Development and Application of a Sustainable Design Rubric to Evaluate Student Abilities to Incorporate Sustainability into Capstone Design Projects

Abstract

is a Ph.D. candidate in Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at Georgia Tech (GT). Through support from a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, she has been working to improve the quality of sustainability education in CEE at GT through development and application of a variety of assessment tools and educational interventions. In addition to research in the field of engineering education, Mary Katherine is the founding president of the GT chapter of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). Also at GT, Mary Katherine completed an M.S. in Environmental Engineering with research focused on biological treatment of organic surfactants. Prior to enrolling at GT, she received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Biosystems Engineering from Clemson University.

Validating a Sustainable Design Rubric by Surveying Engineering Educators

“…Finally, the text mapping and survey outcomes were compared based on quartiles. The total text mapping score [1][2][3][4] and the survey score [1][2][3][4] were summed and ranked by quartile to yield a final score [1][2][3][4]. Criteria ranked overall in the first, second, third, or fourth quartiles were assigned final designations of Very Important, Important, Slightly Important, or Not Important, respectively.…”

“…We are engaged in an ongoing effort to refine and validate a cross-disciplinary sustainable design rubric to promote learning during and assessment of student-level design projects. Our original sustainable design criteria (Table 1) were based on the Nine Principles of Sustainable Engineering [2] and were used in an initial pilot study of civil and environmental engineering capstone projects [3,4]. Since then, we have conducted a systematic literature review to expand our list of cross-disciplinary criteria [5] (Table 1).…”

“…Since then, we have conducted a systematic literature review to expand our list of cross-disciplinary criteria [5] (Table 1). Table 1: Draft criteria for cross-disciplinary sustainable design rubric (pilot phase criteria [3,4] are shown in italics; others resulted from systematic literature review [5] Currently, we are iteratively refining and validating our sustainable design criteria based on a survey of multi-disciplinary experts [6], as well as comparison to existing sustainable design frameworks [7]. Once rubric criteria are finalized, rubric rating scales and criteria weightings will be refined, perhaps using analytic Hierarchy Process, a multi-objective decision-making methodology, or another formal methodology [8] (Figure 1).…”