- Title
- Evaluating the impact of transdisciplinary problem-based learning on student attitude to design and the environment
- Creator
- Brewer, Graham John; Gajendran, Thayaparan
- Relation
- The International Journal of Climate Change: Impacts and Responses Vol. 1, Issue 1, p. 55-70
- Relation
- http://ijc.cgpublisher.com/product/pub.185/prod.12
- Publisher
- Common Ground
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2009
- Description
- It is widely accepted that transdisciplinary approaches to environmental problem solving provide the best hope for humans to address the issues associated with climate change. The education of professionals in the design and construction/manufacturing sectors should ideally sensitise students to these principles, helping them to recognise the value that other professions bring to the design process, and consequently minimise the environmental impact of their designs. A course on “design and the environment” delivered at the University of Newcastle in Australia embraces these principles, delivering content to mixed cohorts that include design and technology teachers, industrial designers, architects, engineers, and construction managers. It is founded upon problem based learning principles, empowering the students to take ownership of their learning. This extends to the consequences of their designs as they are required to perform a life cycle analysis for their product/building, encouraging them to explore the vexing issues of environmental auditing. Previous evaluation of the course has qualitatively indicated its effectiveness in raising the students’ environmental awareness, and this paper confirms this using pre- and post-intervention content analysis of students’ documents to measure the effect. The analysis utilises a framework based on the New Ecological Paradigm, and yields interesting results. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for course design and the responsibility of the educator in global society.
- Subject
- transdisciplinarity; tertiary education; learning contracts
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/808860
- Identifier
- uon:7772
- Identifier
- ISSN:1835-7156
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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