Student-centered Learning Activities for Key Sustainability Competencies in Online Courses with Many Students

Paper in proceeding, 2023

Engineers can make a valuable contribution for a transformation towards a sustainable society.  The CDIO framework, where student-active and integrated learning is intrinsic to design-implement activities, therefore also includes sustainability competencies. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate alignment between specific student-centered (active) learning activities used in digital learning environments with many students and engineering competencies for sustainability. Examples of learning activities in two such online courses are presented and evaluated in comparison to the UNESCO key competencies for sustainability. The courses are two undergraduate courses at NTNU where sustainable engineering represents the discipline knowledge. The learning activities were designed for scalability and to be operable within an entirely digital learning environment. The student-centered learning activities that are used in the courses are: i) project-based learning, ii) academic text with peer-review, iii) auto-graded computational assignments, iv) massive online course module, v) flipped classroom. We outline the design of the learning activities and map their alignment with abilities within key sustainability competencies. We discuss the effects of scalability and digital format on learning outcomes, and the student feedback and plans for further development.