Teaching life cycle assessment in higher education

Abstract

Purpose Scientific Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) literature provides some examples of LCA teaching in higher education, but not a structured overview of LCA teaching contents and related competencies. Hence this paper aims at assessing and highlighting trends in LCA learning outcomes, teaching approaches and developed content used to equip graduates for their future professional practices in sustainability. Methods Based on a literature review on teaching LCA in higher education and a collaborative consensus building approach through expert group panel discussions, an overview of LCA learning and competency levels with related teaching contents and corresponding workload is developed. The levels are built on the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) and Bloom’s taxonomy of learning. Results and discussion The paper frames five LCA learning and competency levels that differ in terms of study program integration, workload, cognitive domain categories, learning outcomes, and envisioned professional skills. It furthermore provides insights into teaching approaches and content, including software use, related to these levels. Conclusions and recommendations This paper encourages and supports higher educational bodies to implement a minimum of ‘life cycle literacy’ into students’ curriculum across various domains by increasing the availability, visibility and quality of their teaching on life cycle thinking and LCA.

Environmental service-learning approach in higher education – a descriptive case study on student-led life cycle assessments of university cafeteria meals

“…The influences of active-learning, project-based learning and IBL blended to create a successful service-learning case study in which all parts of Brundier's Case study on student-led life cycle assessments key competence clusters in sustainability (Brundiers et al, 2010) are targeted. The proposed goal and learning outcomes of the "LCA learning and competency framework" (Viere et al, 2020) were achieved.…”

“…The course took part from October 14, 2019 to February 15, 2020 and is valued with seven European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) corresponding to a maximum student workload of 210 h. This corresponds to Level 3 (minor specialization) of the “LCA learning and competency framework for higher education” of Viere et al (2020), which was derived using Bloom’s taxonomy of learning (Bloom et al , 1956). This competency framework describes the goal of a Level 3 study program as “LCA practitioners […] [are] able to conduct and interpret LCA studies” and the learning outcomes as “design and partial performance of a full-fledged LCA study, incl.…”

“…Refer to Mälkki and Alanne (2017) (in particular their Table 3) and references therein, as well as Gallego-Schmid et al (2018) (their Table 1) for more detailed information and examples on LCA studies in educational environments. In addition, a recently published paper about teaching LCA in higher education gives a structured overview of LCA teaching contents and related competencies for the first time and identifies a literature body of 28 studies that are focused on teaching LCA in higher education (Viere et al , 2020). They also found that only a few studies presented the content of the lectures, the learning outcomes or teaching methods, as is an objective of this case study.…”

How sustainable is it?

“…Studenten die zich meer willen specialiseren in duurzaamheidsbeoordelingen, leren we om bestaande LCA-studies te begrijpen en ze kritisch te beoordelen en natuurlijk om zelf een studie uit te voeren [24].…”

“…Overgenomen van [24]: Viere, T., Amor, B., Berger, N., Fanous, R.D., Arduin, R.H., Keller, R., Laurent, A., Loubet, P., Strothmann, P., Weyand, S., Wright, L., and Sonnemann, G. (2021). Teaching life cycle assessment in higher education.…”