ON TEACHING AND LEARNING SUSTAINABILITY AND SOCIAL COMMITMENT SKILLS

INTRODUCTION Technical development has reached a point of development and adopton by society where the impact of technical developments in the society and the environment has a deep and global impact. With great power comes great responsibility, as Ben Parker said in Spiderman’s comic-books. Today’s engineers need to be aware of the responsibility they bear. This awareness has to be raised during the educaton and training. The adaptaton to the European Higher Educaton Area (EHEA) has brought us the need for the inclusion of professional skills in the curricula of universites. There are many studies on the need to incorporate these skills (Natonal Academy of Engineering, 2004; Cobb, Agogino, Beckman & Speer, 2008). The need for most of these skills was not discussed while others have been introduced without unanimity. On the other hand, teachers feel more comfortable teaching some partcular skills that have been introduced because they have an idea of how to teach and evaluate them.


INTRODUCTION
Technical development has reached a point of development and adopton by society where the impact of technical developments in the society and the environment has a deep and global impact.With great power comes great responsibility, as Ben Parker said in Spiderman's comic-books.Today's engineers need to be aware of the responsibility they bear.This awareness has to be raised during the educaton and training.The adaptaton to the European Higher Educaton Area (EHEA) has brought us the need for the inclusion of professional skills in the curricula of universites.There are many studies on the need to incorporate these skills (Natonal Academy of Engineering, 2004;Cobb, Agogino, Beckman & Speer, 2008).The need for most of these skills was not discussed while others have been introduced without unanimity.On the other hand, teachers feel more comfortable teaching some partcular skills that have been introduced because they have an idea of how to teach and evaluate them.
One of the professional skills commonly accepted as essental in the modern world (despite some detractors) is "Sustainability and Social Commitment" (SSC).Nevertheless it raises concerns among teachers due to the lack of formal knowledge about it.Some of the common questons raised when discussing this skill are: What is sustainability?What is its relatonship with my subject?What should my students learn?How should we evaluate the skill acquisiton?(Forment, López, Carracedo, Almiñana, Poch, Velasco et al., 2013).
If we really wish to develop skills for SSC as part of any academic degree, it is necessary to change our way of thinking, our attude.As we wrote in the ratonale of the track, objectves such as equity; local, internatonal and inter-generatonal solidarity for the conservaton of natural resources, and the preservaton of cultural diversity must be included in our curricula.Universites must always be prepared to meet new challenges and adopt roles that focus on solving current or preventng future social crises (energy, ecology, food, fnance, etc.).Therefore, preparing students to take up their actve role in society so that they are able to partcipate and to solve any challenge at a local, regional, or internatonal level is one of the university's foremost responsibilites.However, learning Sustainability requires new ways of thinking and new ways of teaching.Intellectual development, critcal thinking and a systematc approach are necessary in order to progress from "ignorant certainty to intelligent confusion" (Felder & Brent. 2004).There are methods closely related with the very concept of sustainability, like Service Learning, a method of learning that integrates meaningful community service with instructon and refecton to enrich the learning experience.There are good practces and very interestng experiences introducing sustainability in the curricula.
In this track we would like to promote the discussion about how can we help students to develop an adequate sustainable vision of the world in which they are to live, since they will play themselves a vital role in the evoluton of that world.We thought about some topics, such as Pedagogical Innovatons involving Sustainability, Methodologies for Learning and Teaching Sustainability, Evaluaton and Assessment of Sustainability Learning, New Learning/Teaching Models involving Sustainability, Sustainability Learning Tools and Curriculum Design.Also educatonal experiences can be shared in this track, such as Good Practces involving Sustainability, Laboratory and Projects Design and Designing Sustainable Projects.
But another important point in SSC educaton for engineering is the ability to learn outside the classroom: SSC can be reduced to an academic queston, it is mainly a practcal queston, and students must learn how to apply SSC in the real world.For this reason it s also necessary to work in subjects such as Collaboraton with NGOs, Campus as a Lab, Citzenship Educaton, and Community Problem Solving.
All of these subjects point out to the fundamental and fast growing multcultural perspectve that should be included in the approach used to teach and learn SSC, once the global learning environment is available constantly at a click distance and students travel frequently, both for educatonal and for recreatonal purposes.

LEARNING SUSTAINABILITY AND SOCIAL COMPROMISE SKILLS
To acquire the SSC skills, there are three basic concepts that must be understood by students: • To know and to understand the complexity of economic and social phenomena characterizing the welfare society, relatng globalizaton and sustainability; • To learn the social and environmental implicatons of the engineering practce; • To acquire the ability to fnd solutons, in which technology, economics and sustainability should be well balanced.
The SSC concepts are closely related to sustainable development.Sustainable development is defned as the kind of development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the capabilites of future generatons to fulfl their own needs (Brundtland, 1987).Fundamentally sustainable development is based on two fundamental concepts: • The concept of "needs", in partcular the essental needs of the poor, to which overriding priority should be given; • The acknowledgement of existng limitatons imposed by the state of technology and social organizaton on the capability of the environment to satsfy present and future needs.
In order to atain a sustainable development, it is essental to control the environmental footprint.The ecological footprint, as stated by Wackernagel and Rees (1998), can be defned as the area of ecologically productve land (crops, pastures, forests and aquatc ecosystems) required to generate the resources used, and to assimilate the waste produced by a defned populaton at a specifc level of life development, forever, wherever this area might be.
The challenge for SSC is to queston what demands actually meet a need, and what needs have yet to be established on demand.SSC implies a global vision.Although it is ofen reduced to issues involving the environment (ecology), a sustainable soluton must address problems in three major areas: environmental impact, economic cost and social implicatons.Any "sustainable" soluton to a problem must take into account these three aspects.
As academics, we are bound to emphasize that the products of our students (future engineers) should be technically appropriate, robust, economically viable, taking users into account (accessibility), and at a sustainable environmental cost.
What students should also learn is not necessarily that problems exist that they need to be aware of, nor that they should show solidarity, be commited, or ecological but rather the relatonship between the profession of the computng or mechanical or electrical or civil engineer and professional ethics, how to compute the cost of social and environmental solutons, and above all the impact of their engineering work (López Sánchez, Garcia, Alier, Piguillem & Velasco, 2011).

SSC AND ENGINEERING EDUCATION AND TRAINING
Universites must always be prepared to meet new challenges and adopt roles that focus on solving current social crises (energy, ecology, food, fnance, etc.) (GUNI, 2008).If we really wish to develop skills for Sustainability and Social Commitment (SSC) as part of any engineering degree, it is necessary to change our way of thinking.Therefore, preparing students to take up their actve role in society so that they are able to partcipate and to solve any challenge at a local, regional, or internatonal level is one of the university's foremost responsibilites.
Though the EU has set very well defned targets in what concerns Sustainability and Sustainable Development, through the politcs and lines of acton established in the 2020 program, educaton for sustainable development in higher educaton is gaining growing importance.
Thus sustainability is a key issue that must be kept in mind in any engineering degree and consttutes an important factor in an engineer's educaton.It is closely related with some of the ABET engineering criteria (ABET, 2003), namely: 3.c) The ability to design a system, component, or process in order to meet needs within realistc constraints, such as those posed by economic, environmental, social, politcal, ethical, health and safety issues, as well as manufacturability, and sustainability; 3.f) An understanding of professional and ethical responsibility; 3.h) The broad educaton necessary for understanding the impact of engineering solutons in a global, economic, environmental and societal context; and 3.j) A knowledge of contemporary issues.
A study carried out in 2007 by Huntzinger and colleagues (2007) showed that, while many universites in the USA included the concept of sustainability in their curricula, new learning methods were required to meet 21st century engineering requirements.
The Bologna agreement implied a general reducton of the contact tme for "formal" teaching/learning, with an immediate consequence of increasing the specializaton of the graduates (three -four year bachelor degrees).
Although it was intended that both teachers/instructors and students had to change their behavior towards educaton, and non-formal educaton should be pursued by students, the fact is that this can only be accomplished if students had already gained a certain maturity and responsibility that in most of the situatons is not the case.
Hence to include such a broad mater in the curricula of every course represents a huge challenge, as to understand the full implicatons of any kind of project/technology, the professional should be able to know, even at an elementary level, the basics of many diferent sciences, which is no longer possible.In this way he should be able to work collaboratvely in a group of experts and prevent future problems that could arise from lack of informaton/knowledge.
That is, the applicaton of sustainability to real life problems is a mater of multdisciplinary nature that can no longer be addressed, in most of the cases, by the bachelors that are being graduated nowadays.
SSC has yet to be perceived as a fundamental concept in an engineer's training, and is stll regarded as a "good to know" skill that is not directly related to an engineer's work.Although sustainability is as attude that can only be really entrained from a long practce and diferent thinking, in some schools and facultes, sustainability has been taught as a single subject or in a few specifc subjects.Some of these initatves are based on learning with social services (social learning) (Jacoby, 1996), an experimental approach to educaton in which students partcipate in actvites focused on human and community needs, which are planned beforehand to assure that students acquire the necessary knowledge and training.This type of training has been widely studied in relaton to engineering (Dufy, Tsang & Lord, 2000) and has been applied to diferent programs, such as that at the University of Purdue (Coyle, Jamieson & Oakes, 2005) or the Georgia Insttute of Technology (Watson, Lozano, Noyes & Rodgers, 2013).Comprehension of real world problems helps students to develop SSC skills and provides them with new perspectves.Furthermore, it helps them to learn beter the techniques associated with engineering (Vanasupa, Stolk & Herter, 2009).
Finally, Colby and Sullivan (2008) have proposed 5 basic recommendatons for the teaching of SSC skills: 1. Defne professional responsibility and ethics in a manner that can be clearly understood; 2. Integrate these skills with other academic objectves; 3. Use actve pedagogy for teaching; 4. Teacher involvement; 5. Extend involvement of public insttutons.
These 5 points can be defned as key points for the spirit of this special issue.

PAPERS PRESENTED
In this special issue we present the following papers.First we have four papers that show how project based learning can be efectvely used to learn the SSC skills.In "Developing an aquaponics system to learn sustainability and social compromise skills" we will see how a multnatonal and multdisciplinary team developed an aquaponics system whose goal is to contribute to reduce the strain on resources within 1 st and 3 rd world countries.And in "Learning sustainability by developing a solar dryer for microalgae retrieval" we see the development of a clean energy soluton for drying microalgae.Last but not least in "Introducing ethical, social and environmental issues in ICT engineering degrees" we will see how the SSC skills have been introduced in the engineering studies in the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.Finally we ofer "A multcultural