Embedding Sustainability Competences into Engineering Education. The Case of Informatics Engineering and Industrial Engineering Degree Programs at Spanish Universities

Abstract

The incorporation of sustainability in universities finds the greatest barriers in the field of teaching. The curricula do not usually cover all dimensions of sustainability as most of the experiences are isolated and they do not reach all students. Within a larger study, an exploratory investigation has been carried out on how sustainability competences are being integrated into the programs of both Informatics Engineering and Industrial Engineering degrees of 25 Spanish universities. The main findings suggest that existing courses in the domain of the humanities and engineering projects, as well as the final degree project, are very appropriate areas for developing a holistic and reflective approach. Likewise, there is a lack of environmental issues in Informatics Engineering, and ethical issues do not usually appear in Industrial Engineering courses. In general, there is no systematic and strategic integration along the degree programs. However, inspiring practices have been identified to propose lines of action and a curriculum model to embed sustainability into engineering education coherently and effectively. In addition, some reflections on drivers, opportunities, and challenges to achieve it are presented.

Teaching Down to Earth—Service-Learning Methodology for Science Education and Sustainability at the University Level: A Practical Approach

“…Deeply study the community, traditions, conditions, social customs, geography, ethnobotanicals; Design 20 educational fact sheets with botanical information of the (20) most important species for the community; Elaboration of a science workbook with activities to help teachers using the official curriculum of Education (Ministry of Ecuador), exploring the contents that they demand students must know; Giving this material to the indigenous community.…”

The Development and Validation of a Scale to Measure University Teachers’ Attitude towards Ethical Use of Information Technology for a Sustainable Education

“…The purposes of the university training are in continuous (re)sizing and change, according to the transformation and challenges from society, with development of new technology, and they also determine the perspective modifications [3][4][5]. In the academic area, education for sustainability proposed purposes is various and implies the cognitive (critical thinking, anticipatory thinking, metacognitive abilities), as well as the affective and ethical formation, as the university could be considered the one which completes the formation of the human personality and accomplishes the personality of the next generation who wants to find the different ways of living for living better [6][7][8][9][10].…”

“…[4,11,[25][26][27]. This is a challenge for social, cultural level and supposes an ethical attitude [10,28,29]. Regarding the moral attitude of using ICT, the dishonesty is considerable high in the academic field [22,26,27,[30][31][32].…”

The Sustainability Matrix: A Tool for Integrating and Assessing Sustainability in the Bachelor and Master Theses of Engineering Degrees

“…In his paper, some ideas are put forward to enhance creativity and environmental sustainability in technology education by means of an approach based on ecodesign capability. Our own experience [32,33] indicates that the best way to introduce professional competencies such as communication, teamwork, ethics or sustainability is by integrating them into the curriculum, which is the way sustainability has been introduced into Higher Education curriculums in our country, as shown by the analysis of Miñano et al [34] about the inclusion of sustainability competencies into Informatics and Industrial degrees, and Solís-Espallargas et al [35] about their inclusion in Education degrees.…”