Untitled - avniR

Congrès International sur l’Analyse du Cycle de Vie Lille, Novembre 2011
Integrating Life Cycle thinking into higher education
Romain Degot 1 , Patrick Leghie 2 , Natacha Henry 3 , Nathalie Lecocq 4 , Pierre Echard 5 , Jodie Bricout 6
1,6 Plateforme [avniR], 2 HEI, 3 USTL, 4 IUT de Béthune Université d’Artois, 5 Innovaterra
info@avnir.org; patrick.leghie@hei.fr; natacha.henry@ensc-lille.fr; nathalie.lecocq@univ-artois.fr; pierre@innovaterra.eu;
j.bricout@cd2e.com
Key words: higher education ; LCA ; ecodesign ; sustainability, environmental communication
Introduction
Life cycle thinking and ecodesign are becoming essential approaches to applying sustainability in
business. It is hence fundamental to equipe future managers with the knowledge and tools required to
implement a LCA strategy in a business, whether they be designers, engineers or product representatives.
There is a need to change the existing culture related to designing and improving products and services.
A number of higher learning institutions have already started integrating life cycle approaches into
their curricula, but it is essential to accelerate this movement and make it mainstream. It is also important
to ensure that these courses are aligned with real needs of businesses.
In Northern France, 30 teachers have come together under the auspices of the [avniR] LCA
platform (www.avnir.org) to share their knowledge and tools for teaching LCA and ecodesign.
The project: providing teaching networks and tools
To promote and reinforce LCA and ecoconception teaching in higher learning in Northern France,
[avniR] has developed a collaborative project with universities, schools and businesses.
The project is based on two pillars:
Developing of teaching resources, based on a virtual centre on the [avniR] website
Establishing and facilitating a network of teachers, to foster exchange between different higher
learning institutions
The objective of this project is to mainstream Life Cycle Thinking in all higher education streams, in
order to provide tomorrow’s professionals with modern decision making tools, aligned with sustainability.
a) The educational ressource centre
This resource centre brings together teaching information and tools. Teachers can access
supports for their lectures, examples, exercises, quizzes, videos, a bibliography and more. These tools are
grouped in 4 themes
Sustainable development
Life Cycle Assessment
Eco design
Environmental Communication
The resource centre also contains a database of LCA related documents, which allows teachers to
complete the ‘generic’ materials with case studies and examples adapted to their class.
The database centralises LCA studies, EPDs and guides. Teachers can search the documents by
theme, economic sector or keyword.
These tools are designed to evolve with the contribution of the members.
b) The teachers’ network
This network provides its members with the opportunity to exchange with teachers from other
disciplines and other universities. This fosters the development of multidisciplinary projects, an essential
approach for LCA work.
This network also provides the basis for a continual improvement of the teaching tools.
Progress so far
The [avniR] platform hired an interne from one of the participating universities to develop the
teaching resources during the first semester of 2011. By conducting a survey of students and teachers, he
developed a "beta" version of these teaching tools. Year by year, the tools will be improved by the
members.
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