Team project-based learning enhances awareness of sustainability at the University of British Columbia, Canada

The University of British Columbia's campus sustainability office, through the "Social, ecological, and economic development studies" (SEEDS) program, gave a team of students in a bio-environmental engineering design course an environmental problem to resolve for their term project. T...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInternational journal of sustainability in higher education Vol. 4; no. 3; p. 210
Main Authors Brunetti, Anthony J, Petrell, Royann J, Sawada, Brenda
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Bradford Emerald Group Publishing Limited 01.07.2003
Subjects
Active Learning
Colleges & universities
Economic development
Environmental engineering
Experiential Learning
Learning
Learning Processes
Problem solving
Sustainability
Sustainable development
Teaching
Teaching Methods
Canada
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Summary:The University of British Columbia's campus sustainability office, through the "Social, ecological, and economic development studies" (SEEDS) program, gave a team of students in a bio-environmental engineering design course an environmental problem to resolve for their term project. The students, did not resolve the problem, but the project-based learning approach was effective in teaching them about social, economic and environmental sustainability issues. It also provided the campus with a new sense of direction concerning the solution to the particular problem. The teaching process required that the instructors change their teaching approaches as well as subject matter. Changes in individual engineering-related skill levels were difficult to assess and, due to this, corrective actions were undertaken to address team project-based assessment in the future. The teaching approach can be adapted to other educational settings. This paper will describe the overall learning and teaching process. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT] Keywords Sustainable development, Universities, Action learning, Teaching, Problem solving, Canada
ISSN:1467-6370
1758-6739