Jordi Segalàs

Embedding sustainability in higher education through interaction with lecturers: Case studies from three European technical universities

In this paper, three universities compare their work on the integration of sustainable development into their educational programmes. The purpose is to show examples of how this can be done and to illustrate important generalised success factors. Methods used to achieve embedding of sustainability in curricula through individual interaction with teachers and other actors are described. The three universities are all technical universities with relatively high ambitions for their activities in relation to sustainable development.

How to Educate Engineers for/in Sustainable Development: Ten Years of Discussion, Remaining Challenges.

Systematic analysis of what should be Engineering Education in Sustainable Development has been taking place since the end of the 1990s.This paper addresses what the main challenges have been and what educational research is still required. To provide more and better solutions for the sustainability challenges of our time engineering education should adapt and open itself to social science driven approaches and active experiential learning in order to make the engineer a valuable SD problem solver. But how to educate the engineer for that task? This paper provides an overview of main questions that were analyzed: 1. What should engineers learn on SD? 2. How to trigger institutional change within engineering schools: topdown or bottom-up? 3. How to trigger cultural change, how to win the hearts and souls of the faculty? 4. Curriculum change: starting new programs or changing existing ones? 5. The contribution of active learning and project based learning?

Conceptual maps: measuring learning processes of engineering students concerning sustainable development

In the 1990s, courses on sustainable development (SD) were introduced in technological universities. After some years of practice, there is increased interest in the evaluation of the most effective ways for teaching SD. This paper introduces the use of conceptual maps as a tool to measure the knowledge acquired by students when taking a Sustainability course. Pilot measurements have been made to evaluate the concepts and their interrelations in order to evaluate the students’ learning. These measurements were carried out using a sample of more than 700 European students. To measure the learning outcomes of courses, the evaluation is done twice. Before the course starts, the students’ previous knowledge on sustainability is measured; once the students have completed the course they are evaluated again. By comparing conceptual maps drawn by each student, the improvement of the students’ knowledge is evaluated. This paper shows the measuring process, and points out the suitability of using conceptual maps for research in education. Moreover, the correlation between the learning outcomes the pedagogical techniques used in each course may indicate the effectiveness of the pedagogical strategies in education for sustainable development.

Utilizing international networks for accelerating research and learning in transformational sustainability science

A promising approach for addressing sustainability problems is to recognize the unique conditions of a particular place, such as problem features and solution capabilities, and adopt and adapt solutions developed at other places around the world. Therefore, research and teaching in international networks becomes critical, as it allows for accelerating learning by sharing problem understandings, successful solutions, and important contextual considerations. This article identifies eight distinct types of research and teaching collaborations in international networks that can support such accelerated learning. The four research types are, with increasing intensity of collaboration: (1) solution adoption; (2) solution consultation; (3) joint research on different problems; and (4) joint research on similar problems. The four teaching types are, with increasing intensity of collaboration: (1) adopted course; (2) course with visiting faculty; (3) joint course with traveling faculty; and (4) joint course with traveling students. The typology is illustrated by extending existing research and teaching projects on urban sustainability in the International Network of Programs in Sustainability, with partner universities from Europe, North America, Asia, and Africa. The article concludes with challenges and strategies for extending individual projects into collaborations in international networks.

Action research workshop for transdisciplinary sustainability science

The Research Institute for Sustainability Science and Technology under the Master degree in Sustainability Science and Technology organises the course action research workshop on Science and Technology for Sustainability (5 ECTS). The authors have been coordinating the course during the academic years 13/14, 14/15 and 15/16. The purpose of the workshop is to put together civil society organisations, local administrations, students and educators to collaboratively undertake responsible research, performing transdisciplinary learning environments and by an action research framework, to answer questions such as: Who are we researching for? Who profits from our research? What are the impacts of our research? Which methodologies and tools should be used when dealing with sociotechnical sustainability challenges? Students work on real projects, related to local sustainability problems, represented by a community entity (Service learning and Campus Lab). Action research methodology is used with a two-cycle approach. In each real-life project, students, faculty and stakeholders are asked to follow the action–reflexion process of action research projects: Action 1—Jointly defining: Project purpose; Customer and interest; Involved actors; Reflexion 1—Students define: research question, initial situation, needed additional information, action Strategy, Tasks planning and distribution: Action 2—Items returning and discussing with stakeholders, Reflexion 2—Revising and reformulating. Having now run the workshop three times, we can conclude that: first, students realised the significance of framing an investigation under a research methodological framework that allows bringing research to the community, enhancing transdisciplinarity in any initiative or action in sustainability science. They set out the importance of some topics and the difficulty to hold them. Second, the formulation of the problem became one of the most arduous tasks in the process; difficulties were mainly related to the perception of the problem from distinct community group motivations. Third, interaction and communication with stakeholders and the recognition of their role was problematic as engineering students are not usually trained to work in wicked problems nor accompany stakeholders during the whole process. Finally, it is relevant to highlight that during the process students faced conflict and frustrating situations both within their team and with stakeholders. To help tackle this problem, an Emotional Intelligence module was introduced in the workshop which proved useful in helping students to solve some paralysing situations, which could otherwise have stopped the progress of the project. We suggest that engineering students need specific training in transdisciplinary research and in conflict resolution, to avoid collapsing in frustration when dealing with real transdisciplinary sustainability transitions.

Multicultural Constructive Community Learning Course for Education in Sustainable Development Applying Backcasting

The International Seminar on Sustainable Technology Innovation is a course offered in the framework of the master of Sustainability of the UPC-Barcelona Tech University and financed by the ERASMUS Intensive Program scheme. It introduces backcasting scenarios methodology in real sustainability problems. The learning environment is international, transdisciplinary, intergenerational and intercultural. It includes stakeholders’ dialogues and discussions. The course is organized around current sustainability relevant topics that are analysed in study cases based in different contexts: going from developed to developing countries and from local to global cases. Students apply scenario methodologies to the study cases in order to set up the most contextualized sustainable strategies. The course is structured in four phases: first the local situation analysis where students analyse the topic in their own countries/regions; then students are grouped in international multidisciplinary teams and define the state of the art of the case studies; afterwards students, lecturers and stakeholders meet in Barcelona where the course is run for two weeks and finally students analyse their learning experience in terms of competences acquisition. The topics analysed in the course vary each year and are related to relevant sustainability challenges: urban solid waste management; food and drinks packaging waste; overfishing and marine ecosystem degradation; sustainable mobility, agro-ecology and sustainable community energy systems. In 2014 UPC Barcelona Tech is running the course for the seventh time and so far more than 170 students, 40 lecturers and 60 stakeholders have participated in the course from 39 countries. This paper explains the learning environment and the challenges and lessons learnt when organizing such a course, and the learning results obtained by students.

TRANSDISCIPLINARITY. WHICH ROLE FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT EDUCATION AND ITS SITUATION WITHIN ENGINEERING EDUCATION

Sustainability issues are widely recognized as wicked problems, which should not be considered as problems to be solved, but as conditions to be governed. There is a general agreement on the need to reform scientific expertise as it is required to deal with sustainability challenges, by developing new ways of knowledge production and decision-making. Transdisciplinary aspects of sustainability are widely acknowledged as a transformational stream of sustainability science. However, when entering transdisciplinarity, also encompassing social sciences and humanities, engineering researchers enter unfamiliar grounds. Advancing sustainable engineering science requires creating new long-term, participatory, solution-oriented programs as platforms to recognize and engage with the macro-ethical, adaptive, and cross-disciplinary challenges embedded in professional issues. Furthermore, the difficulties to change engineering education are broadly analyzed: anachronistic pedagogy, mismatched incentives, insufficient expertise, lack of personal commitment, familiar and comfortable patterns for scholars, overcrowded curriculum, etc. Nevertheless, in spite of any old pattern, operationalizing the goals of the field, developing the necessary competencies, and seeking partnerships between society and the academy will position academic institutions to impact on the transition towards sustainability. We have performed a literature review on different ways of applying or bringing transdisciplinarity approach to higher education, in particular in engineering and technology fields. Deepening the argumentation provided by Julie T. Klein on the three discourses on transdisciplinarity - transcendence, problem solving, transgression- we have analysed the different published initiatives under those discourses to approach transdisciplinarity initiatives in engineering education for sustainability.

The EPS Experience at UPC-Barcelona Tech

The EPS was not an original idea. It was first developed in Denmark at the Copenhagen University of Engineering in the Industrial Design field. The main reason why we choose to implement the programme at UPC is that it was a new international programme adapted to the European Higher Education Area which was just being implemented in Spain at that time. Moreover it was suitable for lastyear engineering students, who were the main target of our international mobility programmes.