Cross-Institution Collaborative Learning (CICL) to Connect Water Resources Design with Sustainability Analysis

A common challenge in teaching sustainable design is the need to incorporate knowledge and skills from multiple areas of expertise. This paper describes an approach taken to meet this challenge with a collaborative learning experience that combines students from two institutions. Students from CVEEN 6460 Sustainable Urban Water Engineering at the University of Utah were teamed with students from CIVE 6670/8670 Life Cycle Engineering at the University of Toledo in a semester project experience. The design project required the students to complete the design of a rainwater harvesting project, servicing an institutional building, based on technical, economic, environmental, and social performance criteria. The project was setup to include seven deliverables, each of which included a report submission and a team presentation update at both institutions. Each deliverable encouraged collaborative learning since student teams were required to make a presentation at each institution; therefore, teammates had to help teach across institutions to cover the content of the projects not taught in their respective courses. Student performance was assessed based on the quality of each deliverable, instructor reflection, an opinion survey, and a post-course assessment of student learning. The authors conclude the paper with a discussion of the perceived benefits of the CICL approach and provide suggestions for future implementation. Introduction Educators have been grappling with the challenges of integrating sustainability concepts and skills into engineering education1,2. Many reasons for the lack of progress have been offered, including institutional barriers preventing interdisciplinary courses, an already full curriculum, resistance to curriculum change, and lack of knowledge of social sciences and other disciplines among engineering faculty and students. To overcome these challenges, a variety of approaches have been designed to infuse sustainability concepts and techniques into engineering courses and curricula3-16. These ideas include actions such as modifying learning objectives to include sustainability perspectives, incorporating sustainability knowledge and skills into learning activities, exposing students to sustainability ideas using co-curricular experiences, and creating new learning modules and even entire courses. One general problem that has been difficult to overcome in developing new sustainabilityenriched engineering education material is the need for knowledge and skills from multiple disciplines to be incorporated into learning experiences. This creates limitations to what instructors can accomplish with students lacking the necessary knowledge and skills unless there are added requirements for pre-requisite coursework, additional time taken in class to teach extra material, or extra assignments for students to learn the material independently. Each of these solutions means the course must be modified to reduce content or increase time and effort of students to enable new content to be included. In most cases this is a major impediment and one that prevents instructors from moving forward with plans for anything more than superficial coverage of sustainability concepts. Page 26427.2 This paper presents an approach that seeks to permit the use of an array of in-depth sustainability tools and analysis methods in a project, even though the details of the tools and methods are not covered in the course. The authors accomplished this by using cross-institution collaborative learning (CICL) in the form of a semester team project. This in a way represents a type of linked learning community (LLC) created by the need for collaboration on the team project. The concept of a learning community has existed for nearly a century, with numerous examples having been presented in the literature17. Learning communities generally take one of four forms: (1) students co-enrolled in two or more courses or students from different disciplines linked by a common theme, (2) classroom learning communities, (3) residential learning communities, and (4) student-centered learning communities (honors, under-represented groups, etc.)18. The CICL approach described here is a form of the first type of learning community: it engages students from different disciplines. However, the students are not co-enrolled in the same courses. Instead, the students are linked by a central theme (sustainable design) and are taking different courses that are linked by a common learning activity (team project). The use of the collaborative learning activity is common to learning communities, yet the use of cross-institution collaborative learning is not often used because of numerous logistically challenges. This paper describes the development and assessment of a CICL approach to teach sustainable design and the necessary actions to overcome the logistical challenges. The objectives of the paper are to describe the CICL approach, evaluate its effectiveness for student engagement and learning, and provide recommendations to improve and expand in the future. Courses and CICL Assignment The CICL activity described here was planned, designed, and tested by Steve Burian at the University of Utah and Defne Apul at the University of Toledo. Students from two graduate level courses, CVEEN 6460 Sustainable Urban Water Engineering students from the University of Utah and CIVE 6670/8670 Life Cycle Engineering from the University of Toledo, were partnered in the fall 2014 semester. Both courses are graduate elective courses, for their respective programs, and are regularly offered at least once every two years. The goal for the CICL was to overcome the need for specialized sustainability analysis skills (life cycle assessment (LCA) and urban watershed modeling) for a project by joining students in different courses (and at different institutions) that have the two types of specialized knowledge needed. Students at both institutions involved do not have both elements of the specialized knowledge; so it presented a perfect opportunity for the CICL application and testing. CVEEN 6460 at the University of Utah is a project-based course introducing students to concepts and tools for sustainable planning and design of urban water infrastructure systems, including water supply, stormwater, and sanitation. Topics include sustainability principles, lowimpact development, green infrastructure, decentralized water supply, water conservation, secondary water systems, greywater reuse, sanitation and onsite wastewater management, water reuse, ecological wastewater treatment, water-energy nexus, climate vulnerabilities and adaptation strategies, life-cycle cost, and sustainable building and infrastructure rating systems (e.g., LEED® and EnvisionTM). The goal of the course is to increase knowledge and competency in the practice of sustainable urban water infrastructure engineering. After completing this course students are expected to be able to: 1. Describe sustainability concepts and tools related to urban water infrastructure. P ge 26427.3 2. Plan, assess feasibility, design, estimate costs, and consider the societal and policy implications of green infrastructure systems including permeable pavement, green roofs, bioretention, and rainwater harvesting. 3. Estimate urban water demand and specify conservation measures. 4. Specify decentralized wastewater management methods including greywater reuse, dry toilets, ecological treatment, and water reuse. 5. Estimate energy requirements for urban water sector, specify energy recovery techniques, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 6. Determine life-cycle cost and complete life-cycle assessments for urban water infrastructure systems. 7. Compare resiliency and vulnerability of water infrastructure alternatives. 8. Complete an ISI Envision Rating for a water infrastructure project. 9. Recommend a vision for sustainable urban water infrastructure systems. Students are assessed with individual homework assignments, a midterm examination, and a team project. The team project was modified to implement the CICL activity. In the fall 2014 semester, the course had 17 civil and environmental engineering graduate students. CIVE 6670/8670 at the University of Toledo is a course developed based on Fink’s taxonomy of significant learning19. The course focuses on life-cycle assessment (LCA) with topics introducing LCA, describing LCA steps, different LCA types, computational LCA approaches, and applications. Students are required to complete written assignments, make oral presentations, and undertake a team project. In the fall 2014 semester, the course had five civil engineering students, two chemical engineering students, and one industrial engineering student. Therefore, it is a multidisciplinary class across engineering disciplines. The learning objectives for this course were written using Fink’s taxonomy and included both technical and soft skills (Table 1). Content specific skills were then elaborated as quantitative and qualitative skills as below: Qualitative learning objectives: 1. Explain what constitutes weak (and strong) technical writing style in a journal paper 2. List the phases of an LCA and explain what is done in each phase 3. Discuss the similarities and differences between EIOLCA and process based LCA 4. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of process based and EIOLCA 5. Discuss the similarities and differences between ReCiPe and TRACI impact assessment methods 6. Determine the appropriate functional unit for an LCA 7. List online resources for following LCA literature 8. List names and regions (where they were developed) of major life cycle inventory databases 9. List names of common LCA software 10. Explain the following terminology to an intelligent high school student: a. Primary data b. Secondary data c. Elementary flows d. Allocation e. Cut-off data P ge 26427.4 f. Consequential LCA (prospective, change oriented