Reflective Journal on Sustainability and Engineering Principles

This reflective journal presents a student's reflections on various engineering topics related to positive energy savings, spanning from Week 1 to Week 11. The journal begins with an exploration of sustainability and its importance in engineering, emphasizing the need to balance present needs with future generations. Subsequent weeks delve into complex systems, problem-solving methodologies, engineering drawing using AutoCAD, and professional responsibilities, including ethics and legal liabilities. The journal further examines critical thinking, information literacy, academic literacy, and professional communication skills, highlighting the importance of effective communication and research processes. Teamwork, time management, project management, systems approaches, and innovation are also discussed. The student references multiple sources to support their reflections, showcasing a comprehensive understanding of the course material and its practical applications. The journal provides insights into the application of these concepts in real-world scenarios and the development of essential skills for an engineering career.

A Reflective Journal regarding the positive energy savings
Week 1: Sustainability
The term sustainable development means the purpose of satisfying the needs of the present
generation without giving up of future generation. It had played a major role among the great
leaders in developing the social, environmental and their economical needs. In any field the rule
of the sustainable development is to support the economic and social benefit of the organization.
Likewise it should not destroy any of the following factors such as the natural resources, living
and atmosphere. It is clearly said that the social and the economic well-being couldn’t be
developed by destroying the natural resources. It is crucial to follow the intergenerational
solidarity since these deals with the development of the opportunities of the future world.
According to (Andersen, Mathews & Rask, 2009), it is said that the increase in the population
count around the world leads to the deployment of several natural resources as well as the raw
materials. Awareness has to be taken to protect these resources, which is said to be concern of
today’s world.
Week 2: Complex system
Individual work has to be done that requires the experimental and the simulation work on
different parts of the concerned plant that could be integrated into a network. It is necessary to
have certain sensors that deal with monitoring the system at fixed or regular intervals of time.
This as a whole is integrated with the power networks that could be in the form of complex
systems (Blanco, 2009). The information obtained from these complex networks could be
viewed as dormant information that tells us the behavior of the system with the diagnostic and
the prognostic behavior of the systems. This could be used for the latter reference to predict the
response of the system in advance. These data could also be used for the optimization of the
system. Several computational algorithms could also help us in dealing with the complex
technologies (Branker, Pathak, & Pearce, 2011). Several fields require the need of the complex
system for the monitoring purposes. These fields include the health care, aerospace,
transportation, quality assessment of liquid and air etc.
The areas that include the energy technologies and the complex systems include:
 Energy and power
 Simulation after modeling
 Sensors that is Optical in nature
 Analysis of complex systems
 Complexity, Computation and Economics

Week 3: Problem solving
Several educational institute works for transforming the students in adapting the qualities of a
profession that includes several variant and distinct components, which deals with various fields
and studies. This system deals with the acquisition of knowledge through various sources and
applying them effectively into a practical source. This could be quite challenging. These skills
are sufficiently required for any professional department. Acquiring knowledge could be done by
various sources such as referring a book, learning certain tutorials of a particular domain,
referring lectures, conference, journals, analysis of a situation etc (Connolly, Lund, Finn,
Mathiesen & Leahy, 2011). The thorough knowledge should be gained from these sources.
Engineers develop this knowledge through their academic development carrier. This
fundamental knowledge gained should be sorted out with the real-time occurring problem.
However, this could be quite difficult since this could cause a considerable confusion. The
confusion could be in the form of the algorithms that could be applied at that particular instance
or it could be anything. Hence considering an optimum solution for the generated problem
should be necessarily done. A flow of gaining knowledge and their application should be
necessarily highlighted. For many years professional schools focused chiefly on the transfer of
knowledge and mostly overlooked the skills and application.
Week 4: Engineering drawing
The National Research Council recently documented the need for enhancement in both
engineering design and engineering design education (Crawford, 2009). For any project we take,
it is necessary to implement the prototype of the particular project. Implement the prototype with
the help of the hardware components is of no use. It is necessary to implement it with the help of
the software platform. AutoCAD plays a major role for the implementation from where we could
achieve trial and error method. CAD stands for Computer Aided Design. It helps us to draw and
communicate our designs with the manufactures, technicians and clients.
Week 5: Professional responsibility
Speaking about the social factors and their impacts and needs, the work of the engineers leads to
the development of the social responsibility (Depuru, Wang & Devabhaktuni, 2011). The study
of the professionalism in the field of engineering has been increased over several years when
compared to the basic topics of science, mathematics and analysis. Several categories that falls
under the professional responsibility includes
 Client’s welfare and safety
 Professional Ethics
 Principles of Management
 Environmental Ethics

 Legal Liabilities of Engineers
Ethics is not a topic that is isolated from the engineering field. Moreover the social responsibility
could be spoken well in the professional ethics. Certain problems that occur in the society due to
the environment could be spoken well in ethics (Lund, & Kempton, 2008). Engineers should
analyze the scenario and find solution for those impacts. The major responsibilities of an
engineer are
 Understanding the Market
 Specification of the needs
 Designing the concept
 Brief Design
 Manufacture
 Sell
Week 6: Critical Thinking
Critical Thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully
conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from,
or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to
belief and action (Jessop, 2002). The process of breaking the problems into several parts and
determining the association among them is termed as analysis. An alternate way of thinking
about the problem with the solution found by combining various processes together is termed as
synthesis. At last, it is necessary to evaluate the results based on the evidences that had been
collected (Jacob, Lee & Lueckenhausen, 2009).
Week 7: Information literacy and the research process
When we go one with a project it is necessary to review several journal papers regarding the
research process. An aggregate way of learning process is by enquiry-based learning that
includes the work of the project, investigation done in small scale, resource and problem based
learning (Heshmati, 2014). From this, the ability of the student with their self-directed skills and
functionality could be enhanced. The following characteristic involves
 Engaging with multiple situations, which is necessarily open-ended to various solution
and response.
 The enquiry and the methodologies should be carried out by the students
 Based on the student’s ability, it is required to outline all the progress and sufficient
learning outcomes should be highlighted
 The curiosity of the students could be increased at a high level motivating them to reach
new ideas
 The responsibility falls on the appropriate ways with the help of the analysis.

Week 8: Academic literacy
The indissoluble skills of critical reading, writing, listening and thinking depend upon student’s
capability to put off judgment and endure ambiguity as they respect the ballet between zealous
assertion and patient inquiry. The set of perception with the advanced behavior that leads in the
development of more academic work leads to the true academic literacy. If a student stands by
his own area field and achieving greater in that leads to the academic success. It is necessary to
consider the education as a collaborative effort and the student have to put his own efforts and
responsibilities for that (Huo, Zhang, & He, 2011). Triumphant students search for support when
they require it and advocate for their own knowledge in varied situations.
Week 9: Professional communication skills: written, visual and verbal presentations
A presentation defines the way of communicating to several speaking situations such as speaking
with the grout (group discussion), addressing a meeting or explaining it to the team. This could
also be in the form of addressing a gathering as well as speaking in the video conference. An
effective presentation involves a step-by-step preparation by means of information presentation
that should be done carefully. An effective presentation could be in the gathering information
and raising queries from the listeners and we should be able to solve them. The presentation
could also be in the form of pictures (power point presentation) that could be done very
professionally.
Week 10: Teamwork, time and project management
All the ideas and the project planning have been done effectively. Now these clustered ideas
have to be separated into groups and each member has to contribute their own individual work.
A team leader has to be chosen so he/she will be responsible for monitoring their members work.
At last, these separated works should be clustered and finalized model has to be obtained. A
project has been chosen. The deadline of the project has also been mentioned. If there is no plan
for the time management then the project will be entirely wasted. Hence the duration should be
provided for each implementation and the time chart with the work done should also be recorded.
These works when effectively done, leads to the project management.
Week 11: Systems approach
A line of consideration in the management field that stress the interactive nature as well as
dependence of the external and internal factors could lead towards the system approach (Lin,
2011). This is commonly used in the business organization regarding the elements affecting the
business organization profit.
Week 12: Innovation
This is a major factor that differentiates our project from the regular one. If our project is entirely
new then we should receive patent so that others could not use our ides. In our positive energy

savings, we could say the smart way of using the system by adaptive control is exactly a new
idea.
Reference:
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