Project-based Community of Inquiry for Effective Online Graduate Course on Life Cycle Assessment

Abstract

This article aimed to present the improvements on the instructional design of a postgraduate course, namely Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), for effective content delivery in online teaching and learning due to COVID-19 pandemic. The community of inquiry framework was used as the basis for this improvement. It was aided by project-based learning to enhance the educational experiences and improve content delivery efficiency. Conventional active learning teaching pedagogy was maintained in the early part of the course. Next, an open-ended project became the pillar of the second part of the course for performing a comparative LCA in a team. To ensure all students have high individual accountability, each team member performed a LCA study independently for a sub-scope of the project. Meanwhile, their teammates supported each other as each sub-scope is interdependent on the project. WhatsApp was used to promote interactions between students-students and students-instructors to provide just-in-time feedback, and weekly consultations were offered to students to monitor student progress. Based on the course evaluation, the students felt optimistic about the changes. They agreed that these new delivery methods helped them in mastering the subject matter.