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This study explores the application of the epoxidation process of poly‐β‐myrcene, a constituent of the natural resin from Chios Mastic trees (Pistacia Lentiscus L.), as an educational instrument for teaching Green Chemistry and Engineering to students at various academic levels. The study provides a comprehensive presentation of foundational knowledge essential for interpreting the subsequent experimental data. Consequently, the production process that leads to the production of Mastic Epoxide (MASTEP) stands as an invaluable pedagogical resource, enabling educators to impart crucial principles of Green Chemistry and Engineering to both pre‐graduate and post‐graduate students. By employing MASTEP as a case study, this educational approach actively involves students in a dynamic learning environment. Through this methodology, learners develop a profound comprehension of sustainability, innovation, and good practices. The integration of the MASTEP concept into the curriculum would foster a deeper understanding of responsible methodologies among aspiring chemical engineers and scientists, equipping them to make substantial contributions towards a more sustainable global landscape. This educational model aims to contribute to preparing future generations for a pivotal role in fostering a sustainable world through their professional endeavors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green engineering is an important direction for engineering education, especially in the field of chemical engineering, where green chemical is a necessary guarantee for achieving sustainable development in the industry. How to practice the principles of green engineering in curriculum education is a problem that needs to be faced in engineering education, due to the currently educated persons are the future practitioners. The aim of this study is to integrate green techniques into an undergraduate‐level chemical design course, demonstrating how green engineering principles can be embedded in the curriculum to practice green engineering education, and thus disseminate the sustainability concept, resulting in a framework for achieving sustainable development. According to the training programme and design procedure, each student receives a product process design project and is guided by a teacher through the data review and discussion and then integrates green technologies in all aspects of the design, and the design result is evaluated. The good results of the students' design show that the undergraduate‐level chemical design course can well integrate green engineering principles and green technologies in the design, enhance the green standard of process design, broaden the students' design vision and mobilize their engineering creativity. It is a good form of green engineering education that the integration of engineering green technologies into an undergraduate‐level chemical design course, as demonstrated by the design results, which achieve effective practice of the sustainability concept and develop green education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over 60 million tons of E‐waste is expected to be generated in 2023, with associated significant impacts on health and the environment. To reduce the number of products sent to landfills, "Right to Repair" (RtR) movements are gaining momentum in many countries, including the UK, USA, and EU member states. While Universities are seen as important stakeholders to drive forward sustainable design practices, there is currently little work looking at training undergraduate design engineers in the principles of designing household products in support of RtR. In particular, the project‐based learning (PBL) pedagogy shows promise in engaging and training students with the skills and knowledge required to successfully design products for RtR. In this paper, a pilot‐study of teaching engineers is presented to design products compatible with RtR principles, alongside many technical skills, in a first‐year PBL course. The key outputs of this paper are the design of the module, which can be used to help inform first‐year engineering education, the high engagement of students, with 100% of respondents agreeing that they intend to try to implement sustainable design practices in future, and some of the innovative features that students implement in their projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability research findings are imperative to reach a wide audience but are often hard to interpret for the general public because of their complex and interdisciplinary nature. Virtual reality (VR) is an emerging tool in education and research dissemination that can make information more accessible and engaging. This case study leveraged VR, gamification theory, and art design to develop an immersive experience that educates the general public with environmental engineering and sustainability knowledge. Through a series of informative and interactive games, this experience presented scientific findings while providing realism and entertainment throughout. This paper presents step‐by‐step guidelines for transferring engineering knowledge into a pedagogical VR experience, including human–computer interactions, storyboard development, data visualization, and gamification theory implementation. Participants provided positive feedback on the learning experience and stated that the experience sparked a curiosity to learn more about sustainability concepts. Improving opportunities for future development proposed during beta‐testing were also documented to guide future development. This case study contributes to the body of knowledge by validating the feasibility and effectiveness of incorporating VR and gamification theory in engineering education. Practically, the proposed development procedure can be implemented in various engineering education contents and scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial ecology and sustainability education have evolved over time, as this relatively new discipline has emerged and has been refined. Courses engaging with these topics are often found in engineering departments, and feature project or problem‐based learning (PBL) commonly with an industrial partner. This provides students the opportunity to apply the topics that they have learned in class in a real‐world situation, complete with the constraints and uncertainties inherent in practice. Community‐based learning (CBL), a combination of service learning and PBL, allows students to not only apply the material from a sustainability course, but also to do so in service of a community partner. This work presents an analysis of a multi‐year effort in teaching a CBL course on the topic of industrial ecology and sustainability in a North American context. Knowledge probes are utilized to quantify student preparation for the course and confidence in knowledge gained during the course in a longitudinal manner. Meanwhile, evolving student reflection is utilized to assess the impact of how the CBL element of the course influenced student thinking about the role of sustainability and industrial ecology within engineering education. The findings suggest that applying CBL to industrial ecology education has the potential to further enhance student learning experiences, while also providing a valuable service experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complexities of observing flow phenomena in porous media have made it difficult to teach the course, Flow in Porous Media, to undergraduate students majoring in petroleum engineering. In this study, we propose an integrated numerical visualization teaching (INVT) approach that is based on MATLAB Pdetool, graphical user interface, and Visual Basic Programming. The effectiveness of the INVT method was evaluated in two ways: First, via statistical analyses of the examination grades of two groups (experimental and control groups) of selected undergraduate students from the school of petroleum engineering, after a carefully designed INVT tutorial program was conducted on the experimental group, and finally, by interviewing the selected students to ascertain their psychological wellbeing. The following results were obtained: (1) From the statistical analysis, it was observed that the grade distribution, arithmetic mean, median, and maximum scores of students in the experimental group were relatively higher, suggesting that the INVT approach was effective and suitable for the majority of the students. (2) The interviews revealed that the INVT method provides students with a better classroom experience and help them identify their area of interest. (3) The INVT method will provide other benefits, such as cost‐saving, greener classroom​s, decrease carbon footprint, talent and skill enhancement, and achieve sustainable development goals for education. This paper introduces an effective teaching method for environmental and sustainable energy education. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time the INVT method is adopted in teaching a petroleum engineering professional course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Increasing engineering students' engagement with public welfare is central to promoting ethical responsibility among engineers and enhancing engineers' capacity to serve the public good. However, little research has investigated how student experience attempts to increase engagement with public welfare concerns. Purpose/Hypothesis: This study identifies and analyzes the challenges facing efforts to increase engineering students' engagement with the social and ethical implications of their work through a study of students' experiences at two engineering programs that emphasize public welfare engagement. Design/Methods: We conducted interviews with engineering students (n = 26) and ethnographic observations of program events, classes, presentations, and social groups (n = 60) at two engineering programs that focus on engagement with public welfare and foreground learning about the social context and social impacts of engineering. We analyzed these data to identify areas in which students experienced challenges integrating considerations of public welfare into their work. Results: We found that four main areas where engineering students experienced difficulty engaging with considerations of public welfare: (a) defining and defending their identities as engineers; (b) justifying the value of nontechnical work and relevance to engineering; (c) redefining engineering expertise and integrating community knowledge into projects; and (d) addressing ambiguous questions and ethics. Conclusions: This work contributes to knowledge about the barriers to increasing students' engagement with issues of public welfare, even when programs encourage such engagement. These findings are relevant to broader efforts to increase concerns for ethics, social responsibility, and public welfare among engineers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Project‐based learning has shown promise in improving learning outcomes for diverse students. However, studies on its impacts have largely focused on the perceptions of students and instructors or students' immediate performance. This study reports the impact of taking a project‐based introductory engineering course on students' subsequent academic success. Purpose/Hypothesis: This quantitative study examines characteristics related to enrollment in the project‐based introductory engineering course and subsequent academic performance. We hypothesized that participation in the course would be associated with higher academic performance in subsequent engineering courses. In addition, we examined heterogeneity effects for students traditionally underrepresented in engineering education. Design/Method: This study utilized data on students' demographics, academic preparation, course enrollment, and course performance from 1,318 engineering students from a large public university in Southern California. Logistic regression analysis with robust standard errors examined enrollment patterns. We applied propensity scores as inverse‐probability weights in multiple linear models to calculate the average treatment effect on the treated for participants from the project‐based introductory engineering course in five subsequent engineering courses. This analysis was conducted for all students and for selected student subgroups. Results: Enrollment in the project‐based introductory engineering course was positively associated with students' performance in some subsequent engineering courses and did not adversely affect students traditionally underrepresented in engineering. Conclusions: This study provides an example of a project‐based introductory engineering course that can support students' academic success in engineering. The benefits detected for some student populations (e.g., female) are encouraging for broadening engineering pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Research on gender differences and practical initiatives to attract girls to engineering are often carried out at the macro level where science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are aggregated into an entity called STEM. Purpose/Hypothesis: This article challenges the aggregated approach, analyzes gender differences among science and engineering applicants in Finland, and discusses the implications of the findings for engineering education and intervention initiatives. Design/Method: The data consist of the application choices of all applicants to Bachelor studies in Finland in 2016 (151,369 individuals), from which two groups were selected: persons whose first application choice was engineering/technology and persons whose first choice was natural sciences or mathematics. The application choices of these individuals (in total 9,104) are statistically described and analyzed. Results: Engineering/technology (TECH) and natural sciences and mathematics (SCIMA) subjects are not perceived as alternative options by female applicants. Almost 60% of all female TECH applicants and more than 50% of the female SCIMA applicants apply only to their respective programs. Moreover, TECH applicants considering other options prefer other subjects to SCIMA and vice versa. Conclusions: Encouraging more girls to study STEM is not a sufficient solution for attracting more women to engineering. Instead of or in addition to encouraging girls to study science and mathematics in K‐12 education, it is necessary to open the black box of technology and help young people better understand what engineering is about. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Framework for K‐12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards propose that students learn core ideas and practices related to engineering as well as science. To do so, students will need high‐quality curricular materials designed to meet these goals. We report an efficacy study of an elementary engineering curriculum, Engineering is Elementary (EiE) that includes a set of hypothesized critical components designed to encourage student engagement in practices, connect engineering and science learning, and reach diverse students. To measure the impact of the curriculum, we conducted a cluster randomized controlled trial in 604 classrooms in 152 schools in three states. Schools were randomly assigned to either the treatment curriculum or to a comparison curriculum that addressed the same learning goals but did not include several critical components. Results show that students who used the treatment curriculum (EiE) regardless of demographic characteristics outperformed students in the comparison group on outcome measures of both engineering and science content learning. The results show that curriculum design affects student‐learning outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The engineering education discourse increasingly recognizes the role of empathy in preparing students for 21st century challenges. This pedagogical and theoretical interest is not supported by an empirical understanding of the role empathy plays in students' professional formation. Purpose This study investigated how undergraduate engineering students made sense of empathy during a series of empathic communication modules as part of a mechanical engineering design course. Methodology: Post‐module reflections from 146 students were collected in two iterations of the course. The data were qualitatively analyzed using social phenomenology to focus on participants' meaning making in the context of their overall experiences. A model of empathy as interrelated skills, orientations, and ways of being theoretically framed the data gathering and analysis. Findings Three analytic categories structured the significant variation in students' meaning making. (a) Relationships with Others captured students' understandings of the relationship with and role of others along the three dimensions of Distance, Difference, and Power. (b) The Act of Learning identified varying degrees of resonance or disconnect between students' expectations of engineering learning and the forms of learning encountered in the modules. (c) Empathy as a Conceptual Object described the variation of students' own understandings of the nature and function of empathy in the context of their engineering learning. Conclusions: The experiential significance of engaging with empathy makes visible and pedagogically accessible students' value orientations that frame their relationships toward others and their self‐understanding as engineers, thus providing potential new avenues for research and education to engage less tangible facets of engineering formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineering education underpins local capacity. As such, it forms a key component of sustainable engineering for development. While education is needed at all levels, this paper focuses on the tertiary level where it is assumed that graduating students aspire to become professional engineers. In much of Africa, however, university engineering education is criticised for being little changed since the early independence period. It uses outdated pedagogy, lacks professional relevance and fails to attract a diverse range of students. Through contrasting case studies, the paper examines, therefore: (i) the potential to move curriculum towards a problem‐based learning pedagogy where students focus on real‐world problems and associated engineering solutions; and (ii) the contribution of diverse case studies to this pedagogy and the content of courses. We argue that these twin shifts will broaden the curriculum beyond its habitual industry and physical infrastructure focus, is attractive to a wider range of students and links to human development as expressed through the United Nations sustainable development goals. It is also a major component in the pursuit by African institutions for international recognition of the quality of their engineering programmes. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In engineering education, laboratory experience is powerful in building up the specialized aptitudes and skills of the engineering graduates by structuring and conducting practical experiments. In engineering laboratories, the student often deals with complex laboratory equipment to perform the experiment. Oscilloscope and function generator are frequently used electronic equipment in electronics engineering laboratories. Augmented reality (AR) technology has the capacity to provide a unique learning experience to the students which can ease down the difficulties faced by students while operating laboratory equipment. In this paper, an augmented reality learning environment (ARLE) is developed which could help the student in operating the laboratory equipment. The study aims to determine the impact of AR intervention on student laboratory skills, cognitive load, and learning motivation. The experiment was conducted amongst 60 first‐year undergraduate engineering students. The participants were randomly divided into two groups: Experimental group and Control group. The participants of the experimental group were given ARLE treatment while the participants from the control group were given traditional teaching treatment. The experimental results suggest that AR intervention has a significant positive impact on student laboratory skills. Also, ARLE is an effective tool in reducing the cognitive load of students while operating laboratory equipment. The student feedback indicates that the students of the experimental group operated the equipment without any fear of damaging the equipment as they were already familiarized with the equipment in ARLE. The results of this study recommend AR as an adequate technology for developing unique AR experiences for engineering education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineering educators face a rapidly changing, and ever more challenging world. Rapidly evolving industry demands, accreditation agencies, and students themselves are calling for an engineering education with integrated multidisciplinary design knowledge, leadership, communication, business, education, entrepreneurship, sustainability, and lifelong learning explicitly included in their undergraduate programs. Students still need the core content knowledge of thermodynamics, mass, energy, and momentum balances and fluxes. They also need integrated socio‐contextual knowledge to evaluate a design for sustainability and demonstrate a net positive social benefit. There is only so much time available in an undergraduate program and learning takes time. These challenges are driving changes to both what and how we teach our students to integrate broader competencies and enhance engineering student graduate attribute achievement. A framework for engineering education includes fundamental and socio‐contextual knowledge integrated with metacognitive and professional skill development. This contribution provides practical ideas for how to infuse these dimensions into courses, support the developing engineering practice, and deepen student engagement with their courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The use of metacognition is critical to learning, especially in fields such as engineering that involve problem‐solving and difficult conceptual material. Due to limitations with current methodological approaches, new methods are needed to investigate engineering students' metacognitive engagement in learning situations that are self‐directed, such as study groups. Purpose: Our purpose was to develop an approach to investigate the metacognitive engagement of undergraduate engineering students in self‐directed learning environments. The Naturalistic Observations of Metacognition in Engineering (NOME) Observational Protocol and Coding Strategy is a qualitative data collection method that allows researchers to observe the behaviors of students who are studying in groups to determine the student's engagement in different metacognitive practices. The NOME is intended to be used by researchers interested in studying online metacognitive behaviors without the direct interference of a methodological approach. Design/Method: We observed three study groups where students were working on an engineering problem‐solving homework assignment. Using a taxonomic definition of metacognition, we coded episodes of observation transcripts to identify behaviors that represented key definitions in the taxonomy. Results: We combined subcodes and descriptions of behaviors with key definitions to develop a coding strategy useful for future observational studies. Evidence of intercoder agreement and agreement in unitizing indicates that the coding strategy can reliably be used by multiple trained coders to identify metacognitive engagement. Conclusions: The reliability evidence shows that the NOME may be a useful tool for researchers in engineering education interested in studying the metacognitive habits of engineering students in self‐directed study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Mixed methods research designs in engineering education often frame the "mixed" aspect of the design from the perspective of data collection. However, intentional mixing throughout the research design—particularly during data analysis—may enable richer meta‐inferences about a phenomenon. Purpose: This paper provides examples of strategies for mixing during data analysis in mixed methods program evaluation in engineering education. Although the context is program evaluation, the procedures are applicable in engineering education research more broadly. Scope/Method: This review presents examples of mixed methods analysis strategies in the context of a data set with qualitative and quantitative data from a global engineering program at a large Mid‐Atlantic university. The structure of the examples presents mixed research questions, pragmatic purposes for such studies, and examples of different mixing strategies for the analysis stage. The mixing strategies highlighted include extreme case sampling, converting, creating a blended variable, blending variables and themes across strands, and cross‐case comparison. Conclusions: This review of mixed methods in program evaluation prompted a reflection of processes in the design of studies, how the designs are described beyond the usual taxonomies in the mixed methods literature, and implications for the greater community of engineering education researchers. Five mixed methods designs were formulated around the mixing strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the concept "sustainable engineering." It mentions that the concept sustainability was embodied to egalitarianism within and among generations, and environmental preservation and protection. Although the term was classified as modern mythology, the author declares that it is based on scientific and technological discourse. The term was later applied in engineering and technology management. However, due to complexity of engineering and overcrowded curriculum, the author declares that it lacks room for additional material, which makes the teaching of sustainable engineering difficult to institutionalized. He suggests development of courses that emphasize the economic, environmental, social and cultural domains.

The article focuses on challenges in teaching sustainable engineering, which can be considered the operational arm of industrial ecology. The author asserts that the acceptance of sustainable engineering programs is complicated because some are still skeptical of sustainability. He adds that engineering, as a profession, was also struggling due to the packed undergraduate curriculum which is constrained by accreditation requirements. Industrial ecology deals with integrating social and environmental considerations into product design. The author concludes that it is hard to educate engineers to be aware of the social and environmental context within which products used.