Kathy Jackson
Student attainment of a deeper conceptual understanding of sustainable life cycle engineering can be accomplished through an enriching cyberlearning environment for team-based and personalized design activities. One such environment, called Constructionism in Learning: Sustainable Life Cycle Engineering (CooL:SLiCE), is an NSF funded project across four universities (Wayne State, Oregon State, Penn State, and Iowa State). Now in its third and final year of funding, the project is addressing how sustainable life cycle engineering concepts and tools can be embedded into cyberlearning environments.
At this stage, we have developed learning modules for product visualization, manufacturing process analysis, and supplier selection. Each of these learning modules is based on the constructionist learning theory in order to provide students the means to construct or build personally meaningful artifacts. The learning modules were pilot-tested in the summer and fall of 2016. CooL:SLiCE modules have been implemented into an integrated product development course at Wayne State and a computer-aided design and manufacturing class at Oregon State. In addition, the platform is being used to support an intercollegiate undergraduate capstone project at Wayne State, Oregon State, and Iowa State. We will share our progress to date and our findings from the assessment data collection.