Education for Sustainable Development (ESD): An Example of Curricular Inclusion in Environmental Engineering in Colombia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The topic is unique and sheds light on a different perspective of ESD for environmental engineering in Colombia. The paper describes the application of a case study, for an EE to ESD at a non-certain region, to determine the coursed-based effects for other details at various colleges. I did not detect when the authors carried out a rigid survey from scientific rigor and, how to examine the changes of college students from their courses. However, some details are redundant and cannot be normalized. I have serious arguments concerning your limited numbers of survey participants, i.e., “conducted on students who did not take the ESD subject (n = 38) and students who took the ESD subject (n = 32)” (Line 300-301). And, “A survey was conducted on 43 professors from 13 Colombian universities.” (Lines 229-230); Other information, like “70 of the 192 undergraduate students in environmental engineering at USTA were surveyed.” (Line 281-282).  I may suggest that your manuscript should be revised since you are requested to confirm the following inquires after this review and return your manuscript again since the article has many flaws that need to be addressed. Below are my comments for the authors.

1. Please list all measures used in the study as well as their order of presentation to the participants. Clearly state whether items were presented in a fixed order or was the order of the items changed between participants. The article would benefit from thorough copyediting.

2. The sample used in the study is a convenience sample and thus cannot be used to draw any robust conclusions. At best the study can be used to inform future research. Please make sure that this limitation is more clearly reflected throughout manuscript. Any policy recommendations would need to be very reserved and provided only on the condition that they would be valid if future studies with representative samples replicated the results.

3. Please provide more detailed information on the ethic approval process for the study. Date of approval, number of the decision protocol, etc.

4. The participant age includes underage participants and thus would require their parental consent to participate in the study. Please provide detailed information regarding participant consent and whether any identifying data were gathered.

5. Despite the power analysis, the sample is too small to draw robust conclusion. This limitation should be reflected throughout the manuscript and any conclusions made based on these data should be very reserved.

6. Please include means, standard deviations, and the skewness and kurtosis values for each variable entered into a regression model.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer.

Thank you so much for your suggestions and observations.    We value your evaluation.    In the article, you will find the changes that were suggested by you and the other reviewers marked.
Below we will list the answers to your observations and in which lines you find the corrections.
 
 1.    Please list all measures used in the study as well as their order of presentation to the participants.    Clearly state whether items were presented in a fixed order or was the order of the items changed between participants.    The article would benefit from thorough copyediting.

Thank you for your valuable comment.    You can find the changes and the allusion to the order between lines:
-239 to 244
-266 to 267
-315 to 316
-326 to 327.

2.    The sample used in the study is a convenience sample and thus cannot be used to draw any robust conclusions.    At best the study can be used to inform future research.    Please make sure that this limitation is more clearly reflected throughout manuscript.    Any policy recommendations would need to be very reserved and provided only on the condition that they would be valid if future studies with representative samples replicated the results.

We appreciate your suggestion and observation.    We have made adjustments so that your suggestion is reflected throughout the document.    You can find the modifications in the lines:

- 121 to 124
- 210 to 218
- 329 to 332
- 513 to 518
4.    The participant age includes underage participants and thus would require their parental consent to participate in the study.    Please provide detailed information regarding participant consent and whether any identifying data were gathered.

Thank you for your comment and valid concern.    We have added a few paragraphs clarifying this.    In any case, it is essential to mention that minors were not surveyed.    You can find the correction on lines 234 to 239.    The supports were previously sent to the journal according to the publisher's requirements.

5.    Despite the power analysis, the sample is too small to draw robust conclusion.    This limitation should be reflected throughout the manuscript and any conclusions made based on these data should be very reserved.

We appreciate your suggestion.    We have additionally added an introductory paragraph on the concussions based on your observation.    I will find it on lines 513 to 518.

6.    Please include means, standard deviations, and the skewness and kurtosis values for each variable entered into a regression model.

Thanks for your suggestion.  We have added these statistical indicators to the tables.

Reviewer 2 Report

The topic of the paper is interesting but the problem is too located in Colombia and results cannot be extended and taking this into account the contribution of the work is really bounded.  Before considering the paper I want to know, what is your main contribution to education?

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We understand your concern, and we have made some corrections throughout the article according to the suggestions of the other two reviewers, where you can see your doubt.

In this sense, it is essential to clarify that ESD is not a known current and, much less, applied in Colombia. Based on previously published research, our research team decided to carry out a curricular experiment seeking to integrate ESD within an engineering curriculum, exploring its acceptance measured from a variable is EA. These experiences can not only be applied in Colombia. However, they can also be extrapolated to regions of the Americas where the curricula have similarities thanks to the accreditation factors of ACBET, among other agencies that "standardize" engineering curricula through the accreditation process.

Reviewer 3 Report

This manuscript has some excellent information and discussion. It can be very valuable in informing potential future curricular changes. There are several items that would improve the manuscript:

Required issues:

-Starting on line 65 a different style of citation is used. In addition to the traditional approach used of numbered citations, there is periodic use of an author/year style mixed in the manuscript. The manuscript needs to use one consistent citation style.

-Starting on line 197 I believe there is a typographic error of using DS instead of SD. This occurs at least 6 times in the manuscript. This needs to be corrected.

-Line 542, the word “fil” should be ‘fill”

Questions:

Line 134. The statement is made that EE is “… the most important educational model worldwide.” That is a bold statement as there is no context given, or support for this argument. This type of statement requires some explanation. I suggest this be put in context and either supported by data, literature, or some source for this statement or it is referred to as ‘an important educational model’ or ‘a very important educational model’

Line 208. It is implied that this research extends beyond Columbia to Latin American universities, but I found no mention of surveys being administered outside of Columbia. Either provide some further data or limit the argument to being in Columbia.

Line 247. Should the word “revised” near the end be ‘reviewed’?

Section 2.3, line 280

The selection of survey respondents is not fully described. Were the students randomly selected or was this a self-selection process. This is an important context and should be more thoroughly described in this section.

Discussion and conclusions

The results in this manuscript are presented in two data-rich tables. In the discussion section the authors arguments would be more obvious if a figure or two was used to highlight the relevant results from the previous tables. Showing the responses in bar graph indicating number of responses in each answer category would be a nice way to visually catch the readers’ attention. Clearly Likert scales provide ordinal numbers, not cardinal numbers, so I appreciate not seeing mean statistics. But count values can provide some good visuals.

Line 513. A document from 1994 is cited but the reference is to a 2015 reference. Why is the original document not given as the appropriate reference? It seems inconsistent to refer to something from 1994 in the text and not provide the original citation to match the years.

Author Response

Dear reviewer.

 

We appreciate the time you took to review our article in detail and make suggestions to improve it.

 

Below you will find the responses to your reviews and comments. Within the article, you can highlight the suggested changes.

 

 

1. Starting on line 65 a different style of citation is used. In addition to the traditional approach used of numbered citations, there is periodic use of an author/year style mixed in the manuscript. The manuscript needs to use one consistent citation style.

 

Thank you so much for your observation. All corrections were made in the document.

 

2 . Starting on line 197 I believe there is a typographic error of using DS instead of SD. This occurs at least 6 times in the manuscript. This needs to be corrected.

Thanks for your observation. We made all related changes.

 

3. Line 542, the word “fil” should be ‘fill”

 

Thanks for your observation. It was corrected.

 

4. Line 134. The statement is made that EE is “… the most important educational model worldwide.” That is a bold statement as there is no context given, or support for this argument. This type of statement requires some explanation. I suggest this be put in context and either supported by data, literature, or some source for this statement or it is referred to as ‘an important educational model’ or ‘a very important educational model’

 

was corrected and we took your suggestion.

 

5. Line 208. It is implied that this research extends beyond Columbia to Latin American universities, but I found no mention of surveys being administered outside of Columbia. Either provide some further data or limit the argument to being in Columbia.

 

Thank you very much for your observation and suggestion. We have made the correction and you can find it on lines 210 to 218.

 

6. Line 247. Should the word “revised” near the end be ‘reviewed’?

 

It was corrected. Thank you very much.

 

7. Section 2.3, line 280

The selection of survey respondents is not fully described. Were the students randomly selected or was this a self-selection process. This is an important context and should be more thoroughly described in this section.

 

Thank you very much for this important suggestion. We have added some lines that we hope will give clarity to this matter.

 

The lines were added:

 

-234 to 243.

-315 to 317.

-326 to 327.

-329 to 332.

 

8. Discussion and conclusions

The results in this manuscript are presented in two data-rich tables. In the discussion section the authors arguments would be more obvious if a figure or two was used to highlight the relevant results from the previous tables. Showing the responses in bar graph indicating number of responses in each answer category would be a nice way to visually catch the readers’ attention. Clearly Likert scales provide ordinal numbers, not cardinal numbers, so I appreciate not seeing mean statistics. But count values can provide some good visuals.

 

Thanks a lot for the suggestion. We have added graphs 3 and 4.

 

9.Line 513. A document from 1994 is cited but the reference is to a 2015 reference. Why is the original document not given as the appropriate reference? It seems inconsistent to refer to something from 1994 in the text and not provide the original citation to match the years.

 

Thank you very much for your observation. We have adjusted.

 

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I am satisfied with the author’s responses to my questions raised in my initial review. The revised  manuscript is easier to follow based on feedback from the reviewers.  

 

Reviewer 2 Report

After the explanations of the authors I am satisfied with this paper.