Course syllabus

BOM280 Sustainable development for civil engineers lp3 VT24 (7.5 hp)

Course is offered by the department of Architecture and Civil Engineering

Contact details

Jesper Knutsson (teacher, examiner)

Phone +46 31 772 2136

E-mail: jesper.knutsson@chalmers.se

Ann-Margret Hvitt Strömvall (back-up teacher)

Phone +46 31 772 8600

E-mail: ann-margret.stromvall@chalmers.se

Course purpose

Civil engineers are the professionals that build and organize many aspects of our society. Whether your future career is in city planning, infrastructural projects, construction, waste management, environmental engineering, you are bound to be confronted with the concept of sustainable development , and also be expected to integrate sustainability into much of your work.

Sustainable Development for civil engineers explains why sustainable development does not only deal with the environment as such but rather questions and issues about and around the environment, including the social and economic dimensions.

The overall aim of the course is to provide a deep knowledge and an understanding of the specific area/subject studied, but with the main goal that students should be able to use the acquired knowledge as civil engineers and contribute to the future development of global sustainability.

Schedule

TimeEdit

Course literature

BOM280 Course compendium 2023.pdf

Course representatives

• fannny.backlund@hotmail.com Fanny Backlund
• bettymattsson01@gmail.com Betty Mattsson
• axel.ovuka.andersson@gmail.com Axel Ovuka Andersson
• mr.193@hotmail.com Matilda Rolfson
• sellgrenalva@gmail.com Alva Sellgren

Course design

Weekly learning activities

A central aspect of both the flipped-classroom pedagogy and application of sustainable development is based on discussion and negotiation. For this reason there’s scheduled activity each week where there will be a participatory learning activity formed around that weeks’  theme. This activity may take the form of a workshop, seminar or debate, but for all cases it is expected and also necessary for you to prepare beforehand by studying the learning material, and also do your own research. You are expected to spend at least 5-6 hours per week on preparations as well as completing study questions related to the material (in the course platform).

In short, there are typically two activities each week:

• Online quiz (optional, available on the course webpage)
• Classroom/online learning activity (may include a report hand-in)

The weekly learning activities start with the second study week. Specific instructions for each week will be made available separately.

Individual assignment

Students should choose an individual assignment from the list given in the assignment on the learning platform. If not specified otherwise, the assignment should follow Chalmers standard report format as outlined in the the Chalmers Writing Guide (see below).

For more information on how to write a report see the Chalmers Writing Guide: https://writing.chalmers.se/chalmers-writing-guide/

Questions/supervision or help, but also discussions with other students, are always welcome to address anytime throughout the course.

There will be an optional consultation session for the individual assignment (see schedule for details).

Group project

You are expected to do a group project (3 – 5 members in each group). The problems/topics for will be introduced in class, see schedule. Details of proposed topics are presented in a separate document.

The students should hand in a Planning report/statement of intent (see schedule for deadline) for feedback from teachers. This planning report should contain introduction, background, aim and goal with the project and a plan for carry through of the project. An optional consultation session for the group project is held in week 5 (see schedule). All students are recommended to join in the group to create creative discussions.

It is recommended that you follow the Chalmers Writing Guide: https://writing.chalmers.se/chalmers-writing-guide/ 

Presentation seminar session

The group work will be presented at a presentation session on the last scheduled session in the course. This will give the students the opportunity to present their work to the teachers and the peers, but also to a wider audience within the department.

Organization

The course cover six themes and will be viewed through an engineering or societal context which will facilitate understanding of the concepts and their implications.

Each theme is connected to the course literature and additional suggested learning resources that may be in the form of scientific articles, reports, books, video and websites are listed in the course home page on Canvas. Some of these resources are made available in Canvas, while others can be accessed from other providers (libraries, external websites etc).

In addition, some themes have recorded lectures from Chalmers researchers introducing certain topics from their respective research field, relevant to the course theme. The lectures are available in the learning platform.

The provided learning resources are available during the whole course, and students have access to them anytime during this period.

The six theme topics are listed in the table below:

Week	Theme
Week 1	Course introduction
Week 2	Theoretical foundations, ethics and criticism for sustainable development
Week 3	Closed material loops and waste management, construction materials
Week 4	Sustainable water and resource management
Week 5	Sustainable transportation, Environmental economy, valuation and rebound effects
Week 6	Political and legislative system
Week 7	Sustainable housing, Quantifying sustainability
Week 8	Group work presentations

Learning objectives and syllabus

Learning objectives:

• After completing the course, the student should be able to:
• Explain what strong and weak sustainability means in theory and practice
• Explain important ethical issues related to sustainable development across several dimensions
• Describe the most important commonly occurring criticisms of sustainable development
• Describe important concepts in the environmental economy, which instruments exist and how to manage common resources
• Apply the concept of ecosystem services to be able to identify and describe examples
• Describe the most common methods for valuating ecosystem services and be able to apply and give concrete examples
• Apply in the course introduced concepts and tools for analyzing and evaluating challenges in civil engineering from a sustainability perspective

Link to the syllabus on Studieportalen.

Study plan

Examination form

The final overall grade will be weighted as 50% from the individual assignment, 50% for the group work. 

For the grading of the individual assignments teachers will focus on the students understanding of the selected assignment topic. This means, teachers are searching for how students use and apply facts and concepts in the wider perspective, rather than looking for texts full of definitions and facts (cut and paste from literature). One suggestion is to outline the assignments as finding answers and discuss difficult questions/problems found in the chosen lectures. Discussion with other students is encouraged, but the report writing is done individually.

For grading of the group project reports teachers will assess the following:

• The starting point for the report? Problem definition? Are the problems clearly and well defined?
• Analysis of the problems? Hypothesis and scenarios? Are the defined problems, hypothesis and scenarios handled well in the report?
• Scientific depth in the report? Synthesis of the problem or more or less copy and paste from the literature? Tables and figures made by the group members? Are conclusions and discussions well related to the literature search and the built up hypothesis and scenarios?
• Organization of the report? Formalities? Language? Well written? Scientific?

The grade will be reported as fail, 3, 4 or 5. Please see separate document for evaluation criteria.

NB! Participation in the weekly learning activities is compulsory and required to pass the course. You can miss two mandatory activities, but if you miss a third activity you will need to do an extra written assignment to hand in. The time spent on the extra assignment should correspond to preparations for and participation in the activities missed. The extra assignment will be given within one-two weeks after the third missed activity and should be handed in "when ready". No grade will be reported before extra assignment is handed in.

Course valuation

Course valuation will be done through group discussions with teachers at the end of scheduled group sessions. The evaluation will focus on students learning environment and we discuss the course goals, working load, teacher’s ability and students’ independence. At course end you are encouraged to fill in the Chalmers central assessment formula on http://kursutv.portal.chalmers.se