Comparing Measures of Student Sustainable Design Skills Using a Project-Level Rubric and Surveys

Mary Katherine Watson, Elise Barrella, Thomas Wall, Caroline Noyes and Michael Rodgers
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Mary Katherine Watson: Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, The Citadel, Charleston, SC 29409, USA
Elise Barrella: DfX Consulting LLC, Winston-Salem, NC 27101, USA
Thomas Wall: Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL 60439, USA
Caroline Noyes: Department of Educational Leadership, Counseling, and Foundations, the University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA 70718, USA
Michael Rodgers: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 18, 1-15

Abstract: Civil engineers are poised to impact sustainable development. Consequently, there is a need for curricular materials to scaffold students in developing sustainable design skills. Previously, a sustainability module, based on Kolb’s learning cycle, was integrated into a civil engineering capstone course in the United States. The purpose of this study was to analyze the extent to which students engaging in the module (intervention cohort) were able to improve their sustainable design skills, as compared to a group of capstone students not participating in the module (control cohort). A Sustainable Design Rubric was used to assess students’ sustainable design performance, as captured in capstone reports. In addition, students reflected on their confidence related to several sustainable design competencies via a survey. Based on an evaluation of capstone design reports, improvement in the intervention teams’ consideration of sustainable design criteria was somewhat limited, as they more extensively addressed only 2 of the 16 sustainable design criteria compared to control teams. Intervention students reported improved confidence in more sustainable design competencies than control students (10 of 12 for intervention students; 1 of 12 for control students). For future implementations, clearer and more extensive sustainable design expectations need to be set by instructors and project sponsors to increase the execution of sustainable design and close the gap between students’ perceptions of improved skills and teams’ actual application of sustainable design criteria.

Keywords: sustainable design; Kolb’s learning cycle; sustainable design rubric; civil engineering; capstone design; engineering education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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