Website communications for campus sustainability: an analysis of Canadian universities
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose This study aims to better understand the communication of sustainability by Canadian universities, specifically the use of websites, interactive features and sustainability plans. Design/methodology/approach A total of 95 Canadian universities were included in this study. The mixed-methods approach sought to capture the communication of sustainability via websites, the interactive features used, as well as to evaluate the quality of sustainability plans. Findings The study revealed that 67% of universities address sustainability on their websites. On average, universities offer three to four interactive features on their sustainability-related Web pages, and the average score of the quality of campus sustainability plans was 29 (out of 41). Research limitations/implications This study does not investigate the extent to which interactive features enhance the involvement and participation in sustainability efforts or the extent to which the sustainability plans were put into practice by universities. Practical implications The findings assist with understanding how higher education institutions (HEIs) can enhance their sustainability communication via their websites to encourage interaction and engagement in campus sustainability. The findings can also help universities to enhance the effectiveness of sustainability plans. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research to assess sustainability content and the interactive features on sustainability-related pages of Canadian universities’ websites. The quality of sustainability plans is also evaluated. The study informs the present understanding of communicating sustainability by Canadian universities and provides a basis for future investigations in HEIs in Canada and beyond.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.023 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.009 | 0.016 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".