Exploring Sustainability Instruction Methods in Engineering Thermodynamics Courses: Insights from Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

It is important that engineers are educated to consider sustainability in their work. Thermodynamics is a fundamental course required in several engineering majors that has a natural connection to sustainability topics (e.g., energy and limits on efficiency). This work examined how sustainability was included in university-level engineering thermodynamics courses, based on 18 peer-reviewed papers that described Scholarship of Teaching and Learning studies. This review found that environmental issues were included in 15 courses, social issues in 9 courses, and economic issues in 5. There were 11 papers that included topics related to one or more of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with 8 of the 17 SDGs represented by one or more papers. The learning outcomes from the courses provided many examples of cognitive outcomes at all six levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. In contrast, affective domain outcomes were generally not explicit. Methods of integrating sustainability topics included mathematical examples, labs, projects, service-learning, application-based learning, simulation tools, and book reviews. These examples should inspire instructors to foster sociotechnical mindsets toward engineering, which are a key to educating engineers who value sustainability and who will advocate for its importance in engineering.