The use of a Delphi consultation to explore the curriculum for sustainable development in engineering

Developing a curriculum for sustainable development for engineers, even on a small scale, is a complex task. The University of Manchester has been undertaking a pilot project for an experiential, student-centred approach across engineering and science disciplines, described elsewhere. But that pilot also provided a springboard for the study described in this article. Group techniques for resolving complex issues have been around for half a century but mostly applied to questions of forecasting. Of these, the Delphi technique seemed to best fit the curriculum issues that we wished to explore. This article sets out some of the background to the choice of the Delphi approach, the questions that we sought to answer, the responses that we obtained and some discussion of the appropriateness of the approach to other issues of sustainable development and curriculum design.