Virtuelle Academy for Sustainability

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The Virtual Academy for Sustainability (Virtuelle Akademie Nachhaltigkeit, VAN) is an institute of the University of Bremen that produces digital courses on the topic of sustainability and makes them freely accessible to students at German universities. The aim of VAN is to integrate Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals into university teaching. To this end, the courses are available to students at VAN partner universities as well as students at the University of Bremen, who can have the credit points earned here recognised for their studies.

The VAN programme is made available at the University of Bremen via eGeneral Studies.

The Virtual Academy for Sustainability was launched in 2011 and funded by the German Federal Environmental Foundation (Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt, DBU). In 2016, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF) took over the funding for this institution. The actual implementation was carried out by the Chair of Business Administration, in particular Sustainable Management at the University of Bremen in cooperation with the Centre for Multimedia in Teaching (Zentrum für Multimedia in der Lehre, ZMML). Since 2021, the Virtual Academy of Sustainability has been an academic institution of the University of Bremen.

The ZMML is responsible for coordinating the digital course offerings in the area of VAN, provides didactic advice to lecturers, plans and produces the online courses and their integration into the OnCourse learning platform, provides support for students at the University of Bremen and conducts the examinations there in the test centre.