Sustainable Energy-Efficient Living – A First-Year Project-Based Workshop For Energy Engineers

For many engineering students a lack of study motivation plays a significant role in their drop-out process (Heublein 2014). Therefore, students’ motivation to study should be encouraged as early as possible. A proven strategy for increasing the study motivation is the integration of project-based learning (PjBL) in the course of studies (Kokotsaki et al. 2016). This paper introduces a PjBL-workshop concept which was developed for first-year energy engineering students at a university of applied sciences in Germany. During this one-semester workshop, the students are working weekly as student trainees in a fictitious engineering office. Guided by the teacher as the project lead, the students are developing a concept for integrating various renewable and sustainable energy systems in a single-family home. Each week they take on subtasks of a different work package supporting other employees of the engineering office. During their time as student trainees they have to face authentic engineering challenges like constructing a photovoltaic plant or dimensioning a battery system. Progress and results are documented in a project journal. First insights of initial implementations of the concept led to a closer focus on the aspect of the perceived authenticity of the PjBL-setting (engineering office) by the students. Therefore, besides the conceptual and contentual design of the workshop, this paper will also address the creation of the authentic setup of the engineering office. Future research in this ongoing study will examine the influence of the perceived authenticity on various aspects such as the motivation to study