Despite an emerging emphasis on the role of engineers in achieving the SDGs, there is still a lack of agreement on which competencies should be prioritised to prepare them to tackle future sustainability challenges. By formulating a theoretical framework of key sustainable competencies based on prior studies, this study investigated engineering…

Research around problem solving in collaborative groups has made progress, but several conceptual and methodological issues remain. These issues include the appropriate choices of units of analysis; the ability of current theoretical sets of macrocognition codes to capture group dynamics; detection and identification of potentially emergent…

Biomimicry is a useful method to develop students' skills, such as design and systems thinking, particularly when complemented with inquiry-based learning. The research seeks to uncover how students engage in the biomimicry process and what types of designs they produce to reveal insights that could assist educators in teaching biomimicry. A study…

This study used a design research framework to teach secondary high school science students about environmental sustainability. A high school teacher and researcher collaborated to design a two week environmental science unit to help students make sense of complex environmental sustainability issues. This dissertation study sought to answer the…

Engineering design activities offer the promise of enhanced learning and teaching in pre-college science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) settings. The wide variation and lack of coherence in research and practice concerning pre-college engineering design challenges necessitates an investigation of the literature. The overarching…

In this mixed-methods study, we examined if students benefitted from a game design course offered during an enrichment hour in terms of gains in their system analysis and design skills. Students at a rural middle school in Southeast US (n = 19) attended a 1-hour game design course offered weekly during an academic enrichment class period, for the…

With the introduction of "Next Generation Science Standards" ("NGSS"), teachers have been called to find meaningful and engaging ways to teach science content while incorporating engineering practices and, to a lesser extent, computing and computational thinking. The task becomes even more complex when they also have to…

Purpose: A whole-systems approach, which seeks to optimize an entire system for multiple benefits, not isolated components for single benefits, is essential to engineering design for radically improved sustainability performance. Based on real-world applications of whole-systems design, the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) is developing educational…

Today's graduates need the skills to enable them to "persevere in the face of complexity and unresolvability" (McWilliam and Haukka 2008: 660), and to respond creatively in work environments that are increasingly dependent on digital technologies (Cunningham 2006). However, although many higher education institutions (HEIs) acknowledge…

Successful strategies for incorporating engineering design challenges into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses in American high schools are presented in this paper. The developers have taken the position that engineering design experiences should be an important component of the high school education of all American…

Design thinking is about using design to improve the human experience. It combines collaboration, systems thinking, and a balance of creative and analytical habits. It also fuels what the students want for themselves: making an impact on the real world in real time and having adults take their passions seriously. The process essentially comes down…

In recent years there has been a proliferation of research findings on CSCL at the micro and macro levels, but few compelling examples of how CSCL research has impacted actual classroom practices at the meso-level have emerged. This paper critically examines the impact of adopting a systemic approach to innovative education reforms at the macro,…

For the forty-second time, the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is sponsoring the publication of these Proceedings. Papers published in this volume were presented at the annual AECT Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Proceedings of AECT's Convention are published in two volumes. Volume 1 contains papers dealing…

This article presents a model for the development of an environmentally oriented unit designed to be implemented as an integral part of the science core curriculum. The program's main goal is encouraging students at the junior high-school level to develop systems-thinking and environmental insight as a basis for environmental literacy. A…

Teachers need a framework for decision-making; this book supplies criteria against which they can weigh choices about alternative courses of action and encourages systematic instructional design by encouraging them to think about the overall educational effort. The underlying assumptions are that teachers overteach, that poor organization by the…