Educational challenges of web-based case studies in sustainable development

The Royal Academy of Engineering has funded a project to produce case study teaching material relating sustainable development issues to undergraduate students within the School of Design, Engineering and Computing at Bournemouth University. This is a challenge because it is a complex wide-ranging subject matter and there is no unique solution. The principal learning vehicle is an interactive case study approach available to students through the Internet. This paper addresses the specific educational challenges of student-centred web-based learning and teaching strategies applied to the complex subject of sustainable development. Pedagogical components of variety, action, application, interaction, assessment, feedback and evaluation are discussed and related to the learning and teaching of the subject using the web. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) software is included as a teaching tool and its role when interfaced with case studies is discussed.