Developing Engineering Students’ Understanding of Sustainability Using Project Based Learning

Margaret Jollands and Raj Parthasarathy
Additional contact information
Margaret Jollands: School of Civil, Environmental and Chemical Engineering, RMIT University, 124 La Trobe St, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia
Raj Parthasarathy: School of Civil, Environmental and Chemical Engineering, RMIT University, 124 La Trobe St, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia

Sustainability, 2013, vol. 5, issue 12, 1-15

Abstract: Project based learning (PjBL) can be an effective approach to developing graduate attributes, but it depends on how it is implemented. Chemical Engineering of RMIT University has a stream of PjBL subjects from first to final year. The projects are incrementally more complex but have the same goal: to choose a best process design, using management decision making tools to justify their choices. The tools include GEMI Metrics Navigator TM . This paper reports an evaluation of whether students’ understanding of sustainability is enhanced by undertaking multiple projects, as well as use of sophisticated analysis tools. Student learning outcomes from intermediate and final subjects were compared using ConceptMaps and a focus group. The students’ understanding of sustainability increased substantially from 2nd to final year, similar to results reported in European studies. The spread of results was broad, attributed to range of student ability and differences between student cohorts. Development of understanding of sustainability was attributed to undertaking multiple projects and use of spread-sheeting tools. Use of the GEMI tool was identified as facilitating application of sustainability principles to process design decisions. Concept maps are a useful way to evaluate innovations in teaching sustainable engineering.

Keywords: sustainability principles in design; project based learning; decision making tools; concept mapping (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/5/12/5052/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/5/12/5052/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:5:y:2013:i:12:p:5052-5066:d:30865

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().