Environmental Engineering Education Research Articles

Evaluating the effectiveness of the flipped classroom approach for learning outcomes in environmental engineering courses

Inverted or 'flipped' classrooms represent a growing area of interest in environmental engineering education. The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of the integration of the flipped classroom pedagogical model to an environmental engineering elective course. The approach involved community-based projects related to installing rain harvesting systems in the local area. The key findings from the study demonstrate that the integration of the flipped classroom improved the students' attitudes towards engineering, higher-order cognitive learning, self-efficacy, ease of learning the subject matter, team working and communication skills; all relevant objectives related to engineering accreditation.

Learning Together: A Collaborative Autoethnographic Exploration of STEAM (STEM + the Arts) Education

AbstractBackgroundThere is a growing interest in STEAM (STEM + the Arts) education as a means to enhance the creativity of STEM students and broaden interest in STEM fields. Many art educators, however, object to the instrumental justification for study in the arts as a way to improve student performance in other areas.PurposeDrawing on the first two authors' engagement in an interdisciplinary design studio, this study develops an expanded view of how STEAM might enrich engineering education in ways that more closely align with the pedagogical commitments of the arts.Design/MethodThis article is written as a collaborative autoethnography between the first two authors, educators in environmental engineering and art education, respectively. The study is grounded in the educational philosophy of arts advocate Maxine Greene, who views learning as an active, collaborative search for meaning, “wide‐awakeness,” and social change.ResultsOur dialogue reveals the potential for STEAM to provide students and educators with opportunities to explore personally relevant connections between materials, design, society, and the natural environment and to critically engage with implicit and explicit facets of disciplinary identity.ConclusionsThis view of STEAM simultaneously complements and challenges current conceptions of this emerging educational movement that, almost without exception, are underpinned by calls for competitive economic growth and technological development. We hope future research will build on our perspectives to continue a conversation about STEAM that considers the diverse contributions of, and mutual benefits to, all parties involved.

ИНСТРУМЕНТЫ ИНЖЕНЕРНО-ЭКОЛОГИЧЕСКОГО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ ДЛЯ ФОРМИРОВАНИЯ ТЕРРИТОРИИ УСТОЙЧИВОГО РАЗВИТИЯ: РЕГИОНАЛЬНЫЙ ОПЫТ

ИНСТРУМЕНТЫ ИНЖЕНЕРНО-ЭКОЛОГИЧЕСКОГО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ ДЛЯ ФОРМИРОВАНИЯ ТЕРРИТОРИИ УСТОЙЧИВОГО РАЗВИТИЯ: РЕГИОНАЛЬНЫЙ ОПЫТ

Varstvo okolja in univerzitetni študij tehnike

This paper deals with a university degree in Environmental Engineering as a part of university studies in Engineering and shows engineering fields in which environmental engineering studies have been established as stand-alone studies globally. Furthermore, the paper gives a short overview of environmental engineering education in Slovenia, and then looks in detail at the integration of environmental engineering studies with study programmes offered at the Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering, University of Ljubljana. In 1998, the first ever in Slovenia technical studies in environmental engineering were introduced, i.e. the four-year university study Water Management and Communal Engineering (VKI). In 2009, it was transformed into a new two-stage Bologna study programme Water Management and Environmental Engineering (VOI). The paper presents the basic indicators of the VKI studies (enrolment, graduates, average grades, study duration, drop-out), which formally expires in the academic year 2015/16, and compares them with those of the pre-Bologna university study programme in geodetic engineering.

The potential of Supplemental Instruction in engineering education – helping new students to adjust to and succeed in University studies

Supplemental Instruction (SI) is a programme that is attached to difficult courses with the objective of increasing student performance and retention. However, an SI programme also has the potential to increase overall student performance and retention during the first critical year if applied to introductory courses. In this study the latter objective is investigated in an engineering educational environment. The study shows that an SI programme attached to difficult first semester courses for new engineering students has substantial positive effects on both first-year student performance and retention. Both male and female students appear to benefit from attending SI to the same extent. Some potential reasons for these improved first-year student performances are that attendance at SI sessions appears to lead to improved self-confidence, a broader network of study partners, improved study strategies and problem-solving skills and an increased ability to critically review material and work with others.

Status of Environmental Engineering Education in Various Countries in Comparison with the Situation in Iran

Improving engineering education is an essential task for development, production, cultural and economic progress, and social services in the future for the most of developing countries. Today, universities can provide the necessary skills and technical progress by proper education and research programs. These programs have a dynamic state in developed countries. In these countries, besides proper education of theoretical and special courses, academic programs and laboratory works are as well considered to further participation of students in industry such that most units passed by students are in the form of laboratory or real time projects. In this paper, efficient environmental engineering educational programs and systems in different countries has been comprehensively investigated and compared with the situation in Iran. Then, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of different educational programs have been analyzed and strategies to make improvement in educational system in Iran in the field of civil and environmental engineering are proposed.

Cloud Computing Environment for Engineering and Business Education

The authors present the development of a scientific cloud computing environment (SCCE) for engineering and business simulations that offers high performance computation capability. The software platform consists of a scalable pool of virtual machines running a UNIX-like (Linux) or UNIX-derivative (FreeBSD) operating systems using specialised software based on modelling engineering processes and focused on business training and predictive analytics using simulations. The use of advanced engineering simulation technology allows engineers to understand and predict the future performance of complex structures and systems designs which can be optimized to reduce risk, improve performance or enhance survivability. A key component of cloud computing in Universities as well as in other research centers: they can share computing resources beyond their technical capabilities. With cloud computing, this allows them all to have access to large scales processing power based on KVM (Kernel based Virtual Machine). Our solution provides a more productive approach: a full scale virtualised computer with scalable storage space and instantly upgradable processing capability. It has more flexibility than other network computing systems and saves precious research time and money. Unlike the existing systems, the scientific community can receive support from a large number of specialists who may contribute by in a collaborative way.

Referencing as practice: Learning to write and reason with other people's texts in environmental engineering education

The question of how university students learn to write from and reason with the accumulated knowledge of disciplinary fields that are new to them is a general concern for higher education. This type of challenge has commonly been researched from text-based perspectives and accordingly been addressed as a matter of intertextuality. Less common are studies that attend to phenomena of this kind as mediated processes where university students are being introduced to ways of incorporating earlier claims, arguments or ‘facts’ of specific fields in their writing. In response, this empirical paper investigates referencing as participation in disciplinary text practices and as socialization of genres in environmental engineering education. By video-based, detailed analyses of interaction and communication in a sequence of episodes where a draft for a writing assignment within sustainability assessment is being discussed, this paper analyses referencing as participants' concerns. A series of activities in these episodes demonstrate how referencing is dealt with as a communicative problem mediated by disciplinary discourse. As practice, referencing is handled as the work of recognizing, recontextualising and repurposing previous knowledge.

Science, Technology, Environment, Society (STES) Literacy for Sustainability: What Should it Take in Chem/Science Education?

Ensuring sustainability requires a paradigm shift in conceptualization, thinking, research and Science education, particularly concerning the science-technology-environment-society (STES) interfaces. Consequently, STES literacy requires the development of students’ capabilities via higher-order cognitive skills (HOCS)-promoting teaching, assessment and learning strategies. Striving for sustainability and the consequent paradigms shift, from unlimited growth to sustainable development, makes the corresponding paradigms shift in science, environmental and technology engineering education, from algorithmic teaching to HOCS learning, to become unavoidable. The identified paradigms shift refect the ever-increasing social pressure towards more accountable, socially- and environmentally-responsible sustainable action. Concomitantly, this pressure constitutes the driving force for STES education for sustainability. This requires HOCS for responsibly dealing with multi-dimensional, socio-economical-technological-environmental systems. Our research findings and educational practice suggest, that, although the road to STES literacy for sustainability is rocky, it is educationally feasible and, therefore, attainable.

Toward Gamified Classroom: Classification of Engineering Students Based on The Bartle��s Player Types Model

Abstract A gamified class is more effective in improving students’ learning outcomes and more motivational than the non-gamified approaches. A gamified approach in engineering education environments could be used as a tool which improves the motivation for engineering students. To provide a fundamental understanding on engineering students as the game players is the purpose of this paper. This study classifies engineering students based on the Bartle’s game player types which classify the gamers into eight types of griefers, opportunists, politicians, planners, friends, hackers, networks, and scientists using three axes of acting/interacting, players/words, and explicit/implicit. To classify engineering students with the Bartle’s model, this study used the online survey which consists of 24 questionnaires. Finally, this paper shows that there are several demographic differences on game player types among engineering students. Based on the key findings, the gamified classes which meet the requirements of demographic differences of engineering students could be developed.

A Critical Perspective of an Online Hands-On Laboratory Framework for Environmental Engineering Courses

In environmental engineering education at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, laboratory exercises are a key component for a holistic learning experience. This project gives an outlook of online learning related research and teaching linked to a lab-based learning environment. The advent of the internet and online resources such as weblogs as a major communication methodology in higher education has showed a great deal of interest. In this project a further step into the realm of providing an online support system for student’s access to remote and distributed laboratory facilities in water and environmental engineering modules has been conducted. The approach demonstrates the feasibility of using an online laboratory effectively which can enable learners to reinforce their learning through hands-on practicals and can also be carried out in a flexible environment. An online weblog related the research and interlinked teaching for water and environmental engineering modules which can be implemented in reforming a lecture-based course for students undertaking water and wastewater engineering subjects

Exploring Applications of Building Information Modeling for Enhancing Visualization and Information Access in Engineering and Construction Education Environments

The motivation for this research stems from the authors' experience where they have witnessed the challenges students face in grasping certain concepts because of difficulty visualizing the concepts being taught. The research aims to understand how new digital tools can help students overcome these challenges and how to measure their effectiveness. Three applications of building information modeling in Civil Engineering (CE) and Construction Management (CM) education were explored in this research. Two were the creation of knowledge repositories for residential construction and concrete formwork applications, and the third was the use of three dimensional building information models for enhancing student visualization of concrete structure design concepts. An increase of 4.7% for the beam problem, 4.8% for the slab problem, and 4.8% for the foundation and column problem was observed in the number of correct answers from CM students. For CE students, an increase of 10.1% was observed in the number of correct answers for the beam problem when three dimensional building information models were used. This study shows that the use of building information modeling in CE and CM education applications has the potential to be more than a graphic representation tool, but a means to enhance student learning.

Importace of the International Council of Environmental Engineering Education

Problem statement: Due to the climatic changes and the ecological variations of the biosphere, global natural resources including the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, biodiversities, genetic resources and energy, radiation, electric charge and magnetism, must be safeguarded for the benefit of present and future generations through careful planning and management as appropriate. Approach: The main points of the International Council of Environmental Engineering Education (ICEEE) are to enhance services to its members, work with educational and research institutions to improve environmental engineering education and technology and promote the undergraduate university degree (B.Sc.), graduate higher degree (M.Sc.) and Ph.D. development, facilitate productive cooperation among industry, academy and government, enhance the participation and success of under-represented groups in the environmental engineering education enterprise, promote the value of the engineering profession, unify the environmental engineering education programs throughout the World Countries and exchange the environmental engineering education professionalism among international institutions. Results: Based on the above mentioned concepts, the Obuda University, Rejto Sandor Faculty of Light Industry and Environmental Protection Engineering (Budapest, Hungary), the Technical University of Kosice, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering (Kosice, Slovakia), Uzhhorod National University, Faculty of Chemistry at the (Uzhhorod, Ukraine), Polytechnic Engineering College of Subotica and the UNESCO Chair in Water Resources-Sudan (UNESCO-CWR) agreed to establish an international organization dealing with environmental engineering education management. Conclusion: The dynamic development of our professional reforms and combined with effective use of scientific potentials agreed to improve the standards of environmental engineering education. Our institutions are agreed to fund and serve as the premier multidisciplinary council for individuals and organizations committed to promote all aspects of environmental engineering and engineering technology education. This study about ICEEE defines several of the basic components of the environmental engineering and engineering technology professions and the educational processes needed to produce qualified environmental engineers for the future.

Special Section on Continuing Advances for Incorporating Sustainability into Engineering Education

We are very pleased to be able to present this special section as a supplement to the articles published in the April 2011 special issue of the Journal on sustainability in civil and environmental engineering education. We look forward to future submissions based on these works, and additional research on sustainability in higher education, both in civil and environmental engineering and integrated with other disciplines. Sustainability is typically defined as considering the triple bottom line (economics, environment, and society) of a system, policy, resource, or development with additional consideration of these issues for present and future generations. Therefore, it is important to also include the social aspects of sustainability into engineering courses. The first technical paper, “Incorporating the Social Dimension of Sustainability into Civil Engineering Education,” by Rodolfo Valdes-Vasquez and Leidy Klotz, presents a series of activities that may be used to introduce students to four social aspects of design and construction: corporate social responsibility, community involvement, safety, and social design (designs considering the needs of the workers and end users). In addition to lectures on various subtopics, the techniques include student involvement and assessment and the use of concept mapping to consider interrelationships between stakeholders and the various aspects of the project. In a similar fashion, Stuart Batterman, Antonio G. Martins, Carlos H. Antunes, Fausto Freire, and Maunel C. Gameiro in their technical paper, “Development and Application of Competencies for Graduate Programs in Energy and Sustainability,” present competencies which might form the framework for sustainability courses focusing on energy issues. These courses are divided into two themes, one related to buildings and development and the other to energy systems. Educational competencies that consider the triple bottom line and resource needs and technologies are then mapped into listings of suggested curricula. The two forums provide two different examples of methods by which sustainability can successfully enhance civil and environmental engineering education. In “Teaching Systems Thinking and Biomimicry to Civil Engineering Students,” Corey Cattano, Tina Nikou, and Leidy Klotz provide a framework for introducing two important technical concepts in sustainability—systems thinking and biomimicry—into a construction course. This is done by use of topic modules and then assessment by a plan-do-check-act cycle, whereas Eric A. Seagren and Allen P. Davis, in “Integrating Fundamental Science and Engineering Concepts into a Civil Engineering Sustainability Course,” use sustainability as an overlay to integrate the teaching of several engineering fundamentals of chemistry, thermodynamics, and biology in an introductory course. These articles, and those published in the April 2011 special issue, provide templates for incorporating sustainability concepts into engineering education in a variety of manners, therefore providing options for choosing those that might best fit into the curricula, foci, goals, and traditions at various institutions of higher education. They range from modules to courses to full curricula remapping at various stages in an engineer’s schooling. In addition, various assessment methodologies and suggestions for continual improvement are also provided in many of the articles. These are important tools for future adaptation for enhanced sustainability in this rapidly changing technological world.

Special Issue on Sustainability in Civil and Environmental Engineering Education

Just 10 years ago, very few engineering programs in the United States offered courses in sustainability or even mentioned sustainability in the curriculum. At that time, I was interested in entering academia and wanted to combine my construction and development experience with my environmental engineering education in a more formal way. First, an opportunity arose for me as a lecturer at Yale with the development of a course in air pollution that would be meaningful to a diverse student base, including graduate students in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and chemical engineering majors. This course gave a solid background on the policies and science of air pollution, but also focused on a sustainability issue: the various contributions of motor vehicle use to air pollution problems and alternatives for mitigation or prevention. I was then fortunate to find a position in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of South Carolina. There I was given the opportunity to develop a course in sustainable construction, with lectures on both the concept of low-impact development (LID), a method for development that strives to mimic natural hydrologic cycles, and also green building, through the use of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system, which provides a template of issues for civil engineers to become familiar with and incorporate into designs. By that time, there were still few programs and courses available in the nation on sustainability engineering, although the interest was growing. In fact, the National Science Foundation sponsored a workshop we titled “Construction and the Environment,” focusing on many of the aspects of sustainability and green construction, that attracted a diverse group of educators and professionals from around the country. This workshop and many other nationwide initiatives have prompted groups of interdisciplinary engineers and practitioners to explore ways to incorporate sustainability into the engineering education at many universities and colleges in the United States. The goal of this special issue on Sustainability in Civil and Environmental Engineering Education is to compile many of these initiatives into a single issue so that other educators may incorporate the techniques and lessons learned in their classrooms and so that research into the efficacy of many of the educational practices can be accelerated. The response to this special issue was great—in fact, not all of the submissions could be included in just one issue—so look forward to additional articles that will appear in the next issues of the Journal. Finally, please consider continuing to submit sustainability engineering education case studies and research results for publication. The special issue starts with a forum titled “Intelligent Sustainable Design: Integration of Carbon Accounting and Building Information Modeling,” by Alexander Stadel, Jonathan Eboli, Alex Ryberg, James Mitchell, and Sabrina Spatari. It focuses on integrating life-cycle assessments and building information modeling through the example of a very difficult and important sustainability issue, carbon accounting. The issue then expands to a series of technical papers, each addressing the incorporation of specific sustainability topics into courses or evaluating sustainability learning techniques.

Public health engineering education in India: Current scenario, opportunities and challenges

Public health engineering can play an important and significant role in solving environmental health issues. In order to confront public health challenges emerging out of environmental problems we need adequately trained public health engineers / environmental engineers. Considering the current burden of disease attributable to environmental factors and expansion in scope of applications of public health / environmental engineering science, it is essential to understand the present scenario of teaching, training and capacity building programs in these areas. Against this background the present research was carried out to know the current teaching and training programs in public health engineering and related disciplines in India and to understand the potential opportunities and challenges available. A systematic, predefined approach was used to collect and assemble the data related to various teaching and training programs in public health engineering / environmental engineering in India. Public health engineering / environmental engineering education and training in the country is mainly offered through engineering institutions, as pre-service and in-service training. Pre-service programs include diploma, degree (graduate) and post-graduate courses affiliated to various state technical boards, institutes and universities, whereas in-service training is mainly provided by Government of India recognized engineering and public health training institutes. Though trainees of these programs acquire skills related to engineering sciences, they significantly lack in public health skills. The teaching and training of public health engineering / environmental engineering is limited as a part of public health programs (MD Community Medicine, MPH, DPH) in India. There is need for developing teaching and training of public health engineering or environmental engineering as an interdisciplinary subject. Public health institutes can play an important and significant role in this regard by engaging themselves in initiating specialized programs in this domain.

A Semantic Web-based Learning Environment for Control Engineering Education

This paper describes the design and development of a Semantic Web-based learning environment for control engineering education, in particular in the field of lead-lag controller design with the root locus method. The environment is composed of three subsystems: First, a knowledge based system devoted to the generation of solved and “semantically-enriched” exercises. Second, a Semantic Web based system for the automatic annotation, persistence, search and retrieval of exercises over the Internet. And third, an application working as a graphical user interface that shows and gives explanations about the design process using the very rich information available for each exercise. The first and third subsystems have, as their core component, a domain ontology reflecting the concepts, relationships and tasks involved in the design of controllers, plus a rule engine devoted to the execution of the design process reflected in the ontology. The second subsystem also works around an ontology whose concepts are the source of the terms for the annotation of the exercises. The paper shows the architectural design of the system, its functionalities and a number of advantages obtained with its use regarding learning purposes.

Web-based laboratory for engineering education

Laboratory experiments and practical work by their nature are unavoidable, important, and costly in the engineering education environment. The web laboratory is an educational tool for teaching students the basic principles and methodology in performing a series of experiments on different equipment at any time and from any location through the Internet. In this paper, pre-requests, architecture, and software realization of the Web Laboratory at University of Kragujevac are presented. Organization, development, goals, and possible demands of the laboratory exercise: The inverted pendulum/gantry crane controls (with the capability to test different control algorithms) are also discussed. The applications of the web lab have been tested with the students enrolled at University of Kragujevac and the initial educational results of the implementation of this laboratory exercise are presented. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 18: 526–536, 2010; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com; DOI 10.1002/cae.20222

Designing Architect’s Brief for a Faculty of Engineering

A team of academics produced a Design Brief (DB) to assist architects design a scholarly physical environment for modern engineering education and research. The information gathered from external and internal sources was used to define important themes that the buildings should reflect and hence to arrive at a list of the required spaces. Critical internal and external reviews and budget constraints led to a series of successive refinements of the DB. A design competition was organised for all interested architects in the country to select the architect for the project and consolation prizes were awarded to second and third finalists. The planned development will provide 17900 m2 and 25200 m2 net usable space and estimated gross building area respectively.

Problems with Civil and Environmental Engineering Education in the U.S.

Problems with Civil and Environmental Engineering Education in the U.S.