ADVANCES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION - Summer 2014 - A Case Study of a Co-instructed Multidisciplinary Senior Capstone Project in Sustainability

Q: What problem does the paper address in sustainability education for engineering students?

It addresses the need to integrate sustainability into engineering curricula despite sustainability being inherently multidisciplinary and curricula often being segmented by discipline.

Q: How was the co-instructed multidisciplinary capstone project evaluated?

The study compared a multidisciplinary project group with a control group using pre/post quizzes, online surveys, focus groups, and course deliverables.

Q: What outcomes did the study find when comparing multidisciplinary and traditional senior projects?

Multidisciplinary projects outperformed traditional senior projects in 4 of 5 participating courses, but students in the multidisciplinary projects reported lower average satisfaction than the control group.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Terk

As sustainable development challenges grow, engineering curricula must integrate sustainability effectively across disciplines. The paper tests a co-instruction model for administering multidisciplinary senior capstone projects to teach sustainability and reproduce benefits of team-taught instruction while reducing its resource demands. A case study compares students and faculty across electrical and mechanical engineering, business, political science, and industrial design against a control group completing traditional disciplinary projects. Assessment uses pre/post quizzes, surveys, focus groups, and course deliverables, finding performance gains in 4 of 5 courses but lower average satisfaction in the multidisciplinary setting.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages29

Reading Time1 h 13 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Rationale for multidisciplinary sustainability integration

Reported educational benefits and implementation barriers

Structure of the paper

| | Ad | vances in Engineering Edu | cation | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | SUMMER 2014 A Case Study of a Co-instructed Multidisciplinary Senior Capstone Project in Sustainability JINNY RHEE Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering CLIFTON OYAMOT Psychology DAVID PARENT Electrical Engineering LESLIE SPEER Design ANURADHA BASU Organization and Management AND LARRY GERSTON Political Science San Jose State University San Jose, CA ABSTRACT As societal challenges involving sustainable development increase, the need to effectively integrate this inherently multidisciplinary topic into existing curricula becomes more pressing. Multidisciplinary, team-taught, project-based instruction has shown effectiveness in teaching teamwork, communication, and life-long learning skills, and appreciation for other disciplines. Unfortunately, this instruction mode has not been widely adopted, largely due to its resource-intensiveness. Our proposed co-instruction model of multidisciplinary senior project administration was tested to see if it could effectively teach sustainability topics and duplicate the known benefits of team-taught instruction, while overcoming its resource-intensiveness. A case study of a co-instructed senior project was undertaken with students and faculty from electrical and mechanical engineering, business, political science, and industrial design. The participating students were compared to the control group, i.e. students who chose to complete a traditional disciplinary senior project instead. Extensive assessment was performed with pre/post quizzes, online surveys, focus groups, and course deliverables. The multidisciplinary projects outperformed traditional senior projects in 4 out of the 5 SUMMER 2014 1 ADVANCES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION A Case Study of a Co-instructed Multidisciplinary Senior Capstone Project in Sustainability participating courses. However, the students in the multidisciplinary project rated their satisfaction with the experience lower on average than the control group. A strong, positive correlation between students’ project satisfaction and rating of other instruction aspects (0 .50 < r < 0. 7, p < 0. 01) was discovered, which has implications for all project-based instruction. Participating faculty generally found the process illuminating and engaged in scholarship and creative endeavors as a result. Key Words: team-teaching, multidisciplinary instruction, capstone project INTRODUCTION As new skills are required of engineering graduates to respond to ever-changing societal needs, research on engineering learning systems is required to effectively adapt and respond to those needs.“Technical and non-technical fields are becoming increasing and inextricably linked” [1], and there is a need to incorporate more multidisciplinarity, teamwork, and communication skills, as well as a basic knowledge of sustainability topics into curricula that are largely segmented by discipline in many universities. In this paper, the term “multidisciplinary” will simply mean “more than one discipline,” without a clear distinction between terms such as “interdisciplinary,” “cross-disciplinary”and “trans-disciplinary”. The need to integrate knowledge of sustainability into engineering and other curricula is evidenced by the number of relevant federal funding opportunities for this purpose [2–5] . The study of sustainability is inherently multidisciplinary and requires a multidisciplinary approach, including considerations from economics (e. g. cost-effectiveness, return on investment), psychology (e. g. behavioral science), ethics ([e.g. social](e.g. social) justice) and management skills (e.g. leadership, organizational management), in addition to engineering and technology [6–7] . Furthermore, this approach is inline with the recommendations of the National Science Board and ABET, Inc. [8–9] for engineering curricula. There are man

FAQs

What problem does the paper address in sustainability education for engineering students?

It addresses the need to integrate sustainability into engineering curricula despite sustainability being inherently multidisciplinary and curricula often being segmented by discipline.

How was the co-instructed multidisciplinary capstone project evaluated?

The study compared a multidisciplinary project group with a control group using pre/post quizzes, online surveys, focus groups, and course deliverables.

What outcomes did the study find when comparing multidisciplinary and traditional senior projects?

Multidisciplinary projects outperformed traditional senior projects in 4 of 5 participating courses, but students in the multidisciplinary projects reported lower average satisfaction than the control group.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Terk