Bridging The Gap in Sustainable Engineering Education: Expert-Driven Redesign of an Open LCA Tool For Industry-Aligned Learning

This paper presents an expert-informed evaluation and redesign of an open, Excelbased Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool initially developed to address critical gaps in sustainability education through an Excel-based LCA tool evaluated with academic and industry expert feedback. While proprietary LCA software dominates industry practice, its cost and opacity limit effective pedagogical application. The presented tool—implemented in TEDI-London "Ecological Design" module—employs transparent, scaffolded calculations within a project-based learning framework, enabling students to analyse real-world case studies like building renovations. Through mixed-methods research involving workshops with 10 industry professionals and interviews with 3 academic experts, this study identifies the tool's strengths in fostering conceptual understanding through step-by-step transparency, interdisciplinary collaboration, and industry-aligned documentation. However, experts highlighted key areas for improvement, including enhanced support for diverse learners through inclusive design (e.g., multimodal tutorials), streamlined terminology, and hybrid modules bridging manual calculations with proprietary software workflows. Findings demonstrate how open educational tools can balance pedagogical clarity with professional preparedness, offering a replicable model for integrating LCA into engineering curricula while addressing equity, industry relevance, and scalable feedback mechanisms. The study concludes with a phased redesign strategy prioritizing terminology simplification, EDI enhancements, and structured transitions to industry-standard tools.