First-year engineering students are often introduced to the engineering design process through project-based learning situated in a concrete design context. Design contexts like mechanical engineering are commonly used, but students and teachers may need more options. In this article, we show how sustainable building design can serve as an…

Climate change is real and accelerating. It requires an urgent response that focuses all the strategies and tactics necessary to stabilize the Earth's temperature regime. According to Thomas Jorling, the objective to guide research, development and implementation is straightforward: Achieve an all-electric economy. Simply put, all sectors of…

Engineering design plays an important role in education. However, due to its open nature and complexity, providing timely support to students has been challenging using the traditional assessment methods. This study takes an initial step to employ learning analytics to build performance prediction models to help struggling students. It allows…

When museums commission green buildings, those buildings are often covered in the press. To understand the educational potential of green building press coverage, we qualitatively analyzed 96 articles about eight U.S. green science museums. We found that journalists who cover green buildings highlight green roofs, material choices,…

Purpose: Energy consumption and renewable energy sources are included in the goals for the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7) agenda, and target buildings are the biggest electricity consumers. In turn, Netzero energy buildings (NZEB) contribute to achieve SDG7 goals. This paper aims to identify which Brazilian higher education…

This paper outlines the result of an innovative program to develop a competency-based curriculum and a work process to engage students in energy assessment of small commercial buildings in their community. Throughout the resulting course, "Leadership in Building Energy Efficiency (LBEE)," students were trained to gather buildings'…

Purpose: Aiming to find out how to incorporate green building into the architectural curriculum, this study aims to explore the psychological path for cultivating architectural students' awareness and motivation to learn the green design concepts and related technologies. Design/methodology/approach: Based on a global review of relevant…

The choice to create or renovate museum buildings to green building standards is a growing trend for science museums. With access to green facilities comes the potential to extend informal science learning into the three-dimensional architectural environment. To examine how and if museums with green buildings interpret their buildings for the…

Award-winning Green Preschools in Bali, Berkeley and Hong Kong were selected to explore the characteristics of Green Schools using measures developed by educators (Environmental Rating Scale for Sustainable Development in Early Childhood (ERS-SDEC)) and architects (simplified Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) development).…

With the deepening of the concept of green building design, the course of university education gradually exposed many problems in the teaching of architectural design theory; based on the existing mode of teaching and combined with the needs of architectural design practice it proposed the "integrated" method of green building design. It…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to design a renovation plan for a university campus building (Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering) with the aim to achieve nearly zero energy performance, ensuring a low specific demand (lower than 44 kWh/m[superscript 2]) and a high level of on-site renewable generation (equivalent to more than…

Background: Design and science inquiry are intertwined during engineering practice. In this study, we examined the relationship between design behaviors and scientific explanations. Data on student design processes were collected as students engaged in a project on designing energy-efficient buildings on a blank square city block surrounded by…

The objective of this study was to develop a "Virtual Design Studio (VDS)": a software platform for integrated, coordinated and optimized design of green building systems with low energy consumption, high indoor environmental quality (IEQ), and high level of sustainability. The VDS is intended to assist collaborating architects,…

This quote by ecologist, "Silent Spring" author and Chatham University alum Rachel Carson reminds us of the everyday tenacity needed in working to advance a sustainable and just world. This publication celebrates that tenacity in the higher education sector, specifically among institutions in the Pittsburgh area. Historically known for…

Designing and building homes is normally the responsibility of a professionally trained workforce. So a lot of people are skeptical about the idea of a team of high school students taking on those tasks. Would a young, untrained group of students be able to undertake and successfully complete the construction of an entire home, from start to…