Education for sustainable development – an inter‐disciplinary pilot module for undergraduate engineers and scientists

Abstract

The coming together of a number of initiatives provided a springboard for an innovative pilot programme in education for sustainable development. For some time problem‐based learning has gathered momentum as an approach to educating professionals. More recently, there has been a burgeoning interest in inter‐disciplinary approaches to the complex societal and environmental issues that face the world as a whole. At the same time, professional engineering institutions have been reflecting on appropriate approaches to the education and development of future engineers. Building on work already undertaken by some of the authors, the Royal Academy of Engineering sponsored an inter‐disciplinary pilot programme in sustainable development for undergraduate engineers and scientists in the University of Manchester. The pilot was innovative not only in its inter‐disciplinary approach to sustainable development but also in its approach to the development of the curriculum. Inter‐disciplinary exercises were designed that enabled a contextual, active, collaborative and cumulative approach to learning. The assessment was also designed to align to the learning approach. Evaluation of the pilot programme suggests that it was well received by the students, and the post‐doctoral researchers who acted as facilitators, and also that there were gains in both understanding of the issues and also in approaches to learning.

Keywords:

• wicked problems
• global responsibility
• curriculum development
• problem‐based learning
• facilitators
• inter‐disciplinary
• professional skills
• teamwork

1. Introduction

Although sustainability and environmental issues have been core concerns of engineering education for some years, as evidenced by the inclusion of sustainable development in the UK Standards for Professional Engineering Competence (SPEC) (Engineering Council 2004), undergraduate programmes have often focused solely on putting engineering activities into a wider context and designing technical solutions to global problems by applying discipline‐specific knowledge. Instead, the authors' pilot programme of education in sustainable development for engineers and scientists focused on the professional skills required to drive change towards sustainable development, through working in inter‐disciplinary teams and considering the wider implications of global societal responsibility.

For some time, we have challenged higher education (Engel and Tomkinson 2006) about its response to complex, ‘wicked’ (Rittel and Webber 1973), global problems, with a particular emphasis on interdisciplinarity and global societal responsibility. We have also looked (Tomkinson et al. 2006) at the nature of these wicked worldwide problems: Brundtland (1987) identified a number of such issues, including:

	The burden of debt in the developing world, inequitable commercial regulations and a growing number of the world's population living at or below subsistence level;
	Overuse of non‐renewable resources, growing competition for limited water supplies and threaten armed conflict over access to water;
	Reduction of biodiversity and continuing desertification;
	Pollution of air, water and soil with detrimental influences on the global environment and climate change;
	Continuing growth of the world's population, coupled with additional economic pressures caused by increased life expectancy;
	Increasing nationalistic, political and religious extremism, terrorism, armed conflict, mass migration and social disruption.

Politicians and commercial organisations have a notoriously short‐term and narrow view of such complex issues and it falls to all the professions to ‘carry the torch’ for their amelioration and resolution.

Looking more generally to the future education of professional engineers, there are challenges both to higher education and also to the profession itself. In the US, the National Academy of Engineering (2005) suggested that ‘[the] future engineering curriculum should be built around developing skills and not around teaching knowledge… We must teach future engineers to be creative and flexible, to be curious and imaginative.’ In the UK, the Engineering Council produced new standards of engineering competence (2004) that explicitly included sustainable development. The standards document states that: ‘[Engineers have a] crucial part to play in minimising risk to the environment, and in bringing about sustainable development, not only in the UK but throughout the world.’

Around the same time, the Barcelona Declaration (EESD 2004), a product of an international conference on engineering education in sustainable development, suggested that society needed a new kind of engineer who:

	Understands how engineering interacts with society and the environment, locally and globally;
	Understands how engineers contribute in different cultural, social and political contexts;
	Works in multidisciplinary teams;
	Applies a holistic and systemic approach to solving problems;
	Participates actively in the discussion and definition of economic, social and technological policies, to help redirect society towards more sustainable development;
	Applies professional knowledge and duty according to universal values and ethics;
	Listens closely to the demands of citizens and other stakeholders.

In the same declaration, a charge is laid on higher education to revise and review the training of engineers to take a holistic view of education, embedding social and ethical aspects so that engineers might use their skills for broader social, political and environmental needs.

In Manchester, we had begun a series of dialogues and initiatives to bring together staff and students, from across the disciplinary divides, to look at some of the complex issues of global social responsibility. This had included a two‐day session on aspects of ‘water’ and an evening session with the Deputy High Commissioner for New Zealand looking at problems of small island communities, particularly in the Pacific, as well as a student summer school looking at issues around human migration. Building on this, and around the same time that the engineering institutions published their documents, the University of Manchester invited the Royal Academy of Engineering to sponsor a pilot project. This was to bring together the threads both of tackling wicked global problems on a professional basis and also of the redesign of the education of professional engineers to foster abilities and skills in adapting to change and in managing change through inter‐professional collaboration. This proposal was for an inter‐disciplinary, problem‐based, module on sustainable development in undergraduate engineering and physical sciences programmes. The problem‐based approach was, in part, derived from work carried out by Engel et al. (2007). The proposal to the Royal Academy of Engineering was accepted and the pilot module began in January 2007, undertaken by 48 third‐year undergraduates drawn from four disciplines: Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, and Environmental and Earth Sciences. This article outlines some of design considerations as well as outcomes from that first pilot.

Using terms such as inter‐disciplinarity and multi‐disciplinarity can lead us to trip up on our own terminology and perhaps cause confusion in the reader. We have tried to be consistent in our usage, which is based largely on that of Hugh Barr (1996): Scott and Hofmeyer (2007) have produced a more detailed review of cross‐disciplinary terminology. We regard as multi‐disciplinary, activities where students or professionals from different disciplines learn or work in the same space, but each discipline from its own standpoint. We define as inter‐disciplinary, activities where students from different disciplines learn and work together, sharing views and discussing issues across disciplinary boundaries. Trans‐disciplinary, activities are those where students work or learn together on issues that defy disciplinary boundaries or where the students learn with, and from, teachers from another discipline. However, these are not clear‐cut definitions and there is considerable scope for overlap in meaning, particularly where a group migrates from a multi‐disciplinary to an inter‐disciplinary approach.

2. What was to be achieved?

The study intent was twofold. First, we were seeking to develop a course unit that would help students to develop skills in understanding change processes and some of the skills involved in change management, in an inter‐professional context. Second, we were starting from a premise of a contextual, active, inter‐disciplinary, collaborative and cumulative approach to learning. Our original intention was to design an introductory course module for first‐year students, with the potential of building on that in later years. In practice, we found that timetable constraints meant that we had to look at the pilot as a third‐year option, which was still introductory in its knowledge base but that would look to skills development more appropriate to those about to commence their professional career.

Moving from this objective to the design of the curriculum was a detailed, step by step process, involving the use of four advisory groups (Tomkinson et al. 2007) the essential nature of which was:

	To define a working definition of ‘sustainable development’;
	To identify abilities and skills that ought to begin to be developed in the pilot module in the context of realistic case studies;
	To identify how the learning outcomes of this module might be assessed and how successful participation by the students might be recognised;
	To monitor and evaluate the process of implementing the pilot module, including how staff commitment to a new approach to teaching and learning might be recognised.

The advisory groups were drawn largely from senior academic staff recruited from across the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, and were set up so that each individual had a limited time commitment. Important aims of this approach were to underline the credibility of the profession‐based content and to spread the innovative educational approach throughout the faculty.

The definition arrived at by the first advisory group, and which sets the context for the pilot, is: ‘Education for Sustainable Development aims to enable the professional engineer to participate with a leading contribution in decisions about the way we do things individually and collectively, both locally and globally, to meet the needs and aspirations of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs and aspirations.’ Eighteen embryonic case studies were identified initially by the second advisory group and five of these ‘case studies’ were developed for use in the pilot module. These are discussed in more detail below.

3. The student groups

The key to the design of the exercises was that the learning should take place in small inter‐disciplinary student groups. Each of the five student exercises (see Table 1) extended over three weeks, with one small group session in each week. Each group was designed to comprise two students from each of the four disciplines. They elected a secretary who liaised with the Project Team. For each exercise, the group recruited one of its members to act as scribe – to note the group's progress in its discussions:

	Session one focused on identifying the nature and challenges in the task presented in a scenario, analysing the exercise using a logical system and ending with agreement on the allocation of questions to be followed up through private study, in preparation for the next session. This included a number of questions, some posed by individual students and at least one posed by several students, but none by the designer or facilitator of the exercise. The initial examination of the presenting situation and the nature of the task also encouraged a sharing of existing knowledge and experience among the students, who began to appreciate contributions from different backgrounds and disciplines.
	Session two started with the exchange of what had been learned in answer to the research questions, to encourage all students to actively think through what had been learned and to obtain immediate feedback of how well the individual had learned. This included two students chosen at random providing a brief verbal presentation on their response to the common question. The second half of the session led to a discussion to plan how the completion of the task by submitting a written report or presentation was to be undertaken by the team before the third session.
	Session three began with a discussion of the appraisal of the group's report by an expert followed by a brief formative assessment and a period of reflection where all students were encouraged to summarise how they had learned and how they had helped the group, before starting the next exercise in the second half of the two‐hour session.

Table 1. Student exercises.

Title	Aspects	Task
Wheels	Enabling change within an organisation; Sustainability definitions, tools and techniques; Corporate attitudes; Understanding stakeholders' perspectives.	Recommend sustainable development initiatives for a large tyre manufacturing company, aiming to achieve change within the company through involving different functions within the organisation. A consultant's letter provides a list of existing sustainability tools and projects that students may decide to investigate and could choose to include in their plan.
Shelter	Enabling change across international and cultural boundaries; Impacts of natural disasters on communities; Stakeholder co‐operation; Infrastructure and logistics; Cultural, etc. differences; Sustainable design.	Develop a strategy for transitional accommodation (housing, schools, clinics, etc.) after a natural disaster. Analyse possible alternative approaches and propose a sound and sustainable strategy for their construction. Achieve a realistic and workable balance between international aid and local skills and manpower.
Rules	Implementing change via regulation; Impact of environmental regulation; Impact on supply chain: Minimising life cycle impacts.	As employees of a Regulatory Body, review the UK's implementation of recent EU directives concerning the electronics manufacturing industry, identifying strengths and weaknesses in minimising the negative life cycle impacts. Predict impacts on small businesses and advise on preparation required for implementation.
Energy	Implementing change through new technology; Cost‐benefit analysis; Barriers to new technology; Infrastructure support for new technologies.	For new‐build housing, weigh up the social, financial and environmental impacts of incorporating micro‐energy‐generation technologies such as wind‐turbines, solar water heating, geothermal heat pump and photovoltaic cells, through an initial cost‐benefit analysis taking into account economic, social and environmental issues. Understand the implications of introducing new technology to the marketplace and how to overcome barriers to public acceptance of technical solutions.
Shops	Implementing change through company policy, driven by investor pressure; Corporate social responsibility; Supply chain management; Assessing sustainability; Benchmarking.	Assess the sustainability of a major supermarket chain; evaluating the company against industry good practice in terms of the supply chain sustainability, in response to serious criticism by shareholders. Recommend actions to urgently address the corporate social responsibility issues identified.

The five scenarios were sequenced to foster cumulative learning and all six student groups were engaged on the same scenario at the same time.

4. The use of facilitators

One of the pivotal roles, then, was that of the facilitator and these were recruited and trained specifically for this task from among post‐doctoral research staff. A single member of staff acted as dedicated facilitator for each team, rather than circulating between teams or swapping teams each week. This built trust and enabled a close bond to develop between students and facilitator. The initial training was also used to identify those, among the many volunteers, who were most likely to perform well in this unfamiliar role. In this context, the role of facilitator involves acting as friend and adviser to students in how to benefit from being responsible for their own self‐directed learning, rather than being subjected to traditional teaching. One of the important tasks in training was to get the facilitators, who came from a wide range of disciplines themselves, to set aside their natural inclination to share their specialist knowledge and to focus instead on the learning needs of the students.

We received a large number of applications to be considered as facilitators and we were keen to select post‐doctoral researchers who were: good listeners, encouraging regarding creative ideas, sensitive to students' concerns and confident enough to travel an unfamiliar path with us. Clear communication skills were also important, especially as so many of our students come from all over the world.

Induction of the facilitators was conducted in four sessions: the sequence started with a general discussion of the process of problem‐based learning (PBL), particularly for the development of abilities and skills in relation to sustainable development in science and engineering. In the second session, they looked at the activities which they would set out to support in the three sessions which are assigned to each scenario. They also began to take it in turns to role play what the facilitator would do during the first session of a new Exercise. The third session set out to reinforce what had been discussed in the previous session and to provide opportunities for further role play. The final session examined the content and related challenges of the first Exercise for the student groups.

Support for the facilitators was primarily their participation in the regular, informal ‘post session briefing and debriefing session’, where they met with members of the Project Team for one to two hours each week, to exchange impressions and experiences, as well as observations relating to the members of their group. This exchange was intended as, and in fact proved to be, a significant opportunity for support and learning from each other. Two ‘reserve’ facilitators were appointed with a dual role; first, they acted as back‐up in case one of the facilitators was unable to attend – the ‘reserves’ showed their value when this happened on a few occasions – and, second, they were given specific additional tasks – for example reviewing some of the suggestions for assessment. The former function had to take precedence over the latter and this meant that it was difficult to always assign appropriate other tasks.

5. Student exercises

The design of the student exercises was not a trivial task. As all learning took place through these exercises, ensuring that they encompassed the full range of skills and knowledge intended by the programme was vital. The need to find problem scenarios that: tackled ‘live’ unsolved problems; challenged students, without becoming over‐facing; built skills and knowledge cumulatively, without undue repetition; between them covered a wide range of aspects of sustainable development, without focusing unduly on discipline‐specific knowledge; allowed for inter‐disciplinary interplay, without becoming shallow and anodyne; were contextual, enabling students to realistically take on the role of a recent graduate employed by an organisation, and; were sufficiently topical to be relevant, given the fast pace of technical, social and regulatory change – was a complex one, and doubtless the authors will be criticised for not ‘covering’ someone's favourite topic or technique. Each exercise tackles a different mechanism for change towards sustainable development and was designed in conjunction with an academic expert in the particular subject area chosen, drawn from disciplines as diverse as law, engineering, architecture and economics. The scenarios used, ultimately, in what was originally intended to be an Introductory Module, are described briefly in Table 1.

The final exercise was assessed summatively and so was designed to pull together much of the learning from the earlier exercises.

6. Assessment

Because of the student‐centred and problem‐based nature of the design, the development of assessment was complex. We had to balance the need for assessment to support the way the project team wished to help students to develop new competences with the need to comply with institutional rules and regulations. We were keen to ensure that formative assessment was as much a learning tool as a preparation for the summative assessment.

To achieve some balance the team developed four different types of assessment:

	Modified essay questions (Feletti and Engel 1980). To meet institutional requirements, a ‘one‐hour examination’ was designed to deliver two scenarios and to test individuals' knowledge and understanding through the use of MEQs. The MEQ explores students' ability to act as professionals who are expected to make decisions that they can justify. Hence, each ‘question’ presents a factual scenario in stages, each building on the previous one, usually asking for a number of brief options together with a logically‐justified preferred answer.
	Staff Observation. For the final exercise, groups were monitored by a facilitator from another group, armed with a checklist of attributes of group collaboration to observe. Students had been made aware, throughout the course module, of the expectations of group behaviour and how these would be assessed. A team of senior assessors used criterion referencing to draw judgements on the recorded observations.
	Group Report. As a conclusion to the final exercise, each group submitted a written report, marked on the basis of application of the knowledge and understanding gained over the whole course.
	Peer Assessment (Conway et al. 1993). Each group member was given a checklist and asked to indicate the presence, or absence, of a number of contributions to the group process, for each of the other members of the group. These anonymous judgements were collated and used for the allocation of individual marks by the team of senior assessors.

The formative assessment attempted to mirror the summative assessment and a reflective period, at the end of each scenario, was designed to give students the opportunity to identify not only how they had organised their learning, but also how they had worked together as a group. A fuller account of the assessment methods is given in the report to the Royal Academy of Engineering (Tomkinson 2008).

7. Monitoring

Monitoring is a means of gathering data in relation to the ongoing process of planning, designing, implementing and assessing the curriculum and also provides an opportunity for identifying what goes wrong and may be fixed en passant. This was done in a number of ways:

	First, the reflections of the project team have been captured as we have gone along.
	Second, there have been weekly debriefings of the facilitators, as a group, and the results of these deliberations and reflections are written up.
	Third, the students completed three questionnaires early and late in the course, each no more than one side of A4, intended to measure changes in: self‐perception of skills in, and attitudes towards, sustainable development; approaches to study, using a modified version of the SETLQ questionnaire (ETL Project 2005) and; readiness for inter‐disciplinary learning, using a modified version of the RIPL questionnaire (Mattick and Bligh 2006). The SETL questionnaire measures four attributes: deep approach to learning; surface approach to learning; monitoring study and organised study. The RIPL questionnaire looks at student views of inter‐professional education and use three components: effective team‐working; professional identity and professional roles.
	Fourth, on two occasions the project team obtained student and facilitator feedback through the nominal group technique (see, for example Mackay 2003) to identify what the students and, separately, the facilitators, considered to be the three most positive aspects of the course‐unit, i.e. found so good that it ought not to be changed and the three most negative aspects of the course‐unit, i.e. what was so weak that it ought to be changed in any rerun of the course‐unit.

A fuller account of the monitoring and evaluation is given in the report to the Royal Academy of Engineering (Tomkinson 2008).

8. Evaluation

The results of the student evaluation data were generally highly positive but a little mixed. The scores given on the standard university module satisfaction questionnaire were very high on most attributes and those attributes that fared less well were generally inappropriate to this mode of learning. The self‐perception questionnaire showed a demonstrable improvement in perception of skills in relation to the learning, over the course of the module. The SETL questionnaire showed significant increases in deep learning, and commensurate decreases in surface learning, but the RIPL questionnaire showed no significant change. The last of these came as no surprise since the initial RIPL scores were very high, perhaps reflecting a large element of self selection.

From the nominal group results, we learned that there was unanimity, in the end‐of‐session administration, about the value of inter‐disciplinary working, something only mentioned by half the groups in mid‐semester. Groupwork featured in most of the responses in both mid‐semester (where it had the highest incidence across the groups) and also at the end of the semester. The course content also featured in the top three positive aspects on both occasions, occurring in half of the groups. The variety and nature of assessment featured positively at the end of semester (coming in the top three of half of the groups) but had not featured at all in mid‐semester, although both the learning approach and also the feedback received had merited mention. On the negative side, timetabling issues featured prominently on both occasions. These varied from difficulties of trying to get together students from different programmes to lack of enthusiasm for 9 am starts! Timing also came under scrutiny in two other ways: timing of assessments (both formative and summative), particularly where this conflicted with major pieces of work for other modules, and also the structure of the weekly two‐hour sessions. A concern for a lack of contact with other groups in mid‐semester disappeared by end of semester, by which time the noise of other groups, working in nearby areas, had become an issue!

The results of the mid‐semester nominal group process for the facilitators showed their key positive points to be the imaginative and varied tasks, the use of problem‐based learning and the use of communication skills and group learning, though the facilitators also felt that it was a valuable learning exercise of their own. By the end of the semester, the inter‐disciplinary nature of the module featured more prominently, together with the currency of the issues raised in the scenarios and the professional development aspects. The two key concerns at the mid‐point were the narrow range of disciplines represented by the students and the roles of the two ‘reserve’ facilitators. The imprecise role of the ‘reserve’ facilitators was still prominent in the end‐of‐semester session, but was joined by some unease with the modified essay questions and a suggestion for a broader range of topics.

9. Discussion – the educational approach

Our approach was built on many years' experience of problem‐based learning (Engel et al. 2007) as well as implementing a series of discussions and workshops for both students and staff around the idea of interdisciplinarity with societal responsibility.

Mitchell et al. (2004) suggest that learning how to learn is the single most important goal for sustainable development and that PBL naturally lends itself to this situation. However, ‘[a] shift to PBL may be challenging. Part of this challenge arises from the adjustment required in educators and learners mind‐sets… the locus of responsibility for learning rests much more firmly with the student… This represents a challenging shift for teachers of science and engineering, who may be skilled at and derive great satisfaction from the more accustomed practice of delivering “objective” knowledge.’ Engel et al. (2007) have illustrated a set of key variables which can affect the acceptability, effectiveness and efficiency of PBL, not merely as a method of teaching but as a coherent educational system, based on the principles that underpin problem‐based learning.

The idea of PBL in engineering is not new; Aalborg University has operated a scheme of PBL in engineering for over 30 years (Kolmos 1996). However, there has been some confusion about the nature of PBL; Dym et al. (2005) used the acronym to describe project‐based learning and Fink (1999) described the Aalborg PBL approach in such a way that it suggested an amalgam of both problem‐ and project‐based learning. Felder et al. (2000) looked more generally at teaching methods in Chemical Engineering and Felder's co‐operative learning has much in common with the problem‐based approach: indeed one of his collaborators, Donald Woods, has been a strong advocate of problem‐based learning.

Chernikova and Voropaeva (2007) reported an educational approach in St Petersburg that also picks up both inter‐disciplinary and problem‐oriented aspects. However, the St Petersburg model is aimed more at masters level programmes and adopts more of a project‐based approach to learning than a problem‐based one. The main competences sought in that programme posed a reasonable match to our own, although we would regard the key tenet of change management as a serious omission:

	‘Inter‐disciplinary, systems, holistic strategic thinking…;
	Problem solving capacity for complex problems in an uncertain context;
	Critical reflection about the graduate's own competencies…;
	Being able to communicate…;
	Skills and ability for coordination of a team and for good leadership;
	Creativity and original thinking…;
	Capacity for innovative thinking.’

Not only did our approach take on board the need for using different approaches in order to deal with the issues of uncertainty and complexity that bedevil sustainable development and global societal responsibility, but the design of the curriculum itself was subject to an innovative approach. In his inaugural speech at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam, Rotmans (2005) suggested that ‘… a transition to a sustainable society will require new knowledge and a new knowledge infrastructure… A new interdisciplinary and trans‐disciplinary knowledge infrastructure is required…’ Universities need to grasp this new knowledge infrastructure and design curricula to meet its requirements.

10. Conclusions

In view of a number of obstacles, we would have liked rather more time for the process and more financial flexibility. Our original intention was to provide an introductory level course for first year undergraduates, but timetabling difficulties precluded this, and we had to focus on a third‐year option. Clearly, the pilot study enjoyed a higher level of resourcing than would be normal for a new module, but much of this was deployed on monitoring and evaluation. Nonetheless, to become a financially viable course unit we will need to look closely at issues both of scaling up and also of improving efficiency. The pressure of other responsibilities, the limitation of 3.5 days per week for the project manager and the location of the Visiting Professor in London caused essential communication difficulties. At the same time, we need to acknowledge that ours is a difficult and complex task that calls for more time to overcome inevitable, vested interests in maintaining the status quo or in developing sustainable development in a narrow, single‐discipline fashion.

For the pilot course, the team restricted the student numbers to six groups consisting of pairs from four discipline streams – Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Earth and Environmental Sciences – a total of 48 students. This gave us an immediate problem, as the pilot unit was heavily oversubscribed and the project team had to find ways of sifting down to the required number. In the event, the university's student record system and approach to third‐year options meant that some students did not turn up for the first session and lost their place. We had similar problems in recruiting post‐doctoral research staff and had to turn away some very good candidates. After the first selection, the remaining candidates received their induction training and eight were chosen to act as facilitators. It did mean that the disciplines covered by facilitators were extended to include Chemical Engineering, Chemistry and Computer Science. Our ambition is to extend the approach to a much wider student audience and the second run of the pilot, in 2008, not only has twice as many participating students, but also from a wider range of disciplines, including Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry. In future, we would like to see the model extended to include an even wider range of disciplines, including those from outside the faculty. We are also looking at the possibility of introducing a similar module at postgraduate level and a long‐term ambition has been to introduce sustainable development as a ‘thread’ through all undergraduate years.

The intention to build skills and knowledge of change management in a complex environment was, we felt, met to a large extent, though this has to be a subjective judgement. The real test of how successful we have been in this endeavour lies many years down the line. Suffice it to say that a senior representative of the Royal Academy of Engineering expressed a view that the students that he had observed at work had demonstrated a standard equivalent to those being interviewed for professional chartered engineering status several years into their career.