Teaching Engineering Students about Cognitive Barriers during Design: A Case Study Approach Using the Envision Rating System for Sustainable Infrastructure

摘要

Society's physical infrastructure costs hundreds of billions of dollars every year to build and maintain, and once constructed will continue to impact generations to come. Engineers and planners can use the Envision rating system as a decision framework to increase design consideration for infrastructure sustainability. To teach civil engineering students the value of sustainability in infrastructure, we designed class modules using case studies of two recent Envision Gold certified projects. This paper focuses on our research and development phases, with the results being the case studies we created. The overall modules are intended to educate students about cognitive biases and barriers that commonly occur during engineering decision making (e.g., choice overload, bounded rationality, status quo bias) and how Envision might be used to mitigate them and improve the sustainability of a project. Role-playing activities involving realistic decision scenarios are assigned for each case study. One case study focuses on integrating multi-stakeholder design requirements; the other on engineering challenges and upstream institutional barriers to sustainability. The module lesson plans are set up to teach students about behavioral decision science and the Envision rating system, their interrelatedness, and their importance to engineering design for sustainability.