Sustainability and circular economy through PBL: engineering students’ perceptions

The learning on sustainability and circular economy, within an interdisciplinary Project-Based Learning methodology, on the first year of the Masters’ degree program in Indus- trial Engineering and Management is investigated. By the end of semester, the perceptions about the project were collected and an analysis of the deliverables of each team was performed. The responses to the questionnaire unveils that the students recognize that the project is a stimulating challenge, while enabling to reflect and learn on sustainability issues. Meanwhile, it also shows that the articulation between the courses of the semester still holds some space for improvement. The analysis of the teams’ deliverables revealed a variety of solutions that were based on sus- tainability concepts, namely on the choice of raw materials, digital and physical project deliver- ables, such as the ones detailing the products, representing the shop floor or making proof-of- concepts, and the production systems design and product prototypes.This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013. The authors are also grateful to the students that participated in the PBL project.