Abstract
This paper provides and illustrates a design-based learning (DBL) approach for fostering individual sustainability competency in engineering education. We performed two studies with engineering students in typical educational activities. The first study helped students perform a topic-specific design task in the practicum unit of a sensor technology course, which compared the performance of the DBL approach and conventional passive learning approach. The second study guided students to develop innovative projects for participating in the "Internet Plus" Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition (IPIEC). To validate the proposed approach, stakeholder questionnaires and performance evaluations were implemented. The results show that the DBL approach was viable for sustainability competency teaching in terms of learning demand and teaching procedure. We found that students in the DBL group gave more prominence in the individual competencies, such as system-thinking, multidisciplinary applications, and collaboration. These findings suggest that applying the DBL approach to train sustainability competency in engineering education is beneficial for promoting students’ abilities in dealing with challenges involved in sustainability practice.
Highlights
The emerging academic field focused on sustainability has been engaged in the studies of pedagogies to foster practitioners’ competencies for corporation sustainable development
The results show the practicability of the design-based learning (DBL) approach in the existing educational program
This paper presents a DBL approach for fostering students’ sustainability competency in engineering education
Summary
The emerging academic field focused on sustainability has been engaged in the studies of pedagogies to foster practitioners’ competencies for corporation sustainable development. Global leaders integrated 17 goals into the Sustainable development agenda: 2030 [1], such as poverty, education, sustainable economic growth, renewable consumption, production, etc. These goals are rooted in exploring solutions to extensive social challenges around the world. The business community is playing a pivotal role in sustainable development, as enterprises increasingly acknowledge the importance of responsible and sustainable practices to their legitimacy and competitiveness [15] Enterprises voluntarily combine their economic benefits with environmental and social concerns when formulating business strategies [16]. The complexity involved in sustainable practice further increases due to the often conflicting values and standpoints between multiple stakeholders, such as enterprises, governments, and non-governmental organizations [18]
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