A methodology to introduce sustainability into the final year project to foster sustainable engineering projects

Abstract

Abstract-The introduction of sustainability skills into higher education curricula is a natural effect of the increasing importance of sustainability in our daily lives. Topics like green computing, sustainable design or environmental engineering have become part of the knowledge required by today's engineers. Furthermore, we strongly believe that the introduction of this skill will eventually enable future engineers to develop sustainable products, services and projects. The Final Year Project is the last academic stage facing students and a step towards their future professional engineering projects. As such, it constitutes a rehearsal for their professional future and an ideal opportunity for reflecting on whether their Final Year Project is sustainable or not, and to what extent. It also provides a good tool for reviewing the lessons learned about sustainability during the degree course and for applying them in a holistic and integrated way. In this paper, we present a guide that allows both students and advisors to think carefully about the sustainability of engineering projects, in particular the Final Year Project.

Implementation of competences of social and environmental responsibility in IT engineering degrees

“…We agree with other authors, [7] [23] [24], in the view that the FYP pro vides a great opportunity for practicing and evaluating professional skills such as sustainability or social responsibility. It is the closest academic activity to the future engineering projects on which the students will work.…”

Introducing ethical, social and environmental issues in ICT engineering degrees

“…As the Final Year project (FYP) is the closest academic activity to the future engineering projects on which the students will work, we agree with other authors (Bragós et al, 2010;Liebert, 2013;López, Sánchez, Vidal & Pegueroles, 2014) in the view that the FYP provides a great opportunity for practicing and evaluating professional skills such as sustainability or social responsibility.…”

Everything is INTERRELATED

“…A number of commentators have considered the issue of how to integrate sustainability into the computing curriculum in higher education [5,43]. Currently, integration of sustainability happens sporadically through a number of avenues such as: (i) Developing new courses, which cover selected sustainability and green computing topics [1,20]; (ii) Designing and developing independent green computing learning modules and projects, which can be plugged into the existing computing courses [5,28,43,56]; (iii) An integrative and transformative approach where computing courses are completely re-designed with sustainability at their heart [35,44]; (iv) A topic-centered approach [1]. For example, Sherman [48] suggested a number of steps to achieve integration of sustainability concepts into any curriculum: (i) identify some big ideas within the discipline; (ii) identify a link between one or more of these ideas and the elements of sustainability; (iii) design a class component that integrates the discipline with sustainability.…”