An Integrated Approach to Energy Education in Engineering

What do engineering students in 2020 need to know about energy to be successful in the workplace and contribute to addressing society’s issues related to energy? Beginning with this question, we have designed a new course for second-year engineering students. Drawing on the interdisciplinary backgro...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sustainability 2020-11, Vol.12 (21), p.9145
Main Authors: Hoople, Gordon D., Chen, Diana A., Lord, Susan M., Gelles, Laura A., Bilow, Felicity, Mejia, Joel Alejandro
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Civil engineering
Climate change
Computer engineering
Construction
Core curriculum
COVID-19
Design
Education
Energy
Energy efficiency
Engineering education
Engineering schools
Engineers
Heat
Integrated approach
Interdisciplinary aspects
Learning
Mechanical engineering
Pandemics
Power plants
Social factors
Social justice
Students
Sustainability
Teachers
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Summary:What do engineering students in 2020 need to know about energy to be successful in the workplace and contribute to addressing society’s issues related to energy? Beginning with this question, we have designed a new course for second-year engineering students. Drawing on the interdisciplinary backgrounds of our diverse team of engineering instructors, we aimed to provide an introduction to energy for all engineering students that challenged the dominant discourse in engineering by valuing students’ lived experiences and bringing in examples situated in different cultural contexts. An Integrated Approach to Energy was offered for the first time in Spring 2020 for 18 students. In this paper, we describe the design of the course including learning objectives, content, and pedagogical approach. We assessed students’ learning using exams and the impact of the overall course using interviews. Students demonstrated achievement of the learning objectives in technical areas. In addition, interviews revealed that they learned about environmental, economic, and social aspects of engineering practice. We intend for this course to serve as a model of engineering as a sociotechnical endeavor by challenging students with scenarios that are technically demanding and require critical thinking about contextual implications.
ISSN:2071-1050
2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su12219145