Increasingly, sustainability challenges in transdisciplinary courses are used to confront students with different dimensions of uncertainty, such as unpredictability, lack of knowledge, or ambiguity. However, little is known about how teachers adapt their teaching to scaffold students through such uncertainty. This design-based study investigates the adaptive guidance (scaffolding) employed by teachers to guide students through problem-solving in uncertainty. Using a sixteen-week challenge-based learning (CBL) course called the ‘Living Lab’ as a case study, we monitored how teachers developed scaffolding based on a workshop they received before the course began. Through qualitative questionnaires and focus groups conducted every four weeks, teachers reflected on their teaching practices and coaching strategies. The study identifies teaching problems faced by teachers in transdisciplinary courses, including theoretical grounding, tensions with the commissioner, and assignment clarity. Teachers most frequently used scaffolding for frustration control, marking critical features, and direction maintenance. Additionally, teachers lacked diagnostic strategies to assess student progress on personal learning objectives. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of the role of teachers as coaches in transdisciplinary courses. Practical implications include informing and inspiring teachers to enhance their scaffolding practices on diagnostics, theoretical grounding, and personal learning in CBL courses. ... Read more

Transdisciplinary approaches are increasingly prevalent in higher education curricula. These approaches involve partnering with real-world actors to tackle real-world problems, perhaps most notably the contemporary sustainability challenge. How to balance environmental sustainability with social and economic goals is a contested issue, with varying perspectives on the problems and solutions, even among experts. Furthermore, sustainability education is shaped amidst an unpredictable political landscape and yet unknown technological advancements. This diversity of viewpoints, unpredictability, and a lack of knowledge makes uncertainty an inescapable part of transdisciplinary sustainability education.

Until now, little research has informed teachers and students how to deal with uncertainty. The central question in this research is therefore: How can transdisciplinary education be designed so that students learn to deal with uncertainty in sustainability challenges? The purpose of this dissertation is twofold: (1) to further refine the theoretical understanding of uncertainty in transdisciplinary education and learn to deal with it; and (2) to highlight principles for designing education that empowers both students and teachers to navigate uncertainty effectively. The research approach is based on Educational Design Research (EDR), which aims to combine scientific research findings with practical experiences from people involved in education.

The research highlights how learning to deal with uncertainty is an uncomfortable struggle for students and teachers. The conclusion suggests six design principles to help transform this struggle into a well-guided learning experience. These design principles focus on defining transdisciplinary learning objectives, making uncertainty attitudes explicit, and emphasizing personal development and emotional awareness in future sustainability education. ... Read more

While tackling sustainability challenges, engineering students confront various uncertainties, including the unpredictability of real-world scenarios, unfamiliar aspects of problems, and conflicting viewpoints among stakeholders. Despite previous research indicating the likelihood of encountering such uncertainties in sustainability projects, it is unclear if students are aware of uncertainty and what specific regulatory behaviors they develop to address them. This study seeks to deepen our understanding of the awareness and regulation of uncertainty by students while they work on real-life sustainability challenges. To achieve this, we observed nine MSc students enrolled in a transdisciplinary course on urban sustainability at a Dutch university of technology. Through interviews, we explored the uncertainties they faced and how they navigated them. Our analysis, conducted through open, consensus-based coding by two researchers, revealed that students primarily encountered the uncertainty of multiplicity, characterized by divergent stakeholder perspectives. Additionally, students increasingly recognized the inherent unpredictability of the challenges over the course. To address uncertainty, students developed three kinds of behaviors to deal with uncertainty: seeking social support from commissioners, coaches, and peers; employing small coping mechanisms to overcome obstacles; and developing attitudes such as empathy, flexibility, and relativism. This study offers detailed insights into how students navigate uncertainty. Moving forward, efforts in uncertainty education should prioritize how educators can positively influence the development of metacognition in uncertainty. ... Read more

Purpose
In collaboration with their home cities, universities increasingly develop courses in which students investigate urban sustainability challenges. This paper aims to understand how far-reaching the collaboration with urban stakeholders in these courses is and what students are meant to learn from the transdisciplinary pedagogies.

Design/methodology/approach
This research is designed as a qualitative multiple-case study into the intentions of transdisciplinary courses in which universities collaborate with their home cities: Delft University of Technology in Delft and Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions in Amsterdam. The study compares the written intentions of eight courses in course descriptions with the ideal intentions that teachers describe in interviews.

Findings
First, seven of the eight investigated courses were designed for urban stakeholders to participate at a distance or as a client but rarely was a course intended to lead to a collaborative partnership between the city and students. Second, the metacognitive learning objectives, such as learning to deal with biases and values of others or getting to know one’s strengths and weaknesses in collaboration, were often absent in the course descriptions. Learning objectives relating to metacognition are at the heart of transdisciplinary work, yet when they remain implicit in the learning objectives, they are difficult to teach.

Originality/value
This paper presents insight into the levels of participation intended in transdisciplinary courses. Furthermore, it shows the (mis)alignment between intended learning objectives in course descriptions and teachers’ ideals. Understanding both the current state of transdisciplinarity in sustainability courses and what teachers envision is vital for the next steps in the development of transdisciplinary education.
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In this case study, we answer the question: what are design characteristics for a personal development line integrated in undergraduate engineering curricula? We investigated the development of such a line in a Bachelor of Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences in The Netherlands. We documented and analysed the preparation of and discussions during three design sessions, where teachers and students collaboratively created the personal development line.

This personal development line has two main aims: to guide students in developing their personal and professional identities and promote self-directed learning in the curriculum. Reflective skills are playing a key role in this. Four levels on which students reflect in relation to personal development in the curriculum were identified: self, education, practice, and society. Each Personal Development Week in the design proposal touches upon one of these levels and makes use of three generic elements: inspiration, contemplation, and perspective. Three tensions in the curriculum arose during the design sessions. First, the question if it is necessary to give students direction by assignments or to trust they will reflect by themselves.Second, if that direction should be shaped by specific writing assignments or if students should be left to work with a free form. Finally, if the reflection should be connected to what students learn inside the university or rather to societal challenges that they perceive outside of their studies.

The personal development line in this research is one answer to the questions arising from these three tensions, yet it is not the only answer. Both the identified tensions and the designed reflection model can be a starting point for other curriculum designers to position personal development in their curriculum. Personal development can then become a key ingredient in the education of a diverse group of reflexive engineers at universities anywhere in the world. ... Read more

It is common in architecture education to quantify the quality of assignments into grades, often done by one or two teachers using rubrics. However, this can have several downsides. It suggests an objective preciseness that is debatable for the creative assignments in the field of architecture, and the assessment is dependent on the judgement of only one or two people. Comparative judgement (CJ) offers an alternative to rubric-based assessment by applying pairwise comparison to student assignments, resulting in a ranking instead of a grade.

We used a mixed methods approach to compare the reliability, time efficiency, and fairness of CJ in the selection of students for an undergraduate architecture programme at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Teachers involved in the rubric-based approach for student selection were asked to re-assess a random selection of the assignments using CJ. Reliability and time investments for both methods were compared, and the involved assessors were asked in a focus group setting which of the two methods they perceived as more reliable and fair. Comparing rubric-based assessment to CJ is new, as previous studies have only looked at these assessment methods in isolation.

Findings indicate that CJ can be serve as a more reliable and time efficient alternative to rubric-based assessment. However, teachers still perceive rubrics as having higher reliability and fairness. Though this research is particularly relevant in the context of architecture, it contributes to wider discussions about reliable and fair assessment of creative student assignments. ... Read more

Universities open their doors to society, inviting the complexity of the world to enter engineering education through challenge-based courses. While working on complex issues, engineering students learn to deal with different kinds of uncertainty: uncertainty about the dynamics of a real-world challenge, the knowledge gaps in the problem, or the conflicting perspectives amongst the people involved. Although we know from previous research that students are likely to encounter these uncertainties in sustainability challenges, which metacognitive strategies they use to deal with them is unclear. We interviewed nine MSc students at the end of a challenge-based course at a Dutch university of technology. We asked the students how they dealt with uncertainty in collaboration with the commissioner, their student team, and the teachers. The interviews were analyzed through grounded, consensus-based coding by two researchers. Preliminary results show students use three main strategies. First, the different perspectives from peers in their team inform the position of the student. Second, students find expectation management of the commissioner essential, yet students struggle with how to do this in a professional and timely way. Third, students frame the uncertainties they encounter as part of the learning process, which allows them to accept the possibility of failure. This study provides first insights in metacognitive uncertainty strategies and suggests those strategies should become a more prominent topic in coaching students. When uncertainty becomes an explicit part of challenge-based education, students learn to deal with both the known and unknown in the transition to a sustainable society. ... Read more

The challenges we collectively face, such as climate change, are characterized by more complexity, interdependence, and dynamism than is common for educational practice. This presents a challenge for (university) education. These sustainability transition challenges are often described as wicked or VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) problems. In response, educational innovations that are inspired by ecology, such as living labs are starting to emerge, but little is known about how students engage within and with these more ecologically-inspired forms of education. This work is an exploratory study into how students navigate VUCA learning environments linked to tackling sustainability transition challenges, with a focus on the positive qualities of these experiences. This is done through interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) of seven students (using semi- structured interviews) of the MSc Metropolitan Analysis, Design and Engineering program, a joint degree from Wageningen University and Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. The main findings, which are both psychological and educational, of this exploration include openness to new experiences (1), flexibility (2), a process appreciation of learning (3), a desire to create a positive impact on one’s direct biophysical environment and society (4). In addition, we discuss the potential limitations of the malleability of these different qualities and propose future avenues for research into ecological learning for universities. This work closes by highlighting recommendations for educators to consider when designing or engaging in ecological forms of higher education that connect to sustainability transitions. ... Read more

Challenge-based learning (CBL) is increasingly on the higher education agenda. In many universities of technology in the Netherlands, CBL is being implemented in engineering education programmes to prepare students to work on authentic, complex, societal challenges, provided by partners from outside of the university. Making societal impact is an important driver the introduction of CBL, however, on a more pedagogical level, little is known about the motivational aspects of student learning in these challenge-based transdisciplinary courses. ... Read more