Guideline to Sustainable Building Rating Systems at Dalarna University!

Welcome to the Sustainable Building Rating Systems course. This course continues your learning journey in LP3 in the EEBE program. This course is mainly blended in P217 in the Borlänge campus and Zoom, however, the final seminar is only held via Zoom. All the learning material and recordings are available on the new learning environment platform: https://dalarnauniversity.instructure.com/courses/1638

1. Contents

Initially, the course discusses the history and common parts of sustainable building certification schemes. It subsequently explores variations in Sweden's most prevalent building rating systems, such as the EU Green Building Program (GBP), BREEAM, LEED, and Miljöbyggnad (MB), in national and international settings. Ultimately, the course concludes with a group discussion on how individual certification schemes can offer options and guidance for tailoring a construction project outcome based on various sustainable development objectives and approaches to advance the construction industry's sustainability towards climate-neutral goals.

2. Intended Learning Objectives

The course is centred on prevalent sustainable building certification schemes with the following learning objectives for students upon completion:

• To describe the principles and goals of sustainable building certification schemes in driving sustainability in the construction industry in Sweden,
• To identify and describe the main sustainable building certification schemes used in Sweden, including their evaluation criteria, methodologies, and certification processes.
• To evaluate the fundamental sustainability aspects and practices relevant to building design, construction, project management, post-construction operation and maintenance.
• To apply essential sustainability principles and measures, such as building material selection, operational energy reduction, and indoor climate management, to identify opportunities for improvement and to facilitate sustainable building design, construction, and operation.
• To demonstrate effective communication skills to convey the roles and benefits of sustainable building certification schemes to different stakeholders and understand the potential to drive near-zero carbon building targets, market transformation, and sustainability initiatives.

3. Course Agenda 

The whole course consists of several main teaching modules. Meanwhile, all the case studies are self-learning activities with supplementary documents, which is estimated around another 30~40 hours of learning time. The explicit course modules with the agenda are listed below.

4. Assessment and Feedback

In the Swedish construction sector, there is a prevailing emphasis on pragmatism. For this reason, the assignment task encourages students to work in thematic groups based on LEED, BREEAM, and MB etc. with the central topic of How does the allocated sustainability rating system improve towards the Paris Agreement & Agenda 2030? The assignment work involves tasks with factual questions based on detailed reading demands, as well as specific tasks with comprehension and analytical questions that require critical thinking and policy interpretation. Multiple assignment tasks are designed to assess the same skills and knowledge taught in the course, promoting student learning and mastery of course topics. Completed graded assignment reports serve as self-learning products for others afterwards, which are constructive tasks enabling students to search, analyse, and communicate in a group.

The assessment consists of a report, individual presentation, and peer questioning.  The educator's focus is to give feedback that encourages students to set goals, monitor their progress, and identify strategies for improvement.  When moving to the individual presentation stage on 20th March, the educator's focus is to give task and motivational feedback. In contrast "co-constructed feedback" will be addressed through peer feedback, which can help students develop their feedback skills in the last stage of peer questioning.