Abstract
Engineers are increasingly called upon to develop and implement innovative solutions that serve a growing population, while simultaneously exploiting fewer resources and minimizing environmental impacts. As such, improvements in undergraduate curricula are needed to train students to operate under a sustainable development paradigm. A learning-cycle-based sustainability module was adapted and implemented in a cornerstone design course within a civil engineering program at a large, research-intensive institution in the United States. One cornerstone cohort participated in a peer-lecture version of the module, while the second cohort participated in a peer-discussion version. Concept maps, scored using three different methods, were used to measure changes in students’ sustainability knowledge. A self-report survey was used to measure changes in students’ perceptions of their sustainability knowledge and skills. Students in both the peer-lecture and peer-discussion cohorts demonstrated improved sustainability knowledge networks and confidences after participation in the module. However, peer-lecture students showed greater improvements in knowledge connectedness (a feature of expert-like knowledge) than peer-discussion students. Regardless of cohort, cornerstone students demonstrated greater gains in knowledge and confidence than did a cohort of capstone students who participated in an earlier implementation of the module. Future implementations may be most impactful if the peer-discussion format is integrated into early design courses.
Highlights
Engineers are especially poised to contribute to a sustainable future, as they are the designers of society’s infrastructure, industrial processes, and many consumer products
Traditional and Holistic Concept Map Scoring Methods. Both traditional and holistic scoring methods revealed few differences between concept maps generated by peer-lecture and peer-discussion cornerstone cohorts (Tables 2 and 3)
All students participated in the module, except that one class of students learned about sustainability concepts through peer lectures and the second class of students learned about concepts through peer discussions
Summary
Engineers are especially poised to contribute to a sustainable future, as they are the designers of society’s infrastructure, industrial processes, and many consumer products. A variety of educators have used a modular approach to infuse sustainability into traditional and sustainability-focused engineering courses [5]. To tackle the social dimension in a Sustainability in Civil and Environmental Systems course, Flynn et al [7] implemented a case-based module and found improved confidence in knowledge of how stakeholders influence engineering decisions, as well as improved student motivation. A series of sustainability modules developed for integration into existing industrial engineering courses were shown to improve student interest in sustainable design [8]. To prepare industrial engineering students to integrate sustainability into their capstone projects, Yuan et al [9] used a module to encourage students to use the considerations of system, time, energy, modeling, people, and scale [10] when engaging in sustainable design. Sustainability modules are used by at many academic levels across a variety of disciplines [5]
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