Sustainable product design education: engineering students’ perceptions and attitudes

Abstract

Moving towards sustainable development is a global challenge requiring efforts from all the society, but governments and other stakeholders as well as researchers and academics have a central role to aid put in practice the knowledge and tools to enforce the vital changes. This work was developed to better understand the topic of sustainable product design among engineering students given the deficit of such kind of studies in the master courses of our engineering department. Survey data were collected from engineering students enrolled in master courses that have in its syllabus the product design curricular unit. The main objective of the work was to understand the students' perceptions and attitudes in relation to sustainable product design to envisage actions to continually improve the course with the goal of developing students' further knowledge and competencies with the focus on cradle to cradle design strategies.

The Importance of Higher Education in the EU Countries in Achieving the Objectives of the Circular Economy in the Energy Sector

“…Higher education institutions are strategic actors supporting sustainable development through teaching, research, and social activities [57][58][59]. Education in universities focused on the CE assumptions allows for the introduction of social and economic changes at the macro and administrative level, supporting enterprises in the implementation of closed-loop processes at the micro level by providing educated employees, implementing experience and innovative projects [46,[60][61][62][63][64]. Students are treated as future employees.…”