptation for shorter sessions or integration into broader curricular frameworks. Successful facilitation is crucial. Facilitators require training in sustainability education, participatory learning methods, and design thinking to guide learners effectively through complex tasks and group dynamics. In the conducted workshop sessions, facilitation was carried out by a small team consisting of one or two researchers from the InNoWest3 project and one student assistant from the Department of Business and Management at the Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences. All facilitators had prior experience in participatory workshop methods, creative prototyping, and IT sustainability. Their roles included introducing and conducting each phase of the workshop, moderating group discussions, and supporting participants during the ideation and prototyping stages.
Facilitators act as cognitive supporters, providing support to help learners navigate the complexities of sustainable IT design while fostering critical dialogue and reflection (Edmondson, 1999; Mercer & Littleton, 2007). They must balance guidance with learner autonomy, creating a psychologically safe environment that encourages creativity, experimentation, and peer collaboration. Accordingly, in the ProS sessions, facilitators were responsible for ensuring psychological safety by encouraging all voices to be heard, prompting reflection on sustainability criteria, and maintaining an atmosphere conducive to experimentation and collaboration. Facilitation was deliberately non-directive, allowing participants to take ownership of the creative process while fostering steady progress and coherence across the workshop phases.

4.2. Learning Environment and Resources

The workshop can be delivered in physical or virtual learning environments equipped to support group collaboration and interactive activities. For in-person delivery, flexible spaces adapted for both small-group work and plenary discussion are essential.
Materials include building blocks and building guides for tangible sustainability visualization, interactive card sets introducing key concepts, persona profiles, cut-out kits for prototyping, and sustainability catalogues. Digital adaptations may integrate virtual collaboration platforms and prototyping tools, expanding accessibility but necessitating additional technical support and facilitator preparation (Dede, 2006; Means et al., 2009).

4.3. Data Collection and Outcome Measurement

Pre- and post-workshop surveys are an important component of the workshop evaluation within the framework of the InNoWest project. These surveys are designed to assess changes in learners’ sustainability knowledge, attitudes, and self-reported digital behaviours related to sustainable IT use. They combine quantitative items (e.g., on willingness to pay more for fair products, frequency of sustainable behaviours) with qualitative, open-ended questions to provide a rich, mixed-methods dataset for comprehensive evaluation (Creswell & Clark, 2017).
The pre-survey captures baseline data on participants’ digital device ownership, usage patterns, and initial sustainability awareness, addressing topics such as awareness of fair production conditions, streaming habits, and willingness to adopt more sustainable digital practices. The post-survey assesses perceived behavioural intentions and reflections on sustainable digital consumption, capturing learners’ readiness to change their habits, their uncertainties about impact, and their willingness to pay premiums for sustainably produced devices.
It is important to emphasize that these surveys are essential to the InNoWest project’s research aims and provide valuable insights for the iterative refinement of the workshop and for sustainability education research more broadly. At the same time, the surveys also serve a pedagogical function: they offer learners a structured entry point into the topic and encourage them to reflect on their own perspectives and experiences. This makes them a meaningful element of the workshop design even beyond research purposes. Nevertheless, in contexts where the workshop is transferred or scaled beyond the project, the use of surveys is not mandatory. Implementers may adapt or omit them depending on local priorities, resources, and evaluation needs.
This flexibility supports wider adoption while maintaining fidelity to core workshop goals, allowing educational providers to focus on experiential learning and competency development without the added burden of formal survey administration if undesired.
In addition to the pre- and post-workshop surveys, multiple embedded assessment instruments are utilized to measure participant learning outcomes comprehensively. These include:
  • Peer voting templates: During the peer evaluation phase, participants use structured templates to assess group paper-based prototypes based on sustainability criteria, user relevance, and creativity. These evaluations provide valuable data on learners’ ability to critically appraise sustainable IT designs, reflecting their understanding and application of key concepts.
  • Presentation templates: Groups prepare presentations of their paper-based prototypes guided by standardized templates that prompt explanation of design choices, sustainability considerations, and user-centred features. The content and quality of these presentations serve as indicators of participants’ communication skills, depth of reflection, and conceptual grasp.
  • Cut-out kits: The paper-based prototypes created using cut-out kits and other materials constitute tangible evidence of learners’ design competencies and creativity. Analysis of these artefacts, including documentation of design rationales, offers insights into learners’ problem-solving processes and integration of sustainability principles.
Together with survey data, these diverse sources enable a mixed-methods evaluation approach, capturing both cognitive and practical dimensions of learning. This combination enhances the validity and richness of outcome measurement, supporting iterative improvement of the workshop and informing research on effective sustainability education.
Further, ethical protocols ensure voluntary participation, confidentiality, and informed consent, aligning with best practices in educational research.

5. Discussion

While the workshop demonstrates considerable potential to address the intertwined challenges of sustainability and digital transformation through experiential and collaborative learning, its broader implications depend on how it is situated within complex educational ecosystems.
The discussion is anchored in the paper’s research question: Which teaching format can be used to convey the three dimensions of sustainability in the context of digitalization in a way that can be put into practice? The section reflects back on this question, examining key educational and sustainability implications, identifying practical challenges and limitations, and outlining directions for future research and adaptation.

5.1. Educational Implications

From an educational perspective, the research question provides a closer look at how a teaching format can move beyond knowledge transfer to active engagement with competences central in ESD. The ProS workshop represents an innovative contribution to sustainability education by combining hands-on, participatory methods with design-based learning. Rather than relying solely on the prior abilities of learners, the workshop is structured to actively develop key sustainability competencies, such as systems thinking, critical reflection, and collaboration, through experiential activities including prototyping, creative teamwork, and structured reflection. In doing so, it shifts the focus from transmitting knowledge toward cultivating the practical and reflective capacities learners need to act in complex sustainability contexts.
By immersing participants in scenarios that connect sustainability challenges to tangible design problems, the workshop supports the development of important 21st-century skills such as creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical thinking (Bell, 2010; Trilling & Fadel, 2009). Its participatory and gamified elements enhance learner motivation and promote reflection, fostering deeper understanding and empowerment (Boud et al., 2001; Dichev & Dicheva, 2017).
At the same time, the success of such approaches depends on skilled facilitation and a supportive learning environment. Facilitators must carefully balance open exploration with structured guidance to avoid cognitive overload, especially when addressing complex sustainability topics overload (Hmelo-Silver et al., 2007; Kirschner et al., 2006). Moreover, inclusive facilitation practices are essential to foster equitable participation, counteract social hierarchies, and ensure that diverse perspectives are heard and valued (Cook-Sather, 2006).
All in all, the workshop illustrates how participatory, experiential formats can support transformative learning in sustainability education when embedded within a well-facilitated and reflective educational setting.

5.2. Sustainability Implications

The ProS workshop also reframes the research question through a sustainability perspective, i.e., posing further reflections which teaching format can truly capture the three dimensions of sustainability and connect them to digitalization.
The workshop contributes to sustainability education by enabling learners to critically engage with the often overlooked environmental, economic, and social impacts of digital technologies. Rather than integrating sustainability into digital education, the workshop takes it as its core lens and uses digitalization to reveal hidden impacts, such as energy and water consumption, e-waste, labour conditions, and supply chain complexities.
Through design-based and participatory methods, learners confront real-world sustainability challenges and explore how digital products and infrastructures intersect with broader environmental, economic, and social systems. This fosters important competencies for sustainability, including systems thinking, ethical reflection, and future orientation (Sterling, 2010a; Wiek et al., 2011). Moreover, the format promotes critical engagement with the environmental, economic, and social impacts of technology, including global supply chains and resource consumption, encouraging learners to reflect on intergenerational equity and long-term consequences (Jickling & Sterling, 2017; Sterling, 2010a).
The inclusion of peer feedback and group decision-making supports a community-oriented learning process, reinforcing values of cooperation, responsibility, and sustainability. By positioning learners as co-creators of alternative digital futures, the workshop empowers them to recognize and address the sustainability challenges embedded in digitalization processes, without requiring advanced technical skills or digital production tools.

5.3. Challenges and Limitations

Coming back to the research question, the limits of any single format have to be highlighted. While the ProS workshop points toward a viable mixed-methods model, scaling and sustaining such innovations require navigating institutional constraints, varying educator expertise, and contextual diversity (Coburn, 2003). The modularity of the workshop supports adaptability but also risks dilution of core learning objectives if improperly implemented.
Learner readiness and motivation may vary widely, particularly where sustainability education is marginalized, emotional, or politically contested (Jickling & Sterling, 2017). Facilitators must be well-prepared to manage diverse learner backgrounds and power imbalances within group work. This includes creating safe group environments, proactively addressing conflict, and supporting both majority and marginalized participants (Codding et al., 2024; Lakey, 2020).
Additionally, reliance on physical materials and in-person facilitation can limit reach, especially in geographically or economically constrained settings. While digital adaptations offer significant promise for broader access, they also highlight persistent issues of equitable access, infrastructure, and educator capacity. Ensuring digital equity requires attention not only to hardware and connectivity, but also to content accessibility and inclusive design (Ahuja, 2023; Drljić et al., 2025). Moreover, effective digital facilitation demands enhanced skills and ethical awareness, particularly around supporting diverse learners, managing engagement, privacy, and inclusion in virtual group settings (Switzer et al., 2024).

5.4. Future Research

Future studies should rigorously evaluate the workshop’s cognitive, affective, and behavioural outcomes through mixed-method, longitudinal designs to capture complex learning trajectories and sustained impact (Creswell & Clark, 2017). Participatory action research involving learners and educators can facilitate iterative improvements and enhance contextual relevance (Bradbury, 2015).
Research on integrating advanced digital tools, such as virtual prototyping and adaptive learning platforms, can explore how technology enhances scalability and personalization while maintaining pedagogical integrity (García-Hernández et al., 2023). Finally, cross-cultural studies are essential to assess transferability and inclusivity across diverse educational and sociopolitical contexts (Penuel et al., 2011; Sterling, 2010a).

6. Conclusions

The ProS workshop provides a timely and pedagogically grounded contribution to sustainability education by foregrounding the often hidden environmental, economic, and social impacts of digital technologies. Through a combination of transformative, experiential learning, participatory methods, and design thinking, the workshop creates a reflective and engaging space for learners to explore how IT products, such as smartphones, websites, or applications, contribute to sustainability challenges across global supply chains, energy and water consumption, and social inequality.
The workshop uses digitalization as an important thematic entry point into sustainability education, helping participants critically analyze the material consequences and ethical dimensions of digital technologies. This is particularly relevant in educational landscapes where sustainability and digitalization are still frequently addressed in parallel rather than as interconnected issues. The workshop’s modular structure, reliance on low-threshold, analogue materials which can also be implemented digitally, and use of peer interaction mechanisms make it suitable for adaptation across a wide range of educational levels and institutional contexts.
At the same time, the implementation and transfer of such interventions must be approached with care and attention. Success depends on adequate facilitator training, institutional support, cultural adaptation, and sustained learner engagement, especially in contexts where sustainability is contested or digital access uneven. The inclusion of formative tools such as peer evaluations, structured reflection, and optional surveys further supports robust evaluation and continuous improvement.
Future research should examine long-term learning impacts, explore digital enhancements to the format, and assess how such hybrid models of sustainability education perform across diverse learner populations and institutional settings. Ultimately, this workshop is more than a didactic intervention—it is a prototype itself, inviting further co-evolution between sustainability goals and the evolving digital realities.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, O.L. and F.L.; methodology, O.L., F.L. and A.R.; validation, O.L., F.L. and A.R.; investigation, O.L., F.L. and A.R.; resources, O.L., F.L. and A.R.; writing—original draft preparation, A.R.; writing—review and editing, O.L. and F.L.; visualization, F.L.; supervision, O.L.; project administration, O.L. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (Bundesministerium für Forschung, Technologie und Raumfahrt) and the Joint Science Conference (Gemeinsame Wissenschaftskonferenz, GWK) under the framework of the Innovative University programme (Innovative Hochschule), as part of the “InNoWest–Einfach machen! Gemeinsam nachhaltig und digital in Nord-West-Brandenburg” project under the funding code 03IHS230A (HNEE), 03IHS230B (FHP), and 03IHS230C (THB).

Institutional Review Board Statement

We would like to clarify that the submitted manuscript is a conceptual paper presenting a participatory workshop design. For the research reported in this article, no empirical data involving human participants were collected, analysed, or reported. The workshop description included in the paper is based solely on instructional design documentation and conceptual development, and does not contain personal or sensitive information, identifiable participant data, observational or survey data, audio/video recordings, or any form of intervention-based data collection. Accordingly, under our institution’s guidelines, ethics committee approval is only required when research involves the collection or processing of personal data from human participants. As this manuscript does not report such data, ethics approval was not required for the work presented here.

Informed Consent Statement

Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

Data Availability Statement

All data is available within the manuscript.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Notes

1
German version: “Prototyping Sustainability–nachhaltige IT gestalten”.
2
https://www.canva.com/ (accessed on 28 September 2025).
3
https://innowest-brandenburg.de/ (accessed on 28 September 2025).

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Figure 1. Workshop structure overview.
Figure 1. Workshop structure overview.
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Figure 2. Sample sustainability towers from workshop participants.
Figure 2. Sample sustainability towers from workshop participants.
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Figure 3. Exemplary cards.
Figure 3. Exemplary cards.
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Figure 4. Persona for smartphone.
Figure 4. Persona for smartphone.
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Figure 5. Cut-out kits.
Figure 5. Cut-out kits.
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Figure 6. Exemplary presentation.
Figure 6. Exemplary presentation.
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Figure 7. Peer voting template.
Figure 7. Peer voting template.
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Levina, O.; Lindauer, F.; Revina, A. A Participatory Workshop Design for Engaging Young People in IT Sustainability. Educ. Sci. 2025, 15, 1570. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15121570

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Levina O, Lindauer F, Revina A. A Participatory Workshop Design for Engaging Young People in IT Sustainability. Education Sciences. 2025; 15(12):1570. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15121570

Chicago/Turabian Style

Levina, Olga, Friederike Lindauer, and Aleksandra Revina. 2025. "A Participatory Workshop Design for Engaging Young People in IT Sustainability" Education Sciences 15, no. 12: 1570. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15121570

APA Style

Levina, O., Lindauer, F., & Revina, A. (2025). A Participatory Workshop Design for Engaging Young People in IT Sustainability. Education Sciences, 15(12), 1570. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15121570

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