Exploring the Retention of Sustainable Design Principles in Engineering Practice Through Design Education

Abstract

The School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering at Oregon State University is home to one of the largest academic Mechanical Design groups in the country. As a leader in undergraduate design education, we have been able to keep in touch with a large group of mechanical design graduates, and as such are capable of assessing how students retain information learned in undergraduate coursework to see how this understanding is employed in real-world engineering practice. However, the principles governing the design of sustainable products and processes are relatively novel and are only now being integrated into the undergraduate and graduate mechanical design curriculum. It is our hypothesis that particular means of learning and understanding sustainable design — via lectures, homework assignments, design projects, and the use of various sustainability-related LCA tools — will enable the highest retention of sustainable design understanding, and a higher likelihood that this sustainable design knowledge will be propagated into design practice in industry. Multiple curricular studies that explore dissemination and retention of sustainable design skills are being explored, including a junior-level introductory mechanical design course and a graduate level sustainable product development course. In the junior-level course, baseline sustainability knowledge is tested by allowing students to make sustainable design decisions by applying varied skill sets, including general principles, a list of sustainable design guidelines, and an innovative online survey (The GREEn Quiz). The graduate-level course, which employs sustainable design principles within a larger product development architecture, will capitalize on more “expert” knowledge. Future work will also be discussed, including planned validation studies and curriculum improvements, as well as the means of quantifying the retention of sustainable design information.

Eco-Feedback Designs: A Balance Between the Quantitative and the Emotional

“…The technique was shown to increase both the quantity and novelty of design ideas. DuPont and Wisthoff developed an online questionnaire (GREEn Quiz) to teach engineering students the principles of sustainable design [21]. This tool was shown to be effective in facilitating students to make more sustainable design decisions.…”

Introducing Sustainability in a Robotic Engineering Degree: A Case Study

“…At an educational level, a number of learning activities have been reported in the literature to incorporate sustainability in engineering education [18]. Engineering areas covered include Civil [19], Industrial [20], Mechanical [21], Chemical [22], Sanitary [23], and Materials [24]. To the best of the authors' knowledge, there are no previous initiatives of this type reported in the field of Robotic Engineering. In the context of Spanish higher education, both international reports and diagnostic studies of universities have found that the area in which there are more obstacles and challenges to including sustainability issues is in the education area [25].…”