Sustainable Impact

The course consists of eight modules of 1/2 to 2 weeks each. In the different modules, students will learn about sustainability from the perspectives of People, Planet en Prosperity. They will develop an understanding of the complexity and interrelatedness of product materials, energy use, user behavior, end of life, business models, and the environmental and social impacts arising from them all. They will also learn how to improve these impacts and translate them into practical priorities for their own design projects using systems thinking. A range of methods for assessing impacts and generating creative solutions will be introduced. These will include UN sustainable development goals, life cycle assessment (LCA), design for behavior change strategies, material choice and recovery strategies, and sustainable business models such as Product Service Systems.

The content of this course is relevant for students because environmental and social considerations are increasingly crucial for all human endeavors, especially manufacturing, design, and business.

Assessments will be through formative assignments and practice exam questions at the end of each module, and one summative individual final exam, covering all course content.

During the course, eight formative sets of assignments including practice exam questions will be workshopped during working sessions together with a coach. The students will not receive a mark for the assignments.

Formative homework assignments with practice exam questions will also be supplied through Brightspace to let students self-test on LOs. Homework assignments are self-assessed: answer sheets will be posted on Brightspace at the end of each week for students to compare their answers to. The practice exam questions will largely contain questions from past exams. They will be similar to, but not exactly the same as, the final exam.

There will be one summative assessment, a final exam, covering all course content. It will be administered via Ans or similar platform in one of the computer labs.