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Article
A cyberlearning platform for enhancing undergraduate engineering education in sustainable product design
Journal of Cleaner Production
  • Kamyar Raoufi, Oregon State University
  • Kijung Park, Incheon National University
  • Md. Tarique Hasan Khan, Wayne State University
  • Karl R. Haapala, Oregon State University
  • Carolyn E. Psenka, Wayne State University
  • Kathy L. Jackson, Pennsylvania State University
  • Gül E. Okudan Kremer, Iowa State University
  • Kyoung-Yun Kim, Wayne State University
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Accepted Manuscript
Publication Date
1-1-2018
DOI
10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.11.085
Abstract

Existing tools for educating undergraduate students about sustainable engineering methods are notably lacking. In particular, these tools are unable to support the assessment of competing objectives in the evaluation of economic, environmental, and social performance across the lifecycle during product design. In an effort to address this deficiency, an interactive, web-based learning environment, a distributed cyberlearning environment, Constructionism in Learning: Sustainable Life Cycle Engineering (CooL:SLiCE) has been created. CooL:SLiCE aims to facilitate the consideration of different human controlled/initiated impacts on the natural environment through personalized individual and team-based design activities. Thus, CooL:SLiCE enables constructionist (physical, hands-on) learning in engineering via a virtual platform that allows students to visualize/analyze the effect of changes to product designs, manufacturing processes, and supply chain configurations on sustainability performance. The overall conceptual framework of the CooL:SLiCE platform is discussed. Additionally, the application of constructionism as a pedagogical approach for sustainable engineering education is presented. The framework is designed to facilitate attainment of deeper conceptual understanding in environmentally responsible product design and manufacturing by supplying a set of tools that support a constructivist learning environment. This tool set is based on disparate methodologies from the design, industrial, and manufacturing engineering domains. A team project was undertaken to pilot the CooL:SLiCE platform to aid design and assessment during the sustainable product development process. The pilot project demonstrated the capacity of the CooL:SLiCE platform in the understanding of sustainable product design concepts. This research advances the current educational tools for sustainable product design by integrating three learning modules into a web-based environment developed in the CooL:SLiCE project to provide a platform for learning not currently accessible to engineering educators and students. Future work will mainly focus on using the platform in the classroom settings to investigate its effect on improving student understanding of sustainable life cycle engineering.

Comments

This is a manuscript of an article published as Raoufi, Kamyar, Kijung Park, Md Tarique Hasan Khan, Karl R. Haapala, Carolyn E. Psenka, Kathy L. Jackson, Gül E. Okudan Kremer, and Kyoung-Yun Kim. "A cyberlearning platform for enhancing undergraduate engineering education in sustainable product design." Journal of Cleaner Production (2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.11.085. Posted with permission.

Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International
Copyright Owner
Elsevier Ltd.
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Citation Information
Kamyar Raoufi, Kijung Park, Md. Tarique Hasan Khan, Karl R. Haapala, et al.. "A cyberlearning platform for enhancing undergraduate engineering education in sustainable product design" Journal of Cleaner Production (2018)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/gul-kremer/169/