Consumers in the US market and across the globe are beginning to widely adopt light emitting diode (LED) lighting products while the technology continues to undergo significant changes. While LED products are evolving to consume less energy, they are also more complex than traditional lighting products with a higher number of parts and a larger number of electronic components. Enthusiasm around the efficiency and long expected life span of LED lighting products is valid, but research to optimize product characteristics and design is needed. This study seeks to address that gap by characterizing LED lighting products' suitability for end of life (EOL) recycling and disposal. The authors disassembled and assessed 17 different lighting products to understand how designs differ between brands and manufacture year. Products were evaluated based on six parameters to quantify the design. The analysis indicates that while the efficiency of LED products has improved dramatically in the recent past, product designers and manufacturers could incorporate design strategies to improve environmental performance of lighting products at end-of-life.

Faculty peer observation has seen increasing uptake in recent years, in some cases as an alternative or supplement to student teaching evaluations. While many universities encourage faculty peer observation, it is not widely used in a formal way for formative assessment. This article outlines the development of a new faculty peer observation protocol designed for formative assessment of evidence-based educational practices. The goal of the protocol is to foster reflective teaching practices. The peer observation protocol has been designed to mitigate common faculty fears of classroom observation, with detailed assessment methods for specific topic areas. Preliminary testing of the protocol at one university indicated positive faculty outcomes with regard to personal reflection: all the faculty who tested the protocol reported that the observation process had been helpful for them to reflect on their teaching.

Recent technological advances have made light emitting diode (LED) lamps available to the domestic replacement lightbulb market at much lower prices than ever before. Longer life and higher efficiency have occurred as the products matured. This research studied how LED lamps have changed in the last 5 years and how changes to the lamps impact the environment. A life cycle assessment has been conducted using data from the Ecoinvent database to determine how three recently manufactured lamps compare to the 2011 counterpart in terms of environmental impacts. We found that the newer lamps all perform better than the 2011 A19 LED on environmental impacts and all are now significantly better than traditional lighting technologies. All three lamps have improved in key environmental impact areas, specifically hazardous waste to landfill due to reduced use of metals. The LED lamps studied are outperforming older LED lamps in all environmental impact categories.