A case-study approach to introducing engineering students to nontechnical wastewater engineering constraints: Comparison across courses and controls

By studying closed-ended technical problems, senior undergraduate and early graduate students may not appreciate critical interrelations between technical and nontechnical aspects of engineering in both the developed and developing world. To address this gap, a team of engineering and liberal arts faculty created a module on sanitation engineering for the developing world. Two different faculty teams subsequently implemented the module in two different senior/graduate level courses to test transferability. In both courses, students were assigned a semester-long design project, on which they worked in teams to design a sanitation solution for a small remote local community. In addition, students developed case studies as a means to broaden and deepen their understanding of nontechnical issues of wastewater engineering. Based on design project reports and tests administered before and after case-study development, significant increases were observed in student understanding of technical and nontechnical sanitation issues in both courses. In contrast, a control group showed no significant change. This paper presents a detailed statistical and qualitative analysis of the module´s impact in two different classroom implementations and compares these results with a control group.