Using an open course pack to support interdisciplinary learning in sustainable energy engineering

Abstract

For interdisciplinary engineering programs, it can be difficult to find textbooks that meet the needs of the course – open educational resources (OER) are well suited to bridge this interdisciplinarity challenge. As there was no suitable textbook identified for the course SEE 310: Integrated Energy Solutions in the Sustainable Energy Engineering program at Simon Fraser University, we developed an OER course pack, entirely Creative Commons licensed, that introduces students to energy systems modelling techniques and different types of models. To gain feedback on the effectiveness of the course pack we surveyed the students in SEE 310 and invited them to participate in a focus group to discuss the course pack and how it could be improved. We received positive feedback including that, in almost all cases, they would prefer it over a traditional textbook. Through building the OER course pack, we discovered plenty of commitment to OER development and well-maintained OER repositories, but that material for higher level interdisciplinary undergraduate engineering courses is still difficult to find. Given the suitability and positive feedback from developing OER for SEE 310, we feel that OER are well suited to answer the complexity and interdisciplinarity of sustainable energy engineering.