CROSSOVER PROJECT: INTEGRATING SUSTAINABILITY COMPETENCES INTO PROJECT BASED LEARNING

This article describes how the authors applied Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) methodologies obtained in a teacher training to a 3rd year, Project Based Learning (PBL) course in the Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) degree at Elisava. The Crossover Project course presents students with a sustainability challenge that they address in groups (3-5 students), providing mentoring by two Elisava tutors and one external expert in the field of the challenge addressed. This paper focuses on the experiences of tutoring two of the four class groups from the course. In 2024, there were 3 and 5 student groups in each of the two class groups, obtaining results that show the integration of sustainability competencies even though these competencies were not made explicit to the students. Reviewing the course results, it is possible to understand that Systems, Future, and Strategic Thinking competencies are intrinsic to the design process, even if they are not always framed explicitly to students. It is also clear that a six-week course duration is not enough to achieve full implementation of project solutions.