One year and a half after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it became suitable to rethink the design of the engineering education systems to remain sustainable and resilient. The paper aims to identify the most important aspects of the system, as well as the most vulnerable ones and the extent to which the system meets the sustainability requirements of the society. The Balanced Scorecard approach is used to ensure that the system remains sustainable and resilient. The indicators to measure the aspects of this design are developed. A Quality Function Deployment approach is used to identify the extent to which a designed system satisfies the sustainability requirements of the society. The problem is formulated as an engineering design problem in which the customer requirements are presented using a sustainability Triple Bottom Line framework. The results indicate that a well-designed engineering education system is capable of addressing the majority of the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) identified by the United Nations. The most important aspect of this system is its commitment to quality assurance and continuous improvement. Such a system is a key player to achieve the SDGs, particularly those of economic growth, quality education, good health and wellbeing, and industry innovation.
In the present work, a resilience module is designed to be integrated into a project-based active cooperative learning design course for freshmen. The module is designed to allow the students to practice emergency planning and check the resilience through different virtual drills for different emergency situations. The four-week module is designed to reflect different responsibilities in emergency cases, with decision makers, emergency planners, emergency response coordinators, staff of regulatory bodies and public information officers. The module aims at developing and measuring the students' personal resilience through monitoring the student's performance and attitude in real open-ended problems. The assessment methodology relies mainly on behavior and attitude rather than knowledge gain.
6 October 2013 in Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry
Most existing educational design approaches focus on discipline-specific modules, while those based on a generic product concept rarely target sustainability goals. With the increasing interest in sustainability and education for sustainable development, it is necessary to rethink the product design approaches to target both customer needs and community requirements for sustainability. The main goal of the integral design approach proposed in the present work is to create a broader picture that integrates the design process, life cycle analysis, and the role of each design and life cycle player. A wider management scheme that sets a clear road map of the contribution of all players is introduced. This scheme is based on a win-win strategy between different players to promote mechanisms to enhance sustainability and min-imize risks and socioeconomic footprints.