Using the Zero-Waste Circular Economy Module in Senior Mechanical Engineering Design

Nicholas Pohlman, Northern Illinois University

Course Description

Complete preparation of an engineering system design or project covering problem identification, conceptual design and analysis, prototyping and the development of a work schedule required to carry out the project. Includes methodology, standards and safety codes, professional ethics, decision making, design evaluations, and oral and written communication. A writing-intensive course. Offered in the fall. Students are expected to take MEE 486 the following spring.

Explore the Zero-Waste Circular Economy Module »

Relationship of the Zero-Waste Circular Economy Module to Your Course

The course is two-semester sequence from August-to-May. The module was implemented as a self-study during the bridge period of the Winter break. Students were directed to the NSF Basics website to read materials, input personal waste habits, and build a concept map of their design project waste stream. The collaborative teams were then required to incorporate the portion of the sustainability analysis within the Peer Design Review package. Rather than have a public display, the Peer teams reviewed one another's work to provide greater detail on their own project as well as seek greater understanding of the sustainability of other projects.

The total sustainability element will be a subsection of the complete report of the Capstone experience completed by the end of the Spring semester.

Integrating the Module into Your Course

I teach a two-semester course and use this activity as a bridge between the fall and spring semesters. I provided students with a hyperlink to the course materials and implemented a flipped classroom format. Students were expected to read the material and complete standard exercises, such as building an inventory of their waste consumption. In the first class of the spring semester, I presented the accumulated data to demonstrate why sustainability is an important design consideration when converting ideas into implementation elements. All students participated in a peer review process for their projects. As part of this review, they were asked to create a concept map of waste incorporation, focusing on a small portion of their element's life cycle to understand its connectivity.

What Worked Well

The students were genuinely interested in the topic and were able to delve deeper into the foundations presented in the reading materials. They asked very good, probing questions and began to understand the importance of considering how solving a specific problem extends into the bigger picture of a system. This approach helped broaden their perspective, fighting the tendency of engineers to focus narrowly on solving individual elements without considering broader implications.

Challenges and How They Were Addressed

The biggest challenge arose in building their portfolio of activities. The students were handing off their peer review instead of building these concept maps or flow through elements of the zero waste economy. I made these a required piece that was part of the peer review portfolio. I think because everybody did it, a lot of student teams may have thought of it as a checkbox in order to meet that requirement, but not necessarily added depth in terms of their understanding and connectivity. Conversely, on the reviewer's side of it, the critiques weren't very deep and didn't force the teams to think at a higher level about their projects. It's an environment in which they're still learning how to be good evaluators of one another's work, and some of them are reluctant to really probe and question that. They think that's the job of the faculty member or the instructor to really needle you about it rather than peer to peer saying, oh, are you really thinking of the things that are also important to us? That's just the reason I wanted to put it in the peer review process, as in the module it says that you need to have the students build those concept maps, or those kinds of characterizations, and then you have a display. I know that displays can sometimes be static and lack a great deal of interaction. Conversely, in this peer review process, the students present the portfolio and thus have to stand on the foundation of what they've built for their understanding of zero waste sustainability.

Student Response to the Module and Activities

I believe the students grasped the concept. I'm not sure if your survey finds this out, but I plan to ask my students at the end of my course if sustainability and its connectivity with your work will better inform your process in the future. Do you pick a material because it's cheap, available, and meets the strength? Or are you going to pick a material because you think of where it is sourced? What's its end of life? And I'll fully admit, the engineers have a hard time communicating the bigger picture in that regard. They want to answer the one question that they're given, they don't want to plumb the depths that might be available from a much more sociological or human factors kind of connection. And I know that maybe 30 to 40% of them will give some really, really great responses that might be beneficial, even while others might just give surface-level answers. The challenge with these modules is making them feel like an integrated part of a bigger picture rather than just another requirement. I hope this serves as an introduction to deeper thinking that students will continue to explore.