Teaching life cycle assessment in higher education

A literature review was performed aiming to identify the relevant scientific papers published in the past years on LCA teaching. The review did not collect all possible types of documentation and material from the numerous LCA courses taught around the world (many of them are not publicly accessible). It rather aimed at summarizing the current state of research on teaching LCA in higher education. Hence, the literature review covered databases of scientific research (JSTOR, ScienceDirect, ResearchGate) using the keywords “teaching”, “higher education” and “learning” combined with “Life Cycle Assessment”, “Life Cycle Analysis”, “LCA”, or “lifecycle” (with different spelling).

Since many of the search results also described course formats in more detail, all studies identified were assessed based on the following criteria:

The development of the framework and the categorization of LCA contents and activities are results of expert panels. Expert panels or stakeholder workshops are commonly used ways to discuss and develop consensus in complex subjects from medical practice to specific resource efficiency topics. In the field of LCA, expert panels have been used to build consensus on the development of guiding principles for LCA databases (e.g. Pennington et al. 2010), definition of impact assessment indicators (e.g. Frischknecht et al. 2016) or weighting factors (e.g. Pizzol et al. 2017).

In this study, expert panels were conducted based on the five-step nominal group technique as described in Potter et al. (2004) and Harvey and Holmes (2012) to build stepwise consensus on the learning outcomes and achievable competencies in higher education on LCA. FSLCI invited about 40 internationally recognized universities and academic institutions and announced open expert panel workshops at the 2017 and 2019 Life Cycle Management Conferences. Three semi-structured expert panels were conducted in Luxembourg in 2017, at the University of Bordeaux in 2019, and due to the COVID-19 crisis online in 2020. The experts, who participated in the panels represented the following stakeholders of higher education in LCA:

The first expert panel provided an opportunity to discuss learning outcomes of different study programmes with incorporated LCA topics and key barriers of teaching and education of LCA. The second panel further developed a common understanding of learning outcomes, learning outcomes and competency levels achieved for different LCA courses. In the third panel, learning and teaching contents, materials, activities, and approaches were identified and categorized.

Given the large number of academic institutions teaching LCA, the expert panels which were carried out to complement the literature review provided a highly valuable yet limited insight into how LCA is taught around the world. In going forward, it is planned to carry out a comprehensive global survey to enhance the representativeness of the findings of the panels outlined in this paper as highlighted in our final chapter.

The pedagogical methods and metrics behind the development of the framework on teaching LCA in higher education are described in this section.

An important aspect identified already in the first expert panel meeting was the need to adjust the content and level of complexity to the audience, considering the overall workload and specific LCA learning outcomes. To qualify the comparative time spent studying LCA topics, the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) was used as reference, which presents a system for the transfer and comparability of accredited learning (EC 2015). Credits are awarded for completed learning, where one academic year normally corresponds to 60 ECTS-credits (equivalent to approximately 1500–1800 h of study, irrespective of qualification or standard). The system provisions for transferability between countries, and provides equivalence with country and university systems outside the European Higher Education Area, where a multitude of crediting approaches exist as exemplified in Table 1.

We applied the ECTS system to provide a gauge against which the comparative time spent studying LCA topics can be measured. The more time spent, the greater the credit allocation and the deeper the LCA teaching can be. The more time spent on study, broadly speaking, the higher the cognitive level at which learning can be achieved.

In line with cognitive levels, Bloom’s taxonomy is a set of hierarchical models used to classify educational learning outcomes into categories of complexity and specificity (Bloom et al. 1956). To differentiate cognitive skill levels within LCA teaching, Bloom’s taxonomy has been used. Originally presented to help develop rubrics (criteria for grading) and measure learning, the taxonomy encompasses six categories within the cognitive domain: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation (Bloom et al. 1956). Bloom’s taxonomy is widely used for analysing and classifying cognitive skills in higher education and has been used in the LCA teaching context before (e.g. Favi et al. 2019; Olsen et al. 2018; Roure et al. 2018).

Bloom’s taxonomy has been modified by various authors since its original conception, with variations, modifications or additions (e.g. Anderson et al. 2001; Lytras and Pouloudi 2006). Most widely applied is the addition of a further category of ‘creation’ to the taxonomy, representing learner’s ability to create new knowledge at the point of achieving sophisticated understanding of a subject (Anderson et al. 2001). Table 2 lists and defines the categories of the revised taxonomy.

A final important aspect to address are the learning outcomes. They are defined as the expected goals of a course, lesson or activity in terms of demonstrable skills or knowledge, which the students acquire and as a result of the delivery of taught content or teaching activities. It is useful to also consider these skills in relation to Bloom's taxonomy to provide appropriately levelled outcomes (Anderson et al. 2001). The terms learning outcomes and learning objectives are often used interchangeably. This paper uses the term learning outcomes to describe the intended overarching achievements of students in contrast to instructional and course-specific learning objectives (cp. e.g. Allan 1996, Harden 2002).

To develop a framework on teaching LCA in higher education, the results of the stakeholder workshops were structured in several categories: the degree of LCA integration into study programs measured in ECTS and workload, associated cognitive domain categories according to Bloom’s taxonomy, LCA learning outcomes, and envisioned professional LCA competency. These categories are used to define distinctive LCA learning and competency levels. To further develop the framework, common LCA teaching content and approaches are described, analyzed and categorized within the given levels.

Twenty-eight studies were identified in the literature and summarized in Table 3. The review aimed to identify published experience on teaching LCA in higher education. As highlighted by Burnley et al. (2019), LCA is taught in a significant number of higher education institutes across the world, but many do not publish papers on their teaching experience. Instead, this review reveals the current state of scientific discourse on teaching LCA and provides a basis for expert panel based assessment in later sections of this paper.

Through this literature review, it was confirmed that several universities implemented courses on LCA and environmental assessment tools in the past years. Most of the papers (26 out of 28) report an experience with an LCA course held at a specific university or different universities in the same country (identified as “course experience” in Table 3). For instance, Burnley et al. (2019) present a software tool developed at Cranfield University to allow part-time distance learning students to gain an understanding and experience of LCA. Olsen et al. (2018) and Cosme et al. (2019) present the LCA course experience at the Technical University of Denmark, including how students and companies are engaged in the course allowing a win–win situation to all stakeholders. De Souza et al. (2014) summarize experiences on graduate education in Brazil considering inputs from five different universities, and identified among others, common challenges among the partners as lack of national inventories to model LCA studies. In turn, Mälkki and Alanne (2017) aimed at understanding how LCA can be useful in renewable and sustainable energy education; a literature review was the starting point for the authors, and among other things, they concluded that LCA should be integrated into the learning outcomes of energy degree programmes. This last study was classified as a “generic course proposal”, although the authors do not suggest a detailed curriculum in the paper. As such, the different studies reflect different experiences from educators, but there is therefore no discussion nor comparisons between these different experiences.

In geographical terms, a predominant share of the studies (eleven) are based on experiences in European countries. The second region is North America with eight studies (seven from the United States and one from Canada), followed by Oceania (Australia) with three studies, South America (Brazil) with two studies and Asia (Malaysia) with one study. Three studies included several countries. Overall, this geographical distribution reflects the continental and regional evolution of LCA for the past 30 years, e.g. its use in industry (Stewart et al. 2018) or its spreading via LCA networks (Bjørn et al. 2013), where European and North American regions have seen the largest developments, while other regions like Asia or Africa lag behind with respect to LCA uptake.

Among the papers, ten included related approaches besides LCA, e.g. ecodesign, green chemistry, sustainable development, energy efficiency and circular economy (Loste et al. 2020; Oude Luttikhuis et al. 2015; Roure et al. 2018; Sahakian and Seyfang 2018). Although there is a consensus on the importance of considering sustainability in the academic curriculum of all areas, the majority of LCA courses identified (21) is applied to graduate or undergraduate students following an engineering or technology path. This may be explained by the traditional main use of LCA as a micro-level decision-support tool in industry for product or technology development, although it started to diversify in recent years with broader, large-scale assessments of organizations, sectors or countries (EC 2020; Laurent and Owsianiak 2017).

Different authors reported the relevance of project-based learning (e.g. Lockrey and Bissett Johnson 2013; Margallo et al. 2019; Piekarski et al. 2019; Sriraman et al. 2017a, b), most of the time through a life cycle assessment project developed by the students and using one or different LCA commercial software. Some studies presented experiences with cases developed in partnership with industrial partners (Cosme et al. 2019; Piekarski et al. 2019). As emphasized by Sriraman et al. (2017a, b), an appropriate pedagogy is essential to activate student engagement in the learning process and facilitate a deeper learning.

Regarding the structure of the courses, only a few studies presented the content of the lectures in details, and/or the learning outcomes (e.g. Cosme et al. 2019; Gilmore 2016; Margallo et al. 2019; Olsen 2010; Roure et al. 2018). Gilmore (2016) highlights the importance to adjust the content and level of complexity to the audience and the background of the students, but there is an evident absence of generic LCA course framework based on specific learning outcomes and teaching methods.

Figure 1 and Table 4 summarize the outcome of our expert panel research with regard to LCA learning and competency levels. Depending on the degree of study program integration and the respective workload in ECTS and hours, LCA teaching covers smaller or larger parts of Bloom’s taxonomy and pursues different learning outcomes which eventually result in nuanced expectations regarding the students’ professional life cycle literacy.

Considering the modular structure of most higher education courses in LCA, we consider typical ECTS awards and Bloom’s taxonomy to derive four broad conceptual levels of learning outcomes and cognitive competency. For higher LCA competency levels, higher levels according to Bloom are involved: From the ability to gain or apply knowledge like the basic concept of life cycle thinking, to the ability to critically analyse and evaluate the quality of an own LCA study and finally being able to combine LCA results with insights from other disciplines to create new methods (see Fig. 1). These levels are intended to reflect the time spent by students studying LCA, reflected by the weight of ECTS credits available for part of a course, entire courses, modules or minor and major or complete programs. A fifth learning and competency level is additionally considered to capture research work undertaken by postgraduate research students, particularly in thesis work (MSc or PhD students). This reflects the suggestion of various revisions of Bloom’s taxonomy to add ‘creation’ as further category to the cognitive domain, which is not conceptual knowledge per se, but rather based on the understanding and skills gained through the preceding cognitive categories (Anderson et al. 2001). This fifth level is very flexible depending on the course specific focus and is therefore not detailed in further sections.

In Table 4 we suggest generic learning outcomes for LCA taught content corresponding to the five levels defined above. Through definition of topics, time, and cognitive categories for courses, instructors are able to more clearly define consistent learning outcomes. We recognize that instructors or curricula may have specific requirements or demands and therefore we suggest that these outcomes be applied and adapted as required. Based on the learning outcomes we come up with an envisioned professional LCA competency as the final outcome for students with regards to their future role as sustainability professionals. After their studies, some students will just be aware of the life cycle concept, they might commission LCA studies for decision-making in the future (level 1&2), some will be users of LCA information and contribute to their generation (level 3), while others will be able to conduct full-scale LCA studies (level 4), either in an accompanied or independent manner. As such, the level of LCA competency that will be required from students varies to a high degree.

The substantial differences in learning outcomes and envisioned professional LCA competencies do not only require distinct workloads and tailored study program integration, but also result in a large spectrum of LCA teaching activities, materials, and content. Therefore, this section showcases the use of the framework in higher education. Based on the expert panel research, we decided to focus on three broad types of LCA teaching: lecturing and similar activities, case studies and project work, and LCA software and database use. The latter is mostly part of case studies and project work and of particular relevance for LCA teaching in higher education.

The three types resemble Atkins and Brown’s continuum of teaching methods (2002) where lectures represent one end of the continuum with a high degree of engagement and control by the lecturer. The degree of student participation and independence then constantly increases via small group teaching, research supervision and lab work to the level of individual work (e.g. PhD studies) at the other end of the continuum. Accordingly, the addressed cognitive domain categories of Bloom’s taxonomy change from one type to the next.

The following sections further elaborate the three types (Sections 3.3.1–3.3.3), while typical teaching contents are addressed in Section 3.3.4. Unless stated otherwise, the results are the direct outcome of the nominal group technique.