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Purpose: This paper aims to explore the differences in first-year and senior engineering students' engineering agency beliefs and career goals related to sustainable development. The authors also sought to understand how topics related to sustainable development in engineering courses affect senior engineering students' goals to address these issues in their careers. This work provides evidence of how students' agency beliefs may be shaped by higher education, which is essential to workforce development. Design/methodology/approach: Findings stem from two national surveys of engineering first-year (Sustainability and Gender in Engineering, n = 7,709) and senior students (Student Survey about Career Goals, College Experiences, n = 4,605). The authors compared both groups using pairwise testing by class standing. Findings: The results indicate that undergraduate studies tend to reinforce students' engineering agency beliefs to improve their quality of life and preserve the environment. Significantly more senior students selected career goals to address environmental issues compared to first-year students. In general, students undervalue their roles as engineers in addressing issues related to social inequities. Those topics are rarely addressed in engineering courses. Findings from this work suggest discussing sustainability in courses positively impact setting career goals to address such challenges. Research limitations/implications: The study compares results from two distinct surveys, conveyed at different periods. Nonetheless, the sample size and national spread of respondents across US colleges and universities are robust to offer relevant insights on sustainable development in engineering education. Practical implications: Adapting engineering curriculum by ensuring that engineering students are prepared to confront global problems related to sustainable development in their careers will have a positive societal impact. Social implications: This study highlights shortcomings of engineering education in promoting social and economic sustainability as related to the engineering field. Educational programs would benefit from emphasizing the interconnectedness of environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainable development. This approach could increase diversity in engineering education and the industry, and by ripple effect, benefit the communities and local governance. Originality/value: This work is a first step toward understanding how undergraduate experiences impact students' engineering agency beliefs and career goals related to sustainability. It explores potential factors that could increase students' engineering agency and goals to make a change through engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Considering the requirements of sustainable development regarding professionals training and the challenges evidenced during Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, this study aims to contribute to the debates regarding the need to insert sustainability into engineering education in the current context. Design/methodology/approach: For this, the literature about sustainability in engineering education was considered, and the need for sustainability insertion in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic was debated. It is important to emphasize that this debate was based on the authors' experience regarding sustainability research and teaching. Findings: The current moment unveiled companies' financial management problems, constantly evidenced by media. In this sense, the interest of engineering students in business management may lead them to believe that companies' survival depends only on financial aspects, neglecting environmental and social aspects. This study is characterized as a reminder to academic staff in the field of engineering to continue valuing the principles of sustainable development with their students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originality/value: The need to make engineering students understand the importance of social projects in the current period is emphasized. The training of professionals to consider all the sustainability aspects even during crisis moments is evidenced now and should be used as a learning lesson for the future. [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]

Purpose: This study aims to report on how programme directors address sustainability within engineering education at Swedish universities and engineering colleges. Design/methodology/approach: The study was performed as a survey with follow-up interviews around the following core questions: to what extent do programme directors possess a deep understanding of the subject of sustainable development? Which are the core competencies in sustainable development that programme directors identify as important for their engineering students to acquire during their basic training? To what extent are those competencies integrated into engineering education today and what kind of support do programme directors receive from their department to integrate these competencies into the curriculum? Findings: Programme directors believe that learning for sustainable development is important mainly based on their personal convictions. However, out of 10 potential learning objectives extracted from the literature, only four-six are implemented in degree programmes. Learning objectives and activities are not always aligned, as students are required to learn about interdisciplinary collaboration without working with students from other faculties. The programme directors receive some support from the department, but they express a need for additional support. Examples of support that they suggest are faculty training, efficient teaching material and incorporation of sustainability in the quality assessment instruments for degree programmes. Originality/value: This study is the first comprehensive, national survey of what programme directors think about sustainability in higher education. Their views are important in the attempt to accelerate the integration of sustainability in higher education curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science, technology and engineering students, within the scope of the European Higher Education Area, often approach their subjects as chunks of knowledge due to the very construction of the teaching plans and the interdepartmental structure of the universities, that is, without deepening the interrelationship between these chunks and the future working reality that the student will have to live. During this research, a board game was designed, within the framework of STEAM education, in order to establish the dynamics of playful activities to generate a gamified learning environment. Through a planned, organized, directed and systematic research process, the effect of the use of the board game on the academic grades of engineering students was assessed, based on the hypothesis that the use of this game allows the acquisition not only of knowledge, but also of the ability to integrate the knowledge of subjects directly linked to the STEAM environment. The analysis of the results verified the initial hypothesis of this research, confirming the positive effect that the use of gamified elements has in STEAM environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study used a mixed methodology to investigates the possibility of using blended assessment for engineering education in a challenging learning environment. It discussed the outcome of the evaluation, which is problematized by the influences of an encumbered learning environment. It used the blended engineering models to investigate the circumstances of assessments and its outcomes in a university situated in the sub-Sahara African region. It revealed the experiences of post-internship engineering students using a single blended course. The survey showed that students' knowledge of factors impeding thorough assessment for productivity in the region and advocated ways of improvement. It disclosed past and present assessment percentage shares in addition to suggesting a preferred assessment percentage share required for graduating skilled engineers. The result uncovered where assessment might be situated so that there is a satisfactory learning outcome for engineering programs. [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]

This research aims to evaluate the engineering students' perception regarding sustainability. For this, a survey was developed based on sustainability parameters from a detailed analysis of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the Brazilian Institute of Corporate Governance (BICG). The parameters were initially divided into seven groups: Financial and Productivity Aspects (FPA); Concern With Employees (CWE); Support for Local Communities (SLC); Ethical and Corporate Governance Issues (ECI); Environmental Aspects (ENA); Sustainable Aspects in the Operations Network (SON); Customers, Development of New Products and Services (CPS). The survey was conducted with engineering undergraduate students from two Brazilian universities. The data were analyzed through structural equation modeling technique, namely the PLS-SEM algorithm. The collected 162 answers enabled the validation of the model tested, and showed that the students, in general, do not consider SLC and CWE when they are analyzing sustainability. Additionally, the most important construct was the CPS. This is an exploratory study and we believe that these findings may contribute to expand the debate about the sustainability insertion in engineering courses, helping educators in their didactic activities. There were not found similar studies in the literature, which highlight the originality of the research. The statistical validation of the results and the contribution to expand the debate regarding sustainability in engineering education justify the value of this study. [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]

To address complex problems in an increasingly globalized world, engineers must understand the ethical implications of their work on society. International service learning is one approach for engineers to gain this understanding. The purpose of this study is to investigate the benefits of international service learning on engineering ethics, more specifically macro-ethics, which is defined as an understanding of their impact on society through engineering. The quantitative study measured senior engineering students' macroethics understanding from a national sample of students enrolled in capstone design courses (n=2095). Students who participated in international service learning (ISL) through capstone and volunteer/work experience possess a greater understanding of macro-ethics compared to students without these types of experiences. Gender is also a contributing factor. Female engineering students possess an understanding of macro-ethics regardless of their ISL experience. Male engineering students with ISL experience have a greater understanding of macro-ethics compared to male engineering students without ISL experience. Male engineering students make up nearly 80% of engineering programs. The integration of ISL into engineering education can help these students develop an understanding of macroethics. Another approach is to recruit more women into engineering who seem to possess an understanding of macro-ethics without participating in ISL experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the findings of a comparative study in which students' perceived attainment of the objectives of an engineering ethics education and their attitude towards engineering ethics were investigated and compared. The investigation was carried out in Japan and Malaysia, involving 163 and 108 engineering undergraduates respectively. The research method used was based on a survey in which respondents were sent a questionnaire to elicit relevant data. Both descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were performed on the data. The results of the analyses showed that the attainment of the objectives of engineering ethics education and students' attitude towards socio-ethical issues in engineering were significantly higher and positive among Japanese engineering students compared to Malaysian engineering students. Such findings suggest that a well-structured, integrated, and innovative pedagogy for teaching ethics will have an impact on the students' attainment of ethics education objectives and their attitude towards engineering ethics. As such, the research findings serve as a cornerstone to which the current practice of teaching and learning of engineering ethics education can be examined more critically, such that further improvements can be made to the existing curriculum that can help produce engineers that have strong moral and ethical characters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to deal with the skills for sustainable development in engineering courses. The main objective is to identify which competences should be developed in these courses to contribute to the resolution of conflicts related to sustainability, as well as the means used by universities for their development. Design/methodology/approach: The research is divided into two strands: a theoretical and an empirical one. Concerning the theoretical part, the webibliomining method was adopted, to select the articles that were relevant to the theme, and 22 works were selected. Regarding the empirical study, structured questionnaires were applied to 30 specialists in the field, aiming at validating the competencies found in the literature. Findings: In the literature, eight main competencies required to the engineering professional, related to sustainability, were found. The empirical study showed that some competences are considered more relevant than others by the interviewees. Practical implications: The competencies verified in the present study and the relative relevance between them found in the empirical study can contribute to the engineering courses that wish to develop the sustainable behavior of the engineers in their professional or daily life. Originality/value: The originality of the work consists in presenting to engineering students and teachers as well as professionals of the market and the government the competencies that can contribute to the formation of an engineer capable of bringing adequate solutions to the conflicts of sustainability in the twenty-first century. This paper also presents learning teaching methodologies indicated for this purpose. No other works were found with these results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to analyse some of the main challenges evidenced in the insertion of sustainability in engineering courses, according to the view from a sample of Brazilian students. Through a systematic literature review, a set of 10 challenges were structured to base the research instrument (questionnaire). These challenges were evaluated by 91 engineering students who participate in sustainable action programs promoted by Enactus Brazil. The collected data were analysed in terms of the averages assigned and via the multi-criteria decision technique TOPSIS, which allowed ranking the challenges. The averages were higher than 5.0 on the scale used, indicating that the students notice the existence of the challenges in the courses in which they are enrolled. The ranking via TOPSIS presented the most evident challenges: 'Sustainable issues debated only in specific disciplines in a limited extent'; 'Difficulty to integrate disciplines for the broad teaching of sustainability'; 'Lack of practical and real examples of how sustainability can be embedded in the specific context of the course'; and 'Activities and examples presented focus exclusively on environmental issues'. The results presented here may be useful for course coordinators to improve their curriculum; educators to enrich their disciplines from the findings reported here; and researchers interested in the subject can use these findings as a starting point for proposing new teaching techniques. No similar publications were found in the literature, which indicates its originality and contribution to the knowledge base. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creativity is universally acknowledged as an important attribute of successful engineering design, but individual attributes and preferences can influence whether creative ideas come to fruition during the design process. However, few studies have explored the factors that can predict creative concept generation and selection in engineering design education. Thus, the current study was developed to provide an empirical understanding of how student designers' preferences for creativity predicts their ability to generate or select creative design alternatives during the concept screening process above and beyond the effects of personality through an empirical study with 178 engineering students. The factors explored included the Big 5 factors of personality, the preferences for creativity scale (PCS), and the novelty and quality of ideas generated and screened. The results show that the openness personality trait can predict the novelty of generated ideas as well as the novelty and quality of selected ideas during the concept screening process and that the creative confidence and preference factor of the PCS can predict the novelty of generated ideas and the novelty and quality of selected ideas during the concept screening process beyond the Big 5 factors of personality. A similar finding was obtained for the risk tolerance factor of the PCS. These findings demonstrate the importance of an individual's attitude toward risk and their creative confidence in the generation and selection of ideas in engineering education and provide a foundation for future research geared at building student innovation capacities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The Mechanical Engineering course at the University of Campinas is composed of different disciplines in the areas of materials, mechanical design, manufacturing (production and manufacturing), computational systems, thermal and fluids. In the manufacturing area, in particular, there is a discipline entitled Productive Systems whose main objective is to offer to the student a global vision about operations management. In the field of operations management, sustainability is gaining more and more importance; thus, it is important to develop in the students a critical sense about social and environmental aspects. Thus, this paper aims to present the main initiatives developed in the discipline to promote sustainability in engineering students. Design/methodology/approach: Since 2015, the professors responsible for the Productive Systems discipline, assisted by post-graduate students and professors from other universities, have begun to redesign the discipline, including debates, lectures, projects and other initiatives to provide a critical view concerning the traditional concepts taught. The discipline has been performed three times with this new conception. The methodology to structure this research was literature review, documental analyses of the discipline records and meetings with professors that participated in the initiatives. An Action Research approach was performed by two professors and a graduate student. The authors of this paper also compared the results with those obtained by initiatives performed at Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden). Findings: This study allowed to reinforce some results from initiatives performed at Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden); however, some differences were identified. For example, similar to the initiatives mentioned, the professors of University of Campinas had problems with didactic books, as they loosely integrate the basic operations management concepts with sustainable development fundamentals. On the other hand, debates related to social sustainability were considered positive from the point of view of the professors and students, differing from initiatives performed at Chalmers University of Technology. Research limitations/implications: Results come from one field study (University of Campinas) when professors of the Mechanical Engineering course try to integrate operations management concepts and sustainable development. Different results may be observed by other higher education institutions. Practical implications: The authors of this paper believe that the diffusion of these initiatives can stimulate other professors and researchers in the field to broaden the academic debate about the insertion of sustainability into engineering courses. Originality/value: There are few papers presenting didactic experiences and empirical results about the integration of operations management concepts and sustainable development. Results of this paper reinforce some good practices and they also present other ones, in a way that extend the debate about educational engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Senior design and capstone courses are an integral part of any engineering curriculum around the world. These courses perhaps provide the only opportunity for students to apply the theoretical knowledge and technical skills they have acquired throughout the engineering degree. Moreover, they are often the (sole) environment in which students get some of the professional and transversal skills too. In addition, such courses present a great degree of nonuniformity since the students engage in projects of different nature (e.g., research oriented versus application oriented). Furthermore, not only do these courses prepare students for real-life engineering practice, they also serve as a major component in measuring program outcomes. The survey conducted over two decades ago by Todd et al. [item in the Appendix], which collected responses from 360 departments across 173 schools, highlighted many of the issues related with capstone courses that are still relevant today. Such issues include course format, different degrees of faculty involvement, and project completion requirements. Indeed, all points highlighted thus far emphasize the importance of adequately designing and assessing capstone design courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- The purpose of this study was to design an assessment instrument to evaluate students' attitudes toward sustainable engineering (SE). Factors that impact SE beliefs could then be explored. Design/methodology/approach -- Using the definition of sustainability from the Brundtland report and expectancy value theory, students' sentiment toward SE was evaluated using items to assess SE self-efficacy, SE value and SE affect. The survey was distributed at three diverse universities with 515 responses from students ranging from first year through graduate studies in a variety of engineering majors. The survey instrument was validated using principal components analysis, and internal reliability was established via high Cronbach's alpha for each construct. Findings -- Participation in more experiential, enriching learning experiences correlated to higher SE self-efficacy, value and affect. Extracurricular club involvement correlated with a lower self-efficacy but high SE value. Students who had participated in undergraduate research had a high SE self-efficacy, particularly in the environmental and social sub-scales. The students who participated in internships had high SE self-efficacy but lower SE affect. A greater number of volunteer hours correlated with increased SE affect. Female students possessed higher SE value and affect than male students, but self-efficacy was not significantly different. SE self-efficacy increased with academic rank. Originality/value -- This is the first effort to measure engineering students' attitudes toward SE using the three sub-scales of expectancy value theory and assessing correlations in these attributes with students' participation in various learning experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For sustainable engineering to contribute to sustainability, curricular reforms are needed to train sustainability-conscious engineers. Examining student perceptions of sustainability education can provide insights for benchmarking the current quality of a curriculum and for identifying strategies for reforming a curriculum. Thus, the goal of this study was to examine student interest in, knowledge of, and experiences related to sustainability in civil and environmental engineering (CEE) at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). A survey was developed and administered to students () enrolled in CEE capstone courses. The results indicated that although students are interested in sustainable development, there is potential for further enhancing sustainability learning. In addition, students reported that CEE courses strongly impacted their learning, which underscores the importance of curricular quality. Finally, although students were generally satisfied with CEE sustainability education, they cited the need for more guidance on integrating sustainability into the design process. Although this case study provides feedback to improve CEE sustainability education at Georgia Tech, it also serves as an example for other programs interested in evaluating their curricula from a student perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2001, the International Institute of Women in Engineering (IIWE) at EPF, Ecole d'ingenieurs generaliste, Sceaux, France, has conducted a 3 week short course for culturally and discipline diverse, recently graduated and final year engineering students. The aim of this course is to introduce young engineers to broad global concepts and issues relating to their future professional practice, through intercultural learning. The initial course programme provided examples of engineering practices in various countries throughout the world. However, to achieve an intercultural, multidisciplinary learning outcome, a specific course theme and a project focussing on sustainable engineering and the inclusion of a variety of industrial visits were introduced in 2006. This paper will discuss the success of the strategies used to engage international students in the IIWE course activities, and after consideration of the results of participant surveys, the curriculum initiatives that followed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work provides guidelines for instructors who wish to incorporate green engineering concepts into a typical non-green engineering course without diluting course content or modifying the course syllabus by identifying 5 critical elements necessary to the successful integration of green engineering concepts into any traditional, design-oriented, non-green engineering course. The 5 critical elements result from the assessment of the incorporation of green engineering concepts into a traditional, design and analysis oriented heat transfer course offered to chemical engineering students in the fall semester of their junior year. This work not only incorporates the instructor's assessment of the newly greened course but also assessment of the same course by a student task force. This work includes portions of the instructor's assessment, the student task force's independent assessment of the course as well as the task force's assessment of the instructor's proposed modifications to the course. Even though this study focuses on green engineering as it relates to heat transfer, the assessment and suggestions are relevant to all non-green engineering courses that attempt to integrate green engineering topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]