Developing first year engineering students’ perception of sustainability using interdisciplinary guest lectures and a role-play workshop

This paper discusses the impact of guest lectures presented by non-academics from a wide cross-section of society on first year engineering students’ understanding and appreciation of sustainability concepts. Students are exposed to the range of viewpoints expressed by representatives of groups as diverse as environmental organizations, politicians, practicing engineers, workplace health and safety practitioners and indigenous associations. The complexity of sustainability is further explored in a sustainability workshop where students are assigned roles as shopkeepers, company directors and workers. In these roles, students make decisions based on media releases that publicize changes in economic and environmental conditions. Within the context of the workshop activity, these decisions have a direct impact on the future productivity of the companies and a flow-on effect to the society as a whole. Students reflect on these experiences and apply their enhanced insights on sustainability in a project based learning environment. The paper will show how the guest lectures and sustainability workshop activities both contribute to the students’ awareness of the interdependence of economic, environmental, cultural and social systems. Sustainability concepts are then applied in a student project and further developed throughout the entire program of study. The paper concludes by suggesting further work that could be done to quantitatively measure the change in student attitude to sustainability produced by these activities.